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this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2025
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Fuck Cars
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If you go to the same bakery once a week, you eventually start recognizing people, and people there recognize you. You aren't goin to a shop to meet people, it's just a happy side effect of having a regular routine like that. When you keep seeing the same person over and over again, you may end up wearing a shirt that they like and it becomes a conversation and you have a new connection to your community. Walkable communities encourage relationship building of various types while car dependency forces us into social isolation.
I can tell I'm going to have a hard time explaining why that little narrative you constructed rubs me the wrong way, but I'll give it a shot.
Yeah, I absolutely talk to the same people every day or week, but it's not some special little mental health break I get, it's just how stuff works. The chances of that being a nice bit of social interaction you like or an oppressive thing that makes you feel trapped or socially awkward are about 50-50, and seeing people from other backgrounds or environments romanticise it feels kinda patronizing or... touristy? Touristy is a word.
Does that make sense? Living in a small place or a place where you walk to your daily errands isn't magic or a whimsical simple life, it's just how stuff works in some living arrangements, and it has upsides and downsides. Car-first cities suck and I wouldn't move to one, but it's not because I live in some endless episode of Cheers that's keeping me mentally healthy.
I live in a small, but dense, rural town in the Midwest. It has it's problems, but there is a better sense of community here than any of the half dozen suburbs i grew up in, mostly because most of the homes are within walking/riding distance of a thriving little downtown. Some people are shut-ins who don't want to mingle, and that's fine. Some people i see regularly i have never talked to. There are even people in town who i hate, and others who hate me. The whole point of the OP is that small and walkable communities are how humanity evolved and has existed up until 100 years ago, and study after study has shown that every quality of life metric deteriorates when people live in car-centric environments.
Speaking of things I have a hard time explaining, particularly to people in NA, being car-centric and being large and urban are not the same thing. There are more functions of daily life that need a car here than in the large cities I've lived in. I walk to more things here, but there are also more things I don't do for lack of a car. I've lived in cities where I never met anybody twice outside of work but I used public transportation for everything and had more access to certain services.
It's not a binary between large and car-centric and small and walkable. It's not even a binary between car-centric and walkable. There are different ways to organize transportation (each leading to different consequences in terms of social interactions).
What annoys me is this perception of walkable (implicilty smaller) towns being this haven of community and in turn a mental health refuge by way of whatever stereotype of healthy socialization the speaker happens to project. I am pretty versatile when it comes to this and not needing a car is my red line, but I dispute both the idealization of the small community and the notion that the mode of socialization presented as ideal in the OP's thread is best for all, or even most people. If I was less of a recluse I would feel a lot more constrained in my small, walkable town, and I am very much not alone in that. The sense of isolation and constriction isn't rare in this environment.