Cities Aren't Loud: Cars Are Loud

This depends on how you define ROI. Car infrastructure and lack of density reduces tax revenue for cities and strains infrastructure. There are other human benefits to reducing car traffic and use in favor of public transportation: * Reduces air pollution * Noise pollution * Allows a focus on human centric urban planning * Allows for higher density commercial and residential increasing tax revenue * Reduces pedestrian traffic injury Well done video essays: Parking minimums link Noise pollution ▶ this video Infrastructure strain link More on Infrastructure and Sprawl link Articles: link's%20less%20expensive%20than%20owning,to%20take%20further%20climate%20action. link link Climate town videos are all well researched and provide an enormous amount of follow-up content from their sources. Generally, I care about all of the above and I perceive investments in public transportation to have a higher ROI. Some extra historical context is helpful too: link The book The Color of Law by Rothstein is worth a read. In the end there is a balance between public transportation and car dependency and right now the scales are leaning too much in favor of cars.

I don't get why I am getting such emotional responses. Most of the noise in cities comes from cars, that is a fact. Even dense cities can be fairly quiet. I suggest watching this video: ▶ this video Plus China has probably not the best building codes, the problem can be further improved by having proper sound isolation in homes. Dense cities mean you will have everything in walking distance. There will be much more space for parks and other areas of recreation.

I visited Copenhagen a while ago and one of the most remarkable things was how _quiet_ it was. Or rather, what I could hear. People talking, birdsong, passing bicycles, and just.... life. It hurt to leave. I still remember standing outside with my finger in my ear shouting in to my phone just barely able to hear people walking around in cities in California. Notjustbikes does a great video on this ▶ this video - "Cities Aren't Loud, Cars are Loud"

> So make cars pollute less Physically impossible to have them pollute less than methods of mass transportation. Mathematically, even. Just divide the number of people carried per pollution caused by cars vs trains, bikes, or even buses. There's nothing you can do to make cars competitive. > Figure out how to filter microplastics from our food and water "Just figure it out", ok. But even then, an ounce of prevention is worth the pound of a cure. > Figure out what's causing asthma in children A little random but ok. I'm guessing grinding up rubber and metal particles into the air right next to where said children live isn't the best for their lungs. > Not sure how obesity is related. Maybe improve the food supply? 1. Wake up 2. Walk 30 feet to your car 3. Sit as you drive to work 4. Spend 8 hours at your desk 5. Walk 30 feet to your car 6. Sleep 7. Why am I fat?! Maybe improve the food supply?! > A lot of these are solved with electric cars which are increasingly more competitive. Virtually none are, an electric car is still a car, see point 1. > Why force people to regress towards a worse product rather than address these technical issues? Highly dependent on your definition of worse; I'd argue the sort of streets and environments you can find in the Netherlands [1][2][3] are way better than in the US. Not everything is a technical issue that can simply be solved by better engineering. [1]: ▶ this video [2]: link [3]: link