This is apparently in Columbus, Ohio – a pretty major city by any stretch of the imagination.

And yet there are people who rail (geddit?) against 15-minute cities and efficient public transit that ensures no one ever gets stuck like this.

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    9
    edit-2
    4 days ago

    You can call literally call anyone you know we all have cars here. If you don’t know anyone at all you can taxi or Uber. In smaller towns you may even be able to call the police non emergency number and get help from a community officer type employee who has a car and does minor non police related stuff. Many many many things would have to fail before you need to ask a stranger and even in that case you would be hard pressed to not find help within the first couple people you ask.

    • @[email protected]OP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      20
      edit-2
      4 days ago

      My point is that this entire situation is a massive systemic failure. You shouldn’t have to find yourself in a situation where your car breaking down means you’re stuck at the grocery store with no way to get home unless someone deigns to come and get you – hell, you shouldn’t even need to drive to get groceries, any well-designed city would have multiple grocery stores within a few blocks regardless of where you live, and a dense public transit network and/or cycling infrastructure so you can get to the ones that are farther away.

      • TheEmpireStrikesDak
        link
        fedilink
        English
        33 days ago

        Living in London all my life, we grew up in a car-less household and my dad would do nearly all of the food shopping for our family of 6 himself (7 for a while when my uncle lived with us while he was studying), carrying it all home on the bus. I am still car-free and can get my shopping home using the bus or my bike on the way home from work. If you can’t do that in your city, then that’s the fault of your city’s planners. It’s a failure of providing good public transport.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        54 days ago

        I think it is underappreciated how large the North American continent is with highly concentrated big cities, with vast portions of the land outside of larger cities without public transportation. This includes CA/US/MX as a general comment and not specifically this screenshot in question.

        One may have “good” transit in Calgary, Edmonton and Red Deer but what about all those large spaces in between? It’s 1.5hrs driving from Calgary To Red Deer with many 10k person cities in the middle, etc. These villages do not have transit systems - cars are how North Americans travel when outside of larger cities. It’s why EV (lack of) range is a huge (non)selling point for some people depending where they live.

        • @[email protected]
          shield
          M
          link
          fedilink
          English
          54 days ago

          No, it isn’t underappreciated. It is severely overappreciated – i.e., it’s a bullshit excuse that’s been debunked over and over again.

          FYI, misinformation and bad-faith rhetoric, including whataboutism, is uncivil and violates rule 1 of this community.

        • Zagorath
          link
          fedilink
          English
          84 days ago

          with vast portions of the land outside of larger cities without public transportation

          I mean, yeah? That’s the OP’s point? That too much for North America consists of poorly-designed car-centric urban planning.

          • @[email protected]
            link
            fedilink
            English
            14 days ago

            I mean, yeah? That’s the OP’s point? That too much for North America consists of poorly-designed car-centric urban planning.

            Talk to me about the public transit options - besides the one bus that runs from Kalgoorlie to Esperance - in Norseman, WA.

            • Zagorath
              link
              fedilink
              English
              44 days ago

              I’m not sure what you mean. I didn’t hold out Australia as some bastion of urbanism. I simply reinforced OP’s point that North America is bad.

              Australia is also terrible at this. It just wasn’t relevant to mention.

        • Zagorath
          link
          fedilink
          English
          44 days ago

          Just fyi you got autocorrected (I swear, autocorrect feels like it’s more and more often these days changing from one correct word to a different word that’s grammatically correct but not what I wanted to say) from “food” to “good”.

          Anyway, django’s point was the same as OP’s: that car-dependent urban design is bad for people. Food deserts are a feature of car dependency. They’re not a necessary feature (as in, it is possible to have car-dependent cities that don’t also have food desert), but by definition a 15-minute city, the thing this Community exists to advocate for, cannot be a food desert. A well-planned city makes it possible to get to a grocery store within a 15 minute walk or ride.

        • tate
          link
          fedilink
          English
          44 days ago

          There can’t be food deserts in 15 minute cities.

        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          English
          14 days ago

          And it is pretty sad, that people have to live like this. It takes me 10 minutes to walk to the store, 2 minutes by bike, or one bus stop.