• thatsTheCatch@lemmy.nz
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    10 months ago

    The part about going to your job is totally valid. Some jobs can be worked remotely or partly remotely now, but that doesn’t apply to all professions, so that is something to keep in mind.

    In terms of not being able to realistically change the current cities, many of the best walkable cities prioritized cars first and then changed. It took decades, but they eventually achieved it.

    There’s this presentation I found after doing some research on the 15-minute cities conspiracy theory, and it was a really interesting talk about how towns and cities can be changed into slower, more accessible ones. It’s an hour long but there’s a 5 minute segment where it discusses cases where cities have changed from car-based to a more walkable one, in this case Amsterdam and Pontevedra (in Spain).

    I recommend checking it out. Here’s a link with the timestamp of the start of the section about those cities:

    Dr Rodney Tolley: Fast Speed, Slow Cities

    In the section before this one, he discusses the cost of other transport modes versus cars. Building and maintaining infrastructure for cars is waaaaay more expensive than for other methods, so cost isn’t an issue. I’ve included the slide below.

    Image of a side from the presentation linked above comparing the cost of car infrastructure versus other infrastructure. It's too full of text for an alt text so I recommend watching the presentation