Comment by huhkerrf
1 day ago
Well, while we're talking about anecdotes, my neighborhood in a poor Texas town also had a free tennis court. There were a couple more down the road. My in-laws suburb has walking trails end basketball courts.
1 day ago
Well, while we're talking about anecdotes, my neighborhood in a poor Texas town also had a free tennis court. There were a couple more down the road. My in-laws suburb has walking trails end basketball courts.
Grew up in a very poor town in Arkansas. Had a public tennis court literally next door. In the 80s, the tennis court saw frequent use. People would get mad when they lost a match or whatever and hit the balls into our yard.
My grandmother would go collect them, and we always had a basket full of balls by the door.
By the early 2000s, people stopped using the tennis court very often, and the city tore down the chain link fence around the court to use as overflow parking for the adjacent little league fields.
I think the catch is, Americans have to spend so much time driving for ADLs (activities of daily living) that there is no time to walk over to the local court (if there is one, usually there is not). This is due to the sprawl Ponzi scheme (which spreads everything out). It's also the primary cause behind America's mental health crises (lack of 3rd places, everyone is isolated). And yeah, I'm not talking SF or NYC, but 90% of the rest of the country.
That is false for every american I know. Driving means less time than transit users in every study I've seen - that time is of course more stressful but we spend less time commuting and thus have more time. Working hours can be longer but for many it isn't much longer.
There are a lot of couch potatoes that don't use their time, but they have it.
It always blows my mind when I see how many subscribers Netflix has. Americans are so busy driving and working that they don't have time to do anything (cook, grocery shop, exercise, etc.). How are 90M households finding the time to watch movies or binge on TV shows?
3 replies →
> Driving means less time than transit users in every study I’ve seen […] we spend less time commuting and thus have more time
Transit is indeed slower, but there are several big assumptions in there that don’t support your conclusion. In the US, only 15% of trips are commuting to work, the majority of trips are shopping, errands, and leisure. People with cars make more trips than transit users, and go out of their way for shopping, errands, and leisure more often, because they can, because it’s “faster” than transit. Driving commuters tend to drive to lunch, while transit commuters tend to bring one or walk. Transit users can sometimes get things done that can’t be done while driving, which can in some cases more than negate the added travel time. I think that’s a minority of transit users, but I spent a couple years commuting by train and working on the train, and I saved a considerable amount of time compared to driving. Because a lot of people spend this “more time” they saved commuting doing more driving for things other than work, drivers don’t actually have more time in practice.
I can confirm, I took transit for month instead of driving and every trip was 2x-3x as long and cost at 1x-2x the cost of gas.
Are you talking American transit? Because yeah, it sucks. Also, where do you live - SF, NYC?
That’s the issue though - bad design is why driving is the only logical choice
4 replies →
I commute like 12 minutes and the stores I shop at regularly are in the middle of the drive. My office is more out of town than most jobs here.
You are an outlier, majority of Americans live in suburbia with a significant commute. And that sounds like a sweet setup. Mind if I ask where you live? Medium or small sized town?
2 replies →
Are they used though?
The poor town that I spent time in has 4 tennis courts in great condition that are almost never used.
That wasn't the argument. The argument is that they aren't _available_.
If you live in a place with inexpensive land, tennis infrastructure is relatively cheap. If you live in a dense city where space is at a premium, that’s when it gets relatively expensive.
Wouldn't space be more expansive in Europe with 100 people per km2 than in US with like 40 people per km2?
How come it's the opposite in practice?
> How come it's the opposite in practice?
It’s not. “In practice” ≈ “your assumption”