I appreciate your metaphor of tomatoes vs. ketchup, and LOL'd at "progressive-cause-via-conservative-temperament routine," but am not sure that the keynote speaker's dramatic anecdote holds water (in my experience the "food desert" discourse often plays fast and loose with facts). Pretty much every commercial and ad for fast food burgers/sandwiches includes a stack of lettuce and tomatoes. It's plausible that the kid might not have known the word tomato, or might not have ever eaten one or encountered an unsliced one, but it seems unlikely that he wouldn't at least vaguely recognize the red circle things on burgers sometimes.
Yeah, I’m wondering if the kid in the story (assuming it actually happened that way) was just puzzled why this speaker is publicly asking him about tomatoes.
Even within New York City, and occasionally within warring groups in downtown Manhattan neighborhoods, you get some version of the sides of this debate where there is a side that engages in a part-suburban lifestyle, feels threatened by urbanism (by way of looming redevelopment and parking reductions), and pursues their grievances with a VERY receptive media market (the TV anchors get personal limos, many of the newspaper editors still drive, Rupert Murdoch’s empire, etc). You feel like you’re going crazy when you see a community group emerge that says “no more tall buildings” or “how will I get to the doctor without a car??!?!?” (In Manhattan, and also in BK/Queens really close to here too)
It is definitely possible to keep a car in Manhattan, although it is an expensive pain. The people who do have cars here use them inexplicably - it isn’t just edge cases of people driving to Great Barrington frequently, but it’s also people who don’t go anywhere with their cars but to make Costco runs... with a small apartment where they can’t fit the stuff from Costco... and people who also inexplicably try to drive to restaurants and engage in an hour-long ritual of trying to find parking near the restaurant. Perhaps they did this since a time in the city where parking was a bit more plentiful and fewer tourists were around, and maybe they know the hours where driving is easier. But in any case, they’re more cases of “eats the ketchup, never saw the tomato”. I’m not saying these people are representative - many of them strongly give the impression of borderline personality disorder - but they’re a curious edge case, and they’re not that hard to find.
More relevant is the vast swath of single-family home owners in the eastern parts of Queens and Brooklyn, with sparse subway coverage and irritatingly unreliable bus service, where everyone lives a fully car-enabled lifestyle and they feel quite hostile about modernization and upzoning. They are so hostile about it that they actively obstruct things that people in the urban core need; they don’t want “the city” to creep into their neighborhoods, and have little solidarity with the residents of the other boroughs. You get this sense that the suburban residents of the city, and of the region when it comes to Albany, gang up on the people who chose to be among the 2m or so who live in the dense, transit-rich parts of the city. Instead of thinking of the core of the city as a jewel and an economic engine, they’ve convinced themselves of some wild notions about their neighbors - one of which is that we who don’t need cars are actually living the substandard lifestyle here. It is not a concept to be expanded! And the car-driving folks are entitled to impose whatever externalities onto the non-car-drivers in order to ensure that driving in this city merely remains difficult but not impossible.
(And, again, it’s hard for the non-driving folks to engage with these arguments if the news sources here decided that the suburbs are their main commercial market)
I think this all aligns with “people don’t even know exactly what they’re refusing”. And I think a really great bit of evidence of that is that it’s not exactly this great boon to have a house right on the edge of the walkable city, with a personal garage. Those houses are expensive but not “oligarchs buying them up” expensive. There is still extremely high demand here for walkable living, to the extent that people don’t even wait for apartment viewings anymore to make offers. (And there is no 10% or 20% down on purchases. It’s all cash or nothing.) All the people moving here, in great numbers, want THAT experience. Others are entitled to say it’s “not for them” but for these nearby residents to argue that urbanists are dangerous fools who will run NYC into the ground is... quite something else.
I grew up in a jersey burb like you, and remember getting a car feeling like freedom. I know I changed, and I have some idea of why - living in walkable places , remembering how dangerous I was as a 17 year old driver and how dangerous biking to the park and x-ing busy streets was when I was 12. There are still things I love doing that I can't imagine without a car - mainly outdoor activities. But yes, steak and potatoes without the steak is what car-free would've sounded like to me. The only places you see it in America are very unique parts of the country - a few big cities and college towns - that it is hard to imagine it at all to most Americans.
I grew up in a third ring suburb about 20 minutes outside a midsized Midwestern city. One thing I remember vividly from learning to drive and gaining independence is how threatening I found even first ring suburbs. "The houses are small and close together and on a grid" read as "urban and frightening". After twenty years in the city I love it and find the suburbs to be alienating, but yes, you're right, if you come from the suburbs getting around the city is very strange. In part that's because the tools of travel are designed for a different environment -- parking a giant car in the city is sort of like wearing snowshoes in the summer.
Might our preference for change (or preference against change) be the real issue here? Do those preferences underlay our liberal or conservative tendencies? I fall solidly on the left and I would also say I welcome 'change' (and even advocate for it). I know others who prefer things to largely remain the same.
I also think of another parallel for me - winter cycling. For many years I cycled year-round and enjoyed it more often than not. Many people couldn't understand how or why I would choose to cycle in the winter. But none of those people had actually tried winter cycling.
Which gets to another point - city design. I was able to comfortably cycle in the winter because my commute was largely on city trails that were maintained well through the winter. That quality infrastructure made my choice to cycle in the winter possible, enjoyable even.
