In most American cities it is virtually impossible to get around without a car. Usually it is only the very old cities where it is actually possible to walk anywhere. Even the cities that claim to be pedestrian friendly only make quick easy fixes and little cosmetic improvements that really do nothing to solve the underlying problems. It seems like many environmentalists in the USA are pushing policies to try to force people to take buses instead of buying a car. But in many European cities people choose to walk, bicycle, or ride the bus by choice. Many Europeans who live in the cities do not even have a driver's license. There are several problems I can think of. First, in many suburban American cities there are just too many people and too many cars on the streets. No one wants to ride a bicycle next to all that noise and polluted air. And it can be dangerous to ride a bicycle with all those cars going by. Second, from a pedestrian's perspective, American streets often seem to go on forever, without any side streets. Essentially a long wall of houses prevents you from going directly to where you are trying to go. And to go anywhere, you have to take the main streets, with all those cars. There just do not seem to be any side streets running parallel to the main streets. The third problem is the zoning. In most American cities, all the housing will be in one region, while nearly all the stores and businesses will be far away. And even when you do go to the stores, there will often be a huge parking lot with no pedestrian walk way one has to go through. It seems a little unpleasant to have to walk so far through a parking lot, having to be vigilant for any parked cars that could suddenly be coming out. And the entrances to these stores are often designed only for people who use cars. The store may be adjacent to the side walk, but a pedestrian will have to go all the way around to the other side adjacent to the parking lot to get in. It is not just private stores. I went to the civic center of a city that claimed to be pedestrian friendly and had exactly this experience. It was a huge building, and took five minutes just to walk around to the back side. They had a front door that opened to the side walk, but kept it locked apparently. I have also noticed there seems to be a lack of open space, the side walks are very narrow right up against the streets, and there is no shade from trees. Spreading out little parks along the main pedestrian walk ways would also make it more pleasant. People would have a place to sit down and rest for a few minutes away from the street. In areas with high volumes of car traffic, it might be a good idea to build more little pedestrian tunnels under the main streets, because it is inconvenient to wait for a light for several minutes next to so many cars speeding by. So what can be done to make American cities more pedestrian friendly? I think the most important problem is the layout and design of the city itself. The problem really has to be addressed before the city is even built. Americans need to look back to the designs of their old cities before car ownership was widespread. There also needs to be lower population densities, or rather the density needs to be spread out differently. One of the main problems discouraging pedestrian and bike riding is car traffic, and the main cause of car traffic is urban sprawl, a city that just keeps going on and on. So there should be little clumps of development, insulated from eachother by undeveloped buffers. Each clump should be like a little village, with restaurants and stores to provide the most commonly purchased things for the people in that area. Each little village should have between around 150 to 800 people. Another of the huge problems is work commuting times. America needs to face the facts about its urban decay, crime, and bad school districts that have caused the middle class flight into the suburbs. The fact is that middle class people simply do not want to live where the jobs are. This is a very complex problem, and there are many potential solutions. Perhaps school funding and laws need to be changed to allow insulated middle class communities to exist closer to the jobs in the cities. There need to be designs so that middle class families do not have to live far away to protect themselves from the crime and segregate their children from the poverty and overcrowding in the bad school districts. Some sort of school voucher program would be the simplest solution. So what else can be done to make America's cities more pedestrian friendly, and reduce the reliance on cars?
For brutal honesty to counter your politically correct questions, there are too many black people in urban areas that were designed with efficiency in mind. People didn't simply choose to move to a remote location. They chose to move to a location where the probability of having to shoot a house intruder and possibly do jail time (in the event of a liberal judge) was reduced. The "half-assed" solution by developers was to create suburban areas that would require an automobile to move around. The benefit - if you can't afford a car, you can't make it to the suburbs to steal from them. The detriment - the USA government has decided to give away free houses to minorities to complicate the "safety" factor. You might hear some counter arguments related to people wanting lawns or gardens. That is a fair argument for about 2 % of the population. The rest of the suburban dwellers waste their land and do nothing with it.
I don't get it, Hoosier8. Where are your pictures of Camden, NJ in 1945 and 2012. How about North Philadelphia in 1945 and 2012. They would look a lot different than the pictures you have shown.
In Sweden, not only do the houses have tidy little yards, but also each little group of houses often has its own little area of community open space right across the street. With different houses "sharing" a yard, less space is required. But I suppose this only works best in areas with high cultural/ethnic homogenity. In America, it seems everyone is reluctant to want to share community space with their neighbours, and people are much less trustful about their children being left alone in public, or even in their own front yards if unattended (they tell me there are bad people out there that might drive off with their children). It makes me wonder why America has so many "bad people" and why this is not really a concern in much of Europe. Seattle is actually pedestrian friendly, as the streets were layed out many years ago before cars, but this also means it is very difficult to get around in the city with a car. So ideally a city layout should be carefully designed for both cars and pedestrians. But there might be some inevitible trade-offs. It might simply not be possible to fully optimise a city for both. Vancouver seems to be pedestrian friendly, with so many parks throughout the city and open space along all the walk ways, but I really wonder why there seem to be so few cars on the roads when Vancouver has such a large population. I like the idea of some sort of monorail system going throughout the city, with individual shuttles one could get into and go wherever they wanted, and everything coordinated by a computer. And automatic vending machines to rent electric bicycles throughout the city.
