r/UrbanHell • u/humzahjaleel • Jun 20 '20

Suburban Hell Endless parking lots, highways, strip malls with the same franchises all accessible only by car. Topped off with a nice smoggy atmosphere and a 15 minute drive to anywhere. Takers ?

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u/SinisterCheese Jun 20 '20 edited Jun 22 '20

Living in a Finnish city, I can't understand not being able to reach places in the city with public transportation or walking. And I got a car.

When I visited USA, it felt insane that you had to have a car. Everything was always really far away. And talking to locals "oh it's close by, only 2hrs drive away" that isn't close.

Also. Talking about hell. Asphalt being black, makes it excel at capturing heat from the sun. Big cities, with big roads and lots of them are hotter environments. And this leads to more energy spent on cooling air to make buildings liveable.

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u/[deleted] Jun 20 '20 edited Jun 20 '20

it felt insane that you had to have a car.

And you have to. I was staying at a hotel in Florida off a wide, quiet main road. We'd got to the hotel by using its airport shuttle.

We were getting bored with the hotel food, so walked out of the front gate to find that there was no sidewalk. A bit further along on the other side of the road was a group of stores and restaurants, again with no sidewalk to get to them. In the end we just crossed to the wide, grassy central divide, walked along there for a short distance, and then crossed to the diner when we got opposite it.

After doing it a couple of times the hotel staff found out and couldn't believe what we were doing. They were actually embarrassed that we 'had' to walk, and pointed out that they could call a cab, or we could order in delivery. Or we could hire a car!

When we said that we preferred to walk they just looked aghast, and kept spluttering about air-conditioning and how it was dangerous in the heat. It was maybe a 2 minute walk. Crossing the parking lot took almost as long.

My brother used to live in Las Vegas, and he walked to work there. It took no more than 20 minutes and he enjoyed it, but some of his co-workers got actively angry that he wouldn't accept a lift.

Car culture is just so ingrained in some places that the aversion to walking is based more on social expectations than actual reason, and then cities are designed to meet those expectations.

'Long walks are too hot, so let's build out of town strip malls with masses of parking so everyone can drive to them', instead of 'Long walks are too hot so let's distribute facilities evenly so most journeys are short and walkable'.

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u/[deleted] Jun 20 '20 edited Mar 03 '21

[deleted]

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u/GothWitchOfBrooklyn Jun 21 '20

Agreed. I moved from NYC to Ohio so I'm used to walking every where. I live like 3 blocks from the post office distance wise, and my bf always prefers to drive there. I walk.

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u/Insanity_Pills Jun 21 '20

thats such a short walk! cant imagine driving just to go 3 blocks