alt Hacker NewsI don't follow, are people then not able to choose to live somewhere that has shopping facilities or hospitals that are built so as not to be only accessible by automobile?
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They exist, but usually they are expensive and in-demand areas because... people usually like walkable areas. Its a shame that more suburbs arent designed this way, because it doesnt even cost more money...just more thoughtfulness in how we should design our livable spaces.
Suburbs/car-dependecy is a classic case of "worse is better". Its simpler to build and the worst-case suburban sprawl is tolerable, so it proliferates.
Yes, if such places are plentiful. It's a messy situation where revealed preference (house prices in walkable areas, Amsterdam and Paris increasingly full of rich young Americans) vs immediate consumer choice (more cars! More convenience! Oops, now we need to flatten downtown for an elevated freeway...) tend to give conflicting answers.
> re people then not able to choose to live somewhere
No, because no such somewhere has been built in the country in question (US) in the past ~60 years, because the default is car-centric. So you're left with a few uber dense, old, predating automobiles, places. Which are extremely expensive, because they simply do not have the capacity for everyone who wants to live in them.
We shouldn't have to completely upend our lives to move to the small handful of major cities that provide the infrastructure to exist comfortably without a car. At least in the US, your options are limited to NYC, Chicago, Boston, and maybe a few others (Seattle/SF). And even then, the hard set default in these major cities is car ownership EXCEPT for NYC.