<story><title>American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage</title><url>https://usa.streetsblog.org/2018/07/12/american-cities-are-drowning-in-car-storage/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>angarg12</author><text>I visited the US (particularly the bay area) for the first time recently, and I was baffled by the sparsity of buildings. Suburbs and shopping areas are so far away that you need a car to go anywhere, and in turn you need massive expanses to held all those vehicles, which means that stores are even more spread apart, which essentially becomes a snowball.&lt;p&gt;Being used to high density housing and underground parking spaces all those open parking lots seem nonsensical to me, even more considering the alleged housing shortage over there.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>erikpukinskis</author><text>This is how we have had such economic growth. We use our own population as a testbed where we disintermediate all of our own cultural support systems so that everything must be hired out. Food, transport, entertainment, self concept, family, all of it has been reformed in the U.S. over the last 100 years to replace community labor with commercial relations.&lt;p&gt;This means we get first dibs on these new industries (Software As A Service, Family Mental Health As A Service, Guiltlessness As A Service, etc) as they catch on globally. Sometimes naturally because we discover some actual value. More often just by finding a practice which is addicting and then just dumping product until a population is addicted.&lt;p&gt;Great recipe for success, much wealth has been stockpiled.&lt;p&gt;It’s possible we sold out some cultural knowledge in the process, but the U.S. is a young country so most of our culture was pretty raw in the 19th century.&lt;p&gt;The bulk of our old growth culture we just slaughtered on arrival.</text></comment>
<story><title>American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage</title><url>https://usa.streetsblog.org/2018/07/12/american-cities-are-drowning-in-car-storage/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>angarg12</author><text>I visited the US (particularly the bay area) for the first time recently, and I was baffled by the sparsity of buildings. Suburbs and shopping areas are so far away that you need a car to go anywhere, and in turn you need massive expanses to held all those vehicles, which means that stores are even more spread apart, which essentially becomes a snowball.&lt;p&gt;Being used to high density housing and underground parking spaces all those open parking lots seem nonsensical to me, even more considering the alleged housing shortage over there.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kartan</author><text>Yes. I had the same experience. Visiting Mountain View, I was surprised at how walk hostile is. It took me 10 minutes to just pass one of the buildings surrounded by a huge parking lot and move to the next. To go from Intel offices to the Computer History Museum takes a really long walk cross kilometres of parking space.&lt;p&gt;The Computer History Museum is situated in the middle of &amp;quot;no-where&amp;quot;. But it has a highway 2 minutes away. To go from the close houses walking you need to walk close to the highway, with no trees or shadows. &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;goo.gl&amp;#x2F;maps&amp;#x2F;P6d977i44SA2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;goo.gl&amp;#x2F;maps&amp;#x2F;P6d977i44SA2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Some friends had a story about this. They were in LA and asked directions to a comic shop. &amp;quot;It is 10 minutes from here in that direction&amp;quot;. After 20 minutes walking they asked again. It was &amp;quot;10 minutes&amp;quot; by car, the guy that give them directions did not think that they will go walking.&lt;p&gt;I always have lived in places where is better to take public transportation or to walk than to use your private car. And one of the reasons is that the parking space is expensive. Buildings with parking space, that is also mandatory for new buildings, will place the space underground. This keeps residential buildings, shopping centres and offices close together.</text></comment>