this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2026
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Spoken like an upper middle class person. And yes, fresh tomatoes and lettuce can be a luxury even in a dense city. Food deserts exist even there. Not everyone lives in Vienna or the Netherlands. And ordinary people do NOT get to choose the urban planning they can afford live in. Almost all of it was decided 100+ years ago. And is nearly impossible to change now. Unless you want to move large numbers of the population out of an area to demolish and rebuild that much new infrastructure, a thing that often gets called "gentrification". And what of the poor people who can't afford to live where you do and how you do? They very often live the farthest away from all those things you take for granted.
In fairness, it's often false thrift to move to an area you need a car with the hopes of saving money on rent... that all ends up going into the car. I hear you as someone born into poverty in a car centric place that this often isn't a choice, that's fair, but all else being equal my experience that needing to maintain a car was a constant albatross around our neck as a family. Once I moved to an area with good transit and didn't bother with a car, I could save way, way more money even considering higher rent...
Like I said, your opinion seems to be formed by a car oriented society and you appear to struggle to imagine an alternative. If you need to watch your finances you can find all those fresh produces at urban discounters in transit oriented cities. Buying those without the need for a car is actually less costly than having a car and buying the cheapest worst kind of food.
That is the thing transit oriented cities generally enable that. I m well aware that not every city is transit oriented. I am not saying people living in these places have a choice. I am saying urban planers have a choice to change how the cities look for the next generation(s). You mentioned the Netherlands, they are a great example for that. 2 generations ago they were very car oriented following the US lead. Not 100 years ago, 50 years ago.
Rampant fascism is on the rise, here and abroad. We can't even get US citizens to recognize Mamdami is center, at best, or as I'm discussing elsewhere, how to even get our compatriots online not to accuse us of being trolls, and in 3D not to view us as enemy (see also POTUS reverting to full McCarthyite "Godless communists" red scare tactics on Truth Social).
It seems like you're arguing that a better way of doing things is hard, therefore not worth doing, or that a century ago was the cutoff for deciding how we do transportation.
The way our stuff is laid out makes it difficult to live without a car. That doesn't make the car a necessity in the abstract when that layout and design is often the direct product of designing around cars in the first place. It makes the car a necessity in the specific system we have for many people.
"We can't do things differently because then it's harder to do things exactly the same" is a weak argument.
Are you actually using your perception of someone else's economic class as an argument? When you're arguing in defense of car based suburban sprawl and buying groceries by the carload?