I got into watching "Not Just Bikes" on Youtube, about the morass of car-dependent, ugly Suburban Sprawl that North America has willingly choked itself into, compared against the nigh-utopia that is walkable, comfortable, beautiful urban areas that seems to be many places in Europe, especially the Netherlands.
It's just such a world of difference, almost all of America is built in such a way as to be hostile to pedestrians, and I could never really articulate the feeling before despite having lived here my whole life, just because I never moved outside of the US and really never had anything to compare it to, and Not Just Bikes finally opened my eyes on the subject.
I live in a city that has the vestiges of walkability, but isn't really walkable. There's sidewalks, but frequently completely unmaintained sidewalks that are crooked, cracked, and upturned such that trying to ride a bike is hindered by having to endure millions of small speedbumps. There's nice paths, but those aren't meant to actually take you anywhere, they're just scenic nature trails. There's lots of places without sidewalks at all. Trying to get anywhere on foot or bike is nigh-impossible, if not because there isn't a viable path to it, then because it's simply so far away. American design has, like every other resource at its disposal, misused and abused the large amount of space available to it to turn it into a wasteful, unwalkable, suburban hellscape. And of course, trying to change that would be nigh-impossible because Americans have a neurotic fixation on retaining their terrible lifestyles no matter what, and will combat everything and anything that tries to lift them out of their squalor.
I'm just really envious of Not Just Bikes, getting to be intelligent and worldly, and travel and learn about the world, before settling in Amsterdam, which seems like a paradise compared to basically anywhere in the US.
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Topic: Things that made you go "WTF?" today o_O (Read 13182690 times)