And this could be anywhere in the USA, this could be California, Texas, Fucking Virginia or even Puerto Rico.
this post was submitted on 10 Apr 2025
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That very much not solarpunk. Where is the positivity? Or at least the reflexion for a solution?
Commercial streets like this existed back when I played outside 40 years ago too. If you are going to talk about kids playing, use a photo of a residential area.
Okay. I hear what you're saying, but, given that everyone "needs" to be in the office and the office is in a major city, very few people live in the suburbs in the current workforce.
Most of the suburbs are owned by people either soon to be, or already retired.
When those houses get handed down to the person's progeny, generally the place is liquidated, bought by either a flipper or a landlord, and either ruined, run into the ground or otherwise trashed and taken off the market, possibly to be replaced with either a condo building, a "luxury" rental that nobody can afford, or something similarly terrible, like the house being renovated into single room "suites" for rent....
New developments are no longer an arm and a leg, but rather: both arms, both legs and at least one kidney, just for the down payment.
New "homes" are still being made and those that aren't snapped up by someone looking to make it into an "income property" are either going to rich folks from out of town that moved to the area because it's cheaper, and they sold their home in (insert large city name here) for millions of dollars.
There's a lot wrong with the housing market, and bluntly, neighborhoods have gone to shit. Parks are frequently unmaintained, and I never see anyone using any parks anymore, so many of them are getting omitted from new developments, so the number of local parks is shrinking. Add that to the growing number of people forced to live in the city where they work because commuting is a nightmare and they simply are not allowed to work from home because the boss doesn't want them to, and I'm sure we're getting more and more kids growing up in this kind of urban landscape.
The older generation can only blame themselves for doing it too... Which is likely not you, I'm talking about the people who started their career in a union, then when they decided to start their own business, got in there to union bust.
There's a lot of capitalists that drove entire markets into the dirt so they could have a bit more.
I blame reality TV
Change the picture to a normal suburban playground but set it on fire and have an old hag calling the cops on the kids for having the audacity to enjoy life and it'll be thousand times more accurate.
It's depressing to think that you're right. 40 years ago it looked like this, and now it looks like this too. We have civil engineers and research all around the world that shows how to build better, more human infrastructure and transportation, but America decides that this is what it needs to be. 🙃
sounds american
I hate when nature is absent. It's not just urban centers. Large suburban parking lots with no trees are a kind of hell for me.
I like urban centers even when they're relatively devoid of nature. What I don't like is when nature is pointlessly absent. A bunch of tall buildings providing living, working and recreational space efficiently to lots of people? Excellent. Asphalt to the horizon so that people can drive to Walmart and then drive to Applebee's? Soul-crushing.
In the US, compare a city like Houston, TX to a city like Portland, OR. Seems like two different planets.
You don't need to even travel. Compare downtown to Katy. Houston has plenty of nice parts with tons of nature, they just also have 50 square mile cookie cutter ranch house subdivisions.
And lots of highway.. LOTS
Just one more lane and they'll have enough room for rush hour traffic.
bruh same. everytime i have to ride through suburbs im just like damn this is so depressing and ugly
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Stroads are the worst thing america ever invented.
What the fuck is a stroad? Why is there a distinction between a street and a road?
Summary:
Street = Has businesses, houses, shops and sidewalks. Designed for humans.
Road = Higher speed limit than streets, generally no businesses or sidewalks, as it's just there to connect areas. Designed for cars.
Stroad = A connection between areas that also has businesses. You have higher speed limits, minimal sidewalks and it's dangerous/impossible to cross on foot. The only way to get around to different businesses along a stroad is by car.
Seems like people decided to back out a new definition, I don't think those words mean those things, but whatever.
What comes to mind from the picture is US-1 or 441, both of which were built as highways prior to highways existing and were major east coast routes up and down the coast. They do indeed suck, but it's mostly due to their historical use as The major highway for the area. The same is true of El Camino real over in San Francisco, real shitty.
That having been said, at least with the first two examples the majority of businesses are indeed car focused. Things like auto dealers, mechanics, Costco, furniture, and other shops you would never go without a vehicle. It seems weird to complain that this type of street exists when it clearly serves a purpose (first as a pre-eisenhower highway, then as a shopping mall for vehicle-oriented purposes). Isn't it better to keep cars in their own area?
