How Car Dependency Ruined Small Towns

Comments · 105

• JE

  @jennabrown9713 · 1 month ago

  My grandma is getting older, if she can no longer drive, she will be completed cut off from everything in her small town. Transit is needed for the young and the old who cannot drive.

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• ER

  @Erintii · 1 month ago

  Historically speaking the USA was built on the railway network.     It was rebuilt for car dependence.  And it spreads outside, this car dependence.

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• DE

  @dennisc6716 · 1 month ago

  "Walmart is my hangout spot" has to be one of the saddest phrases in the English language.

  161

• PA

  @paulor2 · 2 weeks ago

  I live in Brazil and have visited the US for work a few times in recent years, and I was shocked by what I saw. Except for the downtown areas of major cities, you have to drive everywhere—even for the simplest things. Here in Brazil, I live in an outlying neighborhood, yet within a 10-minute walk, I have access to absolutely everything I need: supermarkets, pharmacies, restaurants, bars, public parks, and—most importantly—public transport. A local bus runs right past the corner of my street, heading to the city center; if I walk 10 minutes, I reach the main transit corridor served by bi-articulated buses that run in dedicated lanes. These buses connect to terminals and travel to the city center and on to the other side of town. My neighborhood also has a network of bike lanes connecting to these main corridors, allowing me to reach any part of the city; cycling is my primary mode of daily transport. It makes me sad to think about having to rely on a car for everything—being isolated in a ghost-town neighborhood with no social life.

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• TH

  @TheGreatSovietUnion2 · 1 month ago

  thanks for mentioning rural transit!  MOST of north america isnt accessible at all because there is no transit. where I live, there is rural transit to a lot of towns beyond my city, so I go to these small towns on days off and spend some money there. if there was no transit, I would never see these towns, and they would not have my business. small towns have a lot to offer, and having a bus that lets out-of-town people enjoy the same main street as the locals is a good economic argument for said small towns.

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• LI

  @linuxman7777 · 3 weeks ago

  Japan has this same problem with their small towns. Infact in the book "The Roads to Sata" the author back in the 70s was talking about how once the villagers in Hokkaido got cars, they all drove to Nayoro or Asahikawa for better shopping and services than what their town offered, and as a result those small towns died.

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• LO

  @lookdown-t1q · 1 month ago

  I wouldn't really consider them "small towns", but Australia is home to some beautiful towns that are walkable (And once had trams) like Ballarat, Bendigo, Albury and Leeton, Cooroy, Newcastle and the list goes on.

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• JJ

  @jjandorliadul · 1 month ago

  Those were some pretty depressing aerial drone footage. If you were to show this to many residents of small town America, I wonder if a majority would even see a problem with it on an aesthetic level alone. Just absolutely ugly and disjointed. I think many are simply unaware of other possibilities of living.

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• EL

  @elorani1714 · 4 weeks ago

  Another measure that would help small towns is federal level work-from-home protections. We saw how feasible wide-scale work-from-home can be during the pandemic, though this flexibility is being clawed back. Many people who are forced to live in or near large cities for work would probably prefer living in smaller, more slow-paced communities. This wouldn't be a complete substitute for the jobs lost during industrialization, but it would be a way to redirect at least some money from cities to smaller communities as the remote works would shift their shopping and demand for goods to the local market.

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• HA

  @HarrisonPyros · 1 month ago

  The Virginia Passenger Rail Authority is doing great work to connect the state's smaller towns to the larger rail network so smaller towns like Christiansburg and others have better transit access.

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• BA

  @baddriversofcolga · 3 weeks ago

  The thing I really like about small towns is the ability to live in a quieter setting but be close to things. I really love small towns in the northeast and in Ontario.

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• OS

  @oscardaone · 1 month ago

  As much as I want to see improvements on small town, I’ve also learned why some are better off left alone, but that can be its own discussion for another day.

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