Good day!
DISCLAIMER: I have no formal training in anything regarding city planning. I simply don’t enjoy cars that much and I would love to find some discussion and hope among the endless doomposting.
For me, the /c/fuck_cars community (and the original /r/fuckcars) leave something to be desired. Because I have already become “based and trainpilled,” reading through the communities feels a bit like beating a dead horse.
I have heard too much about the Netherlands for one lifetime, as someone who lives in the states. Maybe my perspective is flawed here, but: the Netherlands have a GDP greater than every US state except for 4 of them (California, Texas, New York, Florida), and the Netherlands have less land area than 41 of US states. This isn’t to say that the Netherlands has no city planning feature that should be ignored because they are so unique, but I think that is exactly what the Netherlands are: unique.
Anyway, on to the meat and potatoes!
- If you had to recommend livable places for like-minded people to move to, what city or state would you recommend for anyone? (it must cost less than both an arm & a leg. One arm or one leg is acceptable…)
- Which state(s) policy in your opinion seem to be heading in the right direction as a whole?
I think coastal New England has a lot of potential, specifically Portland Maine, Portsmouth NH, and Boston.
I lived in Portland for four years: its downtown is very walkable/bike-able, they have decent transit options (buses, Amtrak, airport), and seem to care about growth towards people/pedestrian-friendly designs. They’ve been building up their bike lanes, running a bike sharing program in the non-winter months, and are starting to construct denser housing. If I had to settle in the U.S. somewhere, I would personally choose here.
Portsmouth has a smaller downtown, but its also very welcoming to pedestrians. I’m confident they’ll continue in the right direction too.
Boston’s much larger than either of these, though that comes with strong public transit through bus, train, etc. A better choice if you like big cities.
I’ve been to Portland, ME a few times for vacation and one time a few of us decided to bike everywhere. Couldn’t go car free since our hotel was a bit far away, but once we parked, it was bikes all day. There wasn’t a ton about Portland that made it stand out in terms of places you can’t find in other towns, but the ability to ride around to all those places made the difference between a vacation destination and just a thing to do for a weekend.
To have the same experience in terms of types of places to visit in a day my area would require driving 10-20 minutes between each spot which definitely takes the winds out of the sails for trying to enjoy yourself.