What seems more likely is that the guy in the pic dropped off his car for an oil change and was wandering around waiting (I've done this) or that there's a major gap in public transit (very likely).
If you go to any old town in Europe there are a lot of roads with practically no cars. You can just walk along this wide road through the town fit for dozens of people. The problem is not that there aren't enough pedestrian sidewalks, the problem is everything in modern infrastructure is being made for cars, and roads are seen as both meant for pedestrians AND cars.
According to the other guy you have the words backwards fyi
Yes thank you. Quick google search says your right. My bad.
Only sort of related but The Florida Project is a great film that shows children playing in the dismal misery of Florida, much like in this photo.
Part of why I moved to the city was wanting to escape the car based nightmare of the suburbs. Couldn't do much of anything without a car or an extremely risky walk.
I could have walked a mile to the train station with no sidewalks , and then paid $20 for a ticket into the city on a train that stops at like 10pm, but all of that sucks. I stayed inside and played a lot of video games.
$20 a ticket??
Yikes.
What city?
I looked it up, it's $15 currently. Suburban NJ to Manhattan.
$15 is still kind of a lot when you're a kid
Damn, I feel blessed then. Australia's a pretty high cost of living, but our trains (+ the other modes of public transport) are like half that price in Melbourne Australia, and you can travel as much as you like. All day. Almost anywhere in the state where trains, busses and trams go.
(Or at leat most routes)
We are still very car centric though, by international standards.
This is why I want to move to the netherlands. Beautiful countryside, walkable cities. Shit, I could bike to nearby cities there if I wanted to.
I'll never be able to afford to leave the hellhole known as the usa, but damnit I'll dream.
I live in Norway. Growing up, some days in school were reserved for diverse activities. Some of my friends and I decided to bike to the swimming park in the city ~20 miles away. We didn't have to bike on car roads at all to get there, as bike lanes and good side paths lead us the whole way. Being able to get anywhere with a bike at the age of 14 is an amazing level of freedom.
UK here, not perfect but we did have quite a few paths that either don't allow cars or don't have many so cycling around was pretty easy. Cars make people lazy. Many people I know will drive to avoid an 800m walk.
Growing up in the 90s in the usa, movies and tv always showed kids riding around on their bikes and not coming home until dark. Where the hell did they go? To get from the suburbs into town would be 10-20 miles riding on the edge of the highway almost wherever you live. No shoulder, no bike lane, no nothing (I did this to get to work for about a year. it sucked, got hit by a truck twice in that time.)
Norway sounds great.
Riding bikes was a fun activity. The point wasn't to go somewhere.
Riding around in the suburbs get old fast if you can't occasionally go more into the city or out into the countryside or to some other interesting place.
I didn't feel like it ever got old, as a kid. I used to love riding down hills with my friends, with our feet off the pedals to see how fast we could go. Or we'd just ride aimlessly until we'd see some old building to explore, or an animal to try to catch, or a tree to climb, or an interesting person to talk to. I don't think I started feeling like we needed to be going "somewhere" until I was a teen. People aren't as nice about groups of teens riding around randomly.
As a kid I was quite content doing laps around my neighborhood. When I got together with other kids we'd wander further, and since it was a small town, adults would keep an eye on us.
Nowadays if you let kids wander around like that you get cited for abandonment.
I think it must vary a lot from place to place. I lived in Southern Louisiana until recently, and it's still common there to see kids out by themselves, walking from place to place, playing in the street, or riding bikes around the neighborhood with friends. No one seems to have a problem with it.
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It's depressing seeing this in my city. Full groves of trees and fields ripped up and destroyed for another McDonald's and more and more apartments. It never ends does it ?
i know a place that looks extremely similar to that
Yeah, it's called america. Unless you zoom in on a liscense plate, you don't know WHAT state that is.
Well.....I guess it's not Hawaii. Besides that though.....
"I guess it's not Hawaii"
Meanwhile hawaii:
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Here in the Europes, I find curbside parking similarly depressing. Like, man, it should be a human right for kids to be able to go outside for playing ball. But you can't do that anywhere around here, because wherever there's kids, you can be sure that someone's parking their precious car nearby.
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