This is my first introduction to The War on Cars, but I am such a big fan of this anti car movement. Strong towns was my introduction to the movement but my views were solidified through several city planning youtube channels (city beautiful, not just bikes). Before buying into this and related movements I relocated to a rural town where the vast majority of our taxes go to roads. Plowing, maintaining, building, it's all roads around here. Most of our town is convinced that our taxes are so high because of inept government or corruption but when you look at the city budget it's painfully clear that roads are just really expensive when everyone lives on 2 acres, every road is wide enough for 2 heavy duty dually trucks towing boats and potholes are unacceptable. Not to mention that when roads are high quality and wide, people drive fast. The odds of my kids getting smashed by a speeding truck are way higher than I'd like them to be.
We've got to stop with the whole "everyone gets a quarter acre and a truck" mentality. I live out in the middle of nowhere and everyday construction begins on a new home, filling in every gap of what used to be farmland. All of us are 15 minutes away from the nearest anything. To be fair though, I'm sure they're all moving out here for the same reasons I did. Housing near work or transit is so scarce and expensive that it just doesn't make any sense. We're spending the same as we would in the city center on a house, but we're getting a mansion out in the country instead of a shack in the city.
We've got to stop with the whole "everyone gets a quarter acre and a truck" mentality. I live out in the middle of nowhere and everyday construction begins on a new home, filling in every gap of what used to be farmland. All of us are 15 minutes away from the nearest anything. To be fair though, I'm sure they're all moving out here for the same reasons I did. Housing near work or transit is so scarce and expensive that it just doesn't make any sense. We're spending the same as we would in the city center on a house, but we're getting a mansion out in the country instead of a shack in the city.