retiredguy wrote:JD, where do you live that you can purchase all of the things that you need by walking?
Hi retiredguy,
At the moment, I live in the center of Osaka, Japan. I don't need a car here. In fact, I don't even need mass transit, and I have lived years of my life conducting all my business on foot or bicycle. The city is almost perfectly flat, so it's well-adapted for cycling anywhere. Basically, no one I know has a car, and anyone who does have one is "the rich guy".
I have also lived in New York City, when I was a student, and I lived the same way there.
I was living in Colorado for a few years before I moved back to Osaka, so I'm familiar with the car life, but I hated it. It has so many down sides. You can't enjoy a drink with your friends because you have to worry about getting arrested. You gotta buy the car and pay insurance and maintenance. You have to deal with aggressive a-holes in traffic and in parking lots. You're wasting all this precious time doing nothing except sit in a box like a zombie. You have to get a license, which (to a person like me who was used to living without cars) was just an excuse for the government to invade your privacy and run checks on you. Plus you have to put up with the eyesore/odor of all these cars and parking lots everywhere -- you know, "the national automobile slum". That's what I mean that the car degrades your standard of living.
The point that I'm trying to make is that millions of Americans live in places like this. The choice is to re-invent the village as it existed a hundred years ago or to relocate the population to the nearby city. To make this transition is going to be hugely disruptive and hugely expensive. How do you envision this happening within the timeframe dictated during post-Peak.
The only thing impeding a quick transition is the American sense of "dignity" (for lack of a better word). For example, suppose that your gas prices are going through the roof, and the pinch is on. You can't afford to commute, but your cousin lives close to shopping and your workplace. Why not move in with him? If you've got food and shelter, what's the big hang-up? Maybe your cousin would appreciate the extra income because he's feeling the squeeze too.
So suppose you do move in with your cousin, or rent a flop house room. You ride the bus to work, and walk to the mall. Problem solved, and you didn't have to rebuild anything. Yes, it was "disruptive", but not particularly difficult or lethal. It's like overcoming an addiction. 90% of the barrier is just fear.
As for people like yourself who are living out in the middle of sprawl, why don't you move? It's sort of like saying: "But what are we going to do about the people who are standing in the way of the oncoming truck?"