this post was submitted on 12 Oct 2023
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[โ€“] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Cars are a form of personal transportation. Personal transportation is great, things like bikes and escooters can get people around very quickly. The problem with cars is that they go too fast, and they take up too much space.

It's a tragedy of the commons. Cars would be great if they were only used by professional drivers, didn't require parking, and were limited to how many could fit on the roads without causing traffic. (These are called busses and taxis)

All cities in the 60s and 70s were excited about cars. Even cities that would be considered "anti-car" nowadays, like NYC, Paris, and Amsterdam, were excited about cars and building massive highways. However, what most people realized, is that building enough parking, and building wide enough roads to handle all the cars is really hard (and in some cases, literally impossible). Residents realized that they didn't want any more of their city to be bulldozed for yet another highway or parking lot, and went fuckcars.

On top of that, this all happened before we understood the impacts of cars on climate change and mental health.

So yes, we built car-dependent places because it was convenient, and now we're de-carifying those places because it was a terrible decision.