Gregory's Server@chrisblake @hughster @breadandcircuses It should be perfectly possible to live in a town or village and get around to do one's routine necessities without owning a car. Millions did, and millions more are even still nostalgic for that lifestyle.
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25 comments
 @maiamaia I'm certainly not disputing that in most wealthier countries we currently have a complicated and tangled up mess of economic policies and cultural factors that make non-urban car-free living highly impractical for many people. I'm not saying all of us can just stop driving tomorrow without any larger changes in our economies and cultures. My point is that there are current, real-world proofs of concept that show it doesn't have to be this way if we collectively want to change.  @hamishb @chrisblake @hughster @breadandcircuses @hamishb @chrisblake No, millions *didn't*! Before Cars came along most rural areas were significantly underdeveloped and sparsely populated. The entire reason rural towns and villages have exploded in population and grown in prosperity over the last century is cars. @hughster @hamishb @chrisblake ever hear of trains? Trains did that long before cars. Ditch cars and make rail better. @afterconnery @hamishb @chrisblake They didn't, and they never can. Even before Beeching trains only went to towns, and only past the occasional village on the way. And the routes didn't take you in every direction you might want to go. (They certainly don't now.) Good luck trying to build railways to every village with today's prices... @hughster @hamishb @chrisblake That's funny because trains did that where I'm from. And canals did it before trains. It stopped when auto companies bought out and then gutted other forms of transportation. It may be different where you're from, but your history is different than mine. Try not to universalize your history upon everyone else. @hughster Here is an example from near where i live. This one ended up as a bust, but they were being built everywhere at the time. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitewater_Canal Also the Cardinal Greenway, rails to trail path, goes from Richmond to Muncie and there are various towns along the way. A hundred years ago people would take weekend trips from Richmond to these small towns by rail. @afterconnery It doesn't look like that canal went to an awful lot of villages. And for those lucky enough to have been on the route who wanted to go to other places on the route, what would the journey times have been for passengers in the towpath era? @hughster @chrisblake "Underdeveloped" reflects an urban, industrialized perspective. Populations sufficed for a thriving agrarian economy, & people used trains, local buses & taxi services & mutual aid. "Development" since then reflects exurban sprawl ("country living with city amenities"), a luxury we can no longer afford. @hamishb "Underdeveloped" means what it says: people were poor, they had little access to good education and work and leisure opportunities, health outcomes were bad, precious few services and amenities were available, etc. You're imagining a rose-tinted version of the past that never existed. Have you ever actually lived in the countryside? @hughster Old towns all over where I live in Ontario have centres full of solid commercial building and fine houses. They were quite prosperous. There were regional train services and milk-run buses regularly. @hughster Or, OK, how about you say what "development" means to you, because that's where we began? Is it car dependent lifestyles? If you're talking about settlements that are both so tiny and so remote that they can't feasibly have any type of transit service but you also can't feasibly ride a (possibly electric) bicycle to the nearest town that does (or could) have public transit links, my position is that people should be encouraged to move (with economic assistance if needed) to settlements that are not so remote from the rest of society. Unless they actually prefer a very remote, almost purely subsistence-based lifestyle, in which case I respect that, but they also need to be willing to accept the implications of it. As @hamishb pointed out, it is never going to be biophysically sustainable for significant numbers of people to have quick and convenient access to both rural and urban extremes at the same time. That's a peculiarly "first world" extravagance we indeed cannot afford. @chrisblake @hamishb And there we have it: "depopulate the countryside". Knew it wasn't far beneath the surface! You people are fanatics and you deserve to lose. @hughster @chrisblake On reflection a harsh response on my part, so apologies. It is pretty much the upshot of what you said though, from what I can tell, i.e. that people in the countryside who genuinely need cars to get around should have to move. That is an extreme position. @hamishb ☝️ Living the dream in Victoria, Canada Village Life is good #village #CarFree #walking #biking #TheGoodLife #CleanAir #exercise #ClimateCrisis |
@hamishb @chrisblake @hughster @breadandcircuses impossible, only jobs are way away in towns or cities where people want late or early opening, often the only one on the bus going to work, most shiftwork carework etc there is no bus, no can = no job