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Comment by syki | Hacker News Reader

We Americans are a nation of people who spend the vast majority of our waking hours inside. We go from building to building via car isolated from the world and each other. It’s an enormous waste of land and resources since every building has to have its own parking. Most parking lots at stores sit empty most of the time. It’s unhealthy that we walk so little. It’s unhealthy that we interact so little with those around us. It’s unhealthy that we spend so little time outside. We are a nation of zombies addicted to fast food, rage (caused by living virtually in information bubbles designed by Facebook and others), and a fear of interacting with each other.

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The ability to walk in quiet, open spaces with low pollution is one of the top advantages of low density suburbia.

Low density suburbia can, and usually has, plenty of walking spaces with a ton of nature around. I lived in multiple suburban neighborhoods and I was always either within a short (and easy) drive to a park or had great walking areas in the neighborhood itself. Contrast with high density, where you have to deal with pollution, noise and potentially crime just to walk to a park (and in the park itself)

Regarding "fear or interacting", in my experience I have a lot of more interactions, of the cordial and polite kind, with the few neighbors I have in my low density area than I've ever had when I lived in a high density city where you can feel like an ant in a colony.

I lived in a suburb with lots of walking paths and within walking distance of a grocery store. This is a rarity in the U.S. Even on nice days very few people out and about. It was rare for me to encounter more than one person on a hour long walk. While some suburbs have walking paths (and many do not) my experience is that few take advantage of it.

A lot of that pollution is due to cars.

Seems like most Americans like it this way. You say unhealthy but that is what the market overwhelmingly wants.

A market with federal intervention in the form of implicitly guaranteed 30 year mortgages and toll free highways.

And that government was created by the same people… your point is?

I understand your point that citizens in a democracy get the government they deserve. Choices are not made in a vacuum. Path dependence can lock us into local maxima. A series of rational reactions can sometimes lead to an irrational result. People complain about energy price volatility, traffic jams, and climate change but are unwilling to plan meaningful change. Short term concerns and lack of easy solutions tilt us into the same old ways of car dependency, restrictive zoning, tax funded and congested highways, parking minimums, and ever higher housing prices.

The market doesn't want this, it wants to make the most out of land near cities. It's the government (local) that bans density and mandates car-centric development.

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