I have the luxury of being relatively close to my kids’ schools and a grocery store and I’m also fit enough to bike and walk long distances. The only reason I can do this is because I work remote and we have the means to purchase a house almost wherever we want. However even I still drive a car frequently because it can turn a 30 minute walking trip into a 6 minute drive. Multiply that by the trips I take every day and it’s hours saved that I get to relax with my kids instead. Then there’s winter weather where biking becomes infeasible.

It’s not really possible to build a large city where everyone gets to live close enough to their job and their kids’ schools and the stores they need to go to, unless everyone is moving their house every time they want to change jobs.

The best we could do is robust public transportation. Whenever I hear calls to make everything walkable I can only assume the person hasn’t thought about all the people with kids, or who do work that can’t be done remotely, or who don’t want to move for every job, or who can’t afford to live in the nicest parts of town, or who live in places where winter weather would turn a 20 minute walk into a 1 hour hike, or who are too old or injured to be walking long distances, or all of the other reasons people drive cars. Maybe if you’re young, have no kids, and work a high paying job that lets you live wherever you want these ideas seem obvious, but some form of transportation, public or private, is a basic necessity for the rest of the world.

That's not the problem. Wave a magic wand and have all cities walkable and bikeable and you'd still have school busses.

I suppose we could wave more magic wands and say "ok, everybody with kids has to live in a city whether they like it or not" and wave some more magic wands and eliminate all concerns about crime or other dangers, but if we're going to wave this many magic wands maybe we should just wave one that makes it so children don't need to go to school at all because they are all magically educated already.

I don't know if that works in the EU but in the US most places are not a city and most places whilst technically walkable the kids will have to start walking at 4am and maybe they will get to school on time after walking along rural highways and on dirt roads. That would be incredibly dangerous, reckless and irresponsible.

As for tracking, I want more of it by individuals just not centralized corporations. The porch pirate bosses often park in front of my place to watch their minions of whom snatch packages around the time that kids are getting home. Some of the porch pirate minions drive vans and could easily snatch kids. I have been encouraging many of the people in my area to install cameras that log license plates and catch faces and vehicles in multiple directions of their roads and highways. We've removed some of the organized crime and pushed some of it out of this area and we will continue to push harder.

This isn't any more private. There are cameras with recognition tech just about everywhere now. If anything, this is less private.

Wish granted, now cameras are put up on every walk path and bus stop instead, as people keep getting robbed to/from the stores, so while the school buses aren't fitted with cameras, the streets are instead.

So someone introduces a new, problematic feature to a long-existing technical system, and your answer is to "just" reorganize all of society to eliminate that system?

The vast majority of folks don't want to walk/bike in Phoenix, Atlanta, Houston, New Orleans, etc where it's near or over 100 degrees in the summer.

I, for one, do not wish to smell my malodorous coworkers - who have walked or cycled to work and are all sweaty - all day. I already have one of them and it makes me want to vomit.

> Maybe design cities to be walkable and bikeable

Why does everyone suggest this like it's easily done and the only reason that we haven't is due to lack of intelligence and/or will?

It's not. It's an effort that will take decades, cost trillions of dollars, and will face both legislative and legal hurdles.

Besides, with individual trait recognition technology and smartphones, you'll just be tracked regardless. You have to hold leaders to account for this sort of abuse of power.