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No, it is trivial to spend an afternoon with friends or go for a walk.


Go for a walk where? On the side of the stroad? With your friends who live 10Km away and have to drive to meet you because there's no public transport?


Sure, why not?

My take is that Americans like to make infrastructure an excuse for everything when it really boils down to priorities and preferences.

10 km is a 20 minute bike ride if you're not too obese to fit on one. 10 minutes if you pick a coffee shop, pup, or Park that is halfway. Unfortunately, most people prefer Netflix and the fridge which is even closer


>10km is a 20 minutes

e-bike ? otherwise you have to be riding race type bike with really good dedicated bike lane


I don’t think you’ve ever biked in a city if you think 10km is 20 minutes


in 89.65% ‘going for a walk’ is not possible unless you want to walk in circles around your house 76km away from the first tree/park/coffee house… you may though go for a drive in a pickup :)


Maybe if you're living in the Alaskan wilderness, but pull up a map of San Francisco, Austin, or Denver and you'll find a plethora of parks, coffee shops, and pubs. That doesn't stop people from sitting at home watching Netflix alone


Those homes are so expensive that only high income earners can afford rent. Hence my comment.


lol america to non-american who watch a lot of movies might be SF, Denver, Austin… and even in those urban areas (which is not typical America) most people would need a serious drive to find a park (I used to live in Denver area, walking to a park would have been like 110k steps :) )


Strange, I pull up downtown Denver and I see like 20 parks within a square mile.

However, this kind of whataboutism illustrates my point. There's a near infinite number of places humans can congregate to enjoy each other's company. It can be a park or a coffee shop or a pub or your kitchen table for tea.

The fact that none of these are suitable demonstrates that the desire to get together is not there.


> "downtown Denver"

downtown Denver can house minuscule part of the population of the Denver metro area - only those affluent enough to afford it. America (again) is not downtown Denver or downtown SF or downtown anything...


Can poor people afford to live there? In Europe poor neighborhoods has that as well, so everyone can get that if they want.


yeah, there are also open spaces and shops in the suburbs and country outside of urban centers.




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