I appreciate your metaphor of tomatoes vs. ketchup, and LOL'd at "progressive-cause-via-conservative-temperament routine," but am not sure that the keynote speaker's dramatic anecdote holds water (in my experience the "food desert" discourse often plays fast and loose with facts). Pretty much every commercial and ad for fast food burgers/sandwiches includes a stack of lettuce and tomatoes. It's plausible that the kid might not have known the word tomato, or might not have ever eaten one or encountered an unsliced one, but it seems unlikely that he wouldn't at least vaguely recognize the red circle things on burgers sometimes.
Yeah, I’m wondering if the kid in the story (assuming it actually happened that way) was just puzzled why this speaker is publicly asking him about tomatoes.
Even within New York City, and occasionally within warring groups in downtown Manhattan neighborhoods, you get some version of the sides of this debate where there is a side that engages in a part-suburban lifestyle, feels threatened by urbanism (by way of looming redevelopment and parking reductions), and pursues their grievances with a VERY receptive media market (the TV anchors get personal limos, many of the newspaper editors still drive, Rupert Murdoch’s empire, etc). You feel like you’re going crazy when you see a community group emerge that says “no more tall buildings” or “how will I get to the doctor without a car??!?!?” (In Manhattan, and also in BK/Queens really close to here too)
It is definitely possible to keep a car in Manhattan, although it is an expensive pain. The people who do have cars here use them inexplicably - it isn’t just edge cases of people driving to Great Barrington frequently, but it’s also people who don’t go anywhere with their cars but to make Costco runs... with a small apartment where they can’t fit the stuff from Costco... and people who also inexplicably try to drive to restaurants and engage in an hour-long ritual of trying to find parking near the restaurant. Perhaps they did this since a time in the city where parking was a bit more plentiful and fewer tourists were around, and maybe they know the hours where driving is easier. But in any case, they’re more cases of “eats the ketchup, never saw the tomato”. I’m not saying these people are representative - many of them strongly give the impression of borderline personality disorder - but they’re a curious edge case, and they’re not that hard to find.
More relevant is the vast swath of single-family home owners in the eastern parts of Queens and Brooklyn, with sparse subway coverage and irritatingly unreliable bus service, where everyone lives a fully car-enabled lifestyle and they feel quite hostile about modernization and upzoning. They are so hostile about it that they actively obstruct things that people in the urban core need; they don’t want “the city” to creep into their neighborhoods, and have little solidarity with the residents of the other boroughs. You get this sense that the suburban residents of the city, and of the region when it comes to Albany, gang up on the people who chose to be among the 2m or so who live in the dense, transit-rich parts of the city. Instead of thinking of the core of the city as a jewel and an economic engine, they’ve convinced themselves of some wild notions about their neighbors - one of which is that we who don’t need cars are actually living the substandard lifestyle here. It is not a concept to be expanded! And the car-driving folks are entitled to impose whatever externalities onto the non-car-drivers in order to ensure that driving in this city merely remains difficult but not impossible.
(And, again, it’s hard for the non-driving folks to engage with these arguments if the news sources here decided that the suburbs are their main commercial market)
I think this all aligns with “people don’t even know exactly what they’re refusing”. And I think a really great bit of evidence of that is that it’s not exactly this great boon to have a house right on the edge of the walkable city, with a personal garage. Those houses are expensive but not “oligarchs buying them up” expensive. There is still extremely high demand here for walkable living, to the extent that people don’t even wait for apartment viewings anymore to make offers. (And there is no 10% or 20% down on purchases. It’s all cash or nothing.) All the people moving here, in great numbers, want THAT experience. Others are entitled to say it’s “not for them” but for these nearby residents to argue that urbanists are dangerous fools who will run NYC into the ground is... quite something else.
I grew up in a jersey burb like you, and remember getting a car feeling like freedom. I know I changed, and I have some idea of why - living in walkable places , remembering how dangerous I was as a 17 year old driver and how dangerous biking to the park and x-ing busy streets was when I was 12. There are still things I love doing that I can't imagine without a car - mainly outdoor activities. But yes, steak and potatoes without the steak is what car-free would've sounded like to me. The only places you see it in America are very unique parts of the country - a few big cities and college towns - that it is hard to imagine it at all to most Americans.
I grew up in a third ring suburb about 20 minutes outside a midsized Midwestern city. One thing I remember vividly from learning to drive and gaining independence is how threatening I found even first ring suburbs. "The houses are small and close together and on a grid" read as "urban and frightening". After twenty years in the city I love it and find the suburbs to be alienating, but yes, you're right, if you come from the suburbs getting around the city is very strange. In part that's because the tools of travel are designed for a different environment -- parking a giant car in the city is sort of like wearing snowshoes in the summer.
Might our preference for change (or preference against change) be the real issue here? Do those preferences underlay our liberal or conservative tendencies? I fall solidly on the left and I would also say I welcome 'change' (and even advocate for it). I know others who prefer things to largely remain the same.
I also think of another parallel for me - winter cycling. For many years I cycled year-round and enjoyed it more often than not. Many people couldn't understand how or why I would choose to cycle in the winter. But none of those people had actually tried winter cycling.
Which gets to another point - city design. I was able to comfortably cycle in the winter because my commute was largely on city trails that were maintained well through the winter. That quality infrastructure made my choice to cycle in the winter possible, enjoyable even.
There are so many useful things to read....like your musings. This is insightful. Opinion survey creators all need to read this. Thanks again!