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Comment by dublin | Hacker News Reader

Well, to be fair, parking is AT LEAST as important as housing, since housing without parking is pretty damn useless in almost every city there is. There are very valid reasons that most of the population of the world (and especially the US) simply refuse to live anyplace where public transit is the only option - it just sucks. Always.

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More to the point, parking regulations _nudge_ people into owning cars since low density places means you have to drive _everywhere_. And the more you drive, the less you walk to the point where it becomes a seldom, maybe Sunday afternoon walk and at that point, it's clear to see how owning a car can overtake your life. And so you drive, and when you get to where you want to go, you need parking. It's a vicious circle. Desire to own a car -> drive instead of walk etc -> build parking -> shops & houses become separated by oceans of parking -> desire to own a car.

Living in a dense, walkable cities where your friends and resources are close is a healthy and sought after lifestyle. You should try it.

No. There are many places where it’s perfectly viable and pleasant to do without a car, through some combination of walking, biking, and public transport. Granted, most of those places are outside the US, but even in the US there are a few decent spots, I’ve lived in them.

Not every location adopts the approach of building a car dependent hellscape, and then using the very car dependence they have created as justification to continue the car dependent approach.

This is just completely wrong. Just from personal experience I can say that Tokyo, Amsterdam, Paris, and Florence are perfectly livable without a car.

Now list 4 american cities you can live in without a car?

Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, New York

Would also go so far as to put forth any college town with a climate where a bicycle will get you around most of the year without dying from freezing to death or heat exhaustion.

All those cities are way better with a car.

How do you plan to get to Rainier?

Is there supposed to be a "/s" here?

Whether or not those cities are "better with a car" doesn't really matter here. OP was asking what "cities you can live in without a car", and you can do that in all four of those (I've done so in Seattle and San Francisco). Whether or not you love to do it doesn't change the fact that it's perfectly possible.

And Mt. Rainier? Really? Again - the question was whether or not you can live in a city without a car. Rainier is two hours outside of the city, so it's not even a part of the question.

So the point is that US cities suck?

I don’t know anyone who owns a car in Paris. The TCO is just stupid. People just rent one when they need it.

> parking is AT LEAST as important as housing,

Holy shit lol. I usually kinda roll my eyes when transit activists use the phrase "car brain" but it just clicked.

Maybe parent is satire?

LOL guess everybody refuses to live in Tokyo, New York, London, Hong Kong, Singapore, Berlin, Amsterdam, Paris, and so on, as evidenced by the severe lack of people who live in those cities.

Tokyo.

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