<p>Exactly, emeraldkity. Apart from young people who don’t want to drive and people who can’t afford a car, there are more and more people who can’t or shouldn’t drive. We need to do better providing places to live that don’t require cars. Step one: stop requiring developers to provide parking.</p>
<p>So weird. </p>
<p>For me having a car and being able to drive = freedom. I can’t imagine having to be saddled with using public transportation (take a bus that takes double the time or longer than just driving) unless one lives in a very urban environment and that’s no place I’d ever want to live. I got my learner’s permit and DL on the very earliest day I could and then I bought a car and then I had freedom.</p>
<p>I like the idea of biking/walking and do that but that’s pretty limiting in range from a practical perspective and downright difficult to bring stuff home from Home Depot with.</p>
<p>[Delivery</a> Services](<a href=“http://www.homedepot.com/webapp/catalog/servlet/ContentView?pn=Delivery_Services]Delivery”>http://www.homedepot.com/webapp/catalog/servlet/ContentView?pn=Delivery_Services)</p>
<p>You’re not a real bicyclist until you’ve carried furniture. Stuff from Home Depot is barely a challenge.</p>
<p>For me, not having to get in a car from one week to the next = freedom.</p>
<p>This is hard core.
[Tim</a> Flores, Minimalist From Bellingham, Washington, Moves House On A Bicycle To Reduce Environmental Impact](<a href=“HuffPost - Breaking News, U.S. and World News | HuffPost”>Tim Flores, Minimalist From Bellingham, Washington, Moves House On A Bicycle To Reduce Environmental Impact | HuffPost Good News)</p>
<p>I wonder what percentage of reduced driving is directly attributable to being able to do most shopping on-line.</p>
<p>Once all these youngsters have kids, they will all be out in the burbs hunting for a house with a yard and good school systems. Then they will get cars.</p>
<p>
90+%, maybe more, of the people I see on those few occasions when I take public transportation have the ear buds in, the music cranked, their nose in their phones, and they are doing their best to avoid making eye contact with anyone.</p>
<p>definitely not true here.</p>
<p>S-1 decided NYC public transportation costs too much, so got a bicycle, helmet and health insurance instead.</p>
<p>The choices of getting married—>buying a house----->having kids, are not the only options available.
I think more people will remain single & mobile.
[Living</a> Single Longer: It’s a Global Phenomenon | Psychology Today](<a href=“http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/living-single/200811/living-single-longer-its-global-phenomenon]Living”>http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/living-single/200811/living-single-longer-its-global-phenomenon)</p>
<p>“Having a car = freedom” only if you have plenty of money to pay for insurance, parking, tolls, gasoline, maintenance, registration/license tax, etc. Otherwise, it’s an expensive ball and chain. All of those costs have gone up significantly in recent years, while entry-level wages are stagnant at best.</p>
<p>I can do my job without a car quite easily - bike two miles from the employee housing every morning. I can’t effectively do my job without a smartphone and wireless Internet. Pretty easy choice which bill I pay.</p>
<p>Not my young ones.</p>
<p>notrichenough, there’s really no evidence that anyone wants to “move back to the burbs.” Research indicates that this is a fundamental, long-term demographic shift, just as the Baby Boomer flight to the suburbs was ascendant for about 50 years.</p>
<p>Suburbs were built for a paradigm of gasoline that cost a buck a gallon. $5 per gallon will seem cheap in a couple years - the era of easy oil is coming to an end. We’re seeing the early effects right now.</p>
<p>Speaking for myself, I never want to live in a suburb, ever. Vibrant small town, sure - but a sterile car-dependent cookie-cutter subdivision miles from the nearest grocery store or business district? Forget it.</p>
<p>
I did it all on my own when I was 16 from my earnings at an almost min wage p/t job plus savings to buy the car. Maybe it’s harder today but that usually just dictates the cost of the car. Maintenance would have been expensive but that was incentive for me to learn how to work on cars myself. I’m sure I’ve saved many thousands of dollars over the years as a result. </p>
<p>A bike is no substitute for a car unless one sticks within a short distance of home and doesn’t need to carry much (back to the home depot point - try carrying 10 sheets of drywall or a lawn mower or 5 75 pound bags of fertilizer on a bicycle). </p>
<p>I think a good compromise for most drivers though is to get a bike and start using it more and offset some of the driving with biking and walking even if a car is needed at other times. Biking/walking has other benefits - as long as you don’t get hit by a car while doing it.</p>
<p>Glad, I did the same thing @16 or maybe @17, brought a brand new car with my own money. Taking the bus was too inconvenient and time consuming which I did for years.</p>
<p>I agree with GGD. I don’t know why people make it seem like either/or. I walk around campus and such (knee doesn’t allow me to bike :() and I drive to work and going back home. </p>
<p>2 out of my 3 jobs require a car. Buses don’t run that early on Sunday (when I have to work) and I can’t walk that far. Truth be told, given the nature of my work, I don’t want to take public transportation to and from that job even if it was available. Too risky IMO. My other job is all over SE Michigan and can take over an hour driving. The other one I could bus to, but I’d have to cut down my hours as I’d have to include transportation time as it’s a heavily traveled (and not reliable) route.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Every Home Depot I know of offers delivery.</p>
<p>Moreover, I don’t know of any urban dweller who needs 375 pounds of fertilizer. That’s what I mean by a paradigm shift - what’s someone who lives in a downtown loft going to do with enough fertilizer to start a farm, or a marijuana grow operation? There’s no 5-acre lawn to mow.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Yeah, that doesn’t happen anymore. How much was that car, by the way? The cheapest new car for sale in the United States today is $12,000. That’s equal to about 2,000 hours of work at minimum wage, not even considering taxes.</p>
<p>It also is much more difficult to work on your own car without a lot of expensive tools.
That is if your car is new enough not to have a carburetor.</p>
<p>All the electrical stuff on modern vehicles is just something else to go wrong.The glass on my lift gate on my Jeep for example won’t latch. It’s been like that for almost two years because there is not an efficient, accurate or inexpensive way to pinpoint electrical problems.</p>
<p>
I don’t live in the middle of an urban area and actually use that amount of fertilizer for my farming.</p>
<p>It’s good that we can both do what we want - there’s no correct answer.</p>
<p>Some people just adore a penthouse view and others like the land spreading out far and wide.</p>
<p>Have you tried rotating crops/no till farming? You might not need so much fertilizer.</p>
<p><a href=“Northern Virginia Soil and Water Conservation District (NVSWCD) | Northern Virginia Soil and Water Conservation District”>Northern Virginia Soil and Water Conservation District (NVSWCD) | Northern Virginia Soil and Water Conservation District;