Unpopular Opinion
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But then it has to be asked - are things so spread out because of the car? Could things have been more convenient and close by if we didn't rely so heavily on the car? Would shopping centers like target and Walmart choose to be 5 miles outside of town if people didn't have cars, or would they opt to be closer to where the people are, walkable and convenient.
That's my point, that cars have made us more independent maybe, but at the sacrifice of our own convenience and community.
It is a lot of things. Despite the majority of people living in cities the US has a very strong independence in rural settings identity that includes traveling to remote areas on our own terms. This was fueled by auto makers and supported by our remote national parks, and a huge section if the southwestern US that is mostly open roads for miles and miles.
Unfortunately this aspect, which is a fairly positive thing in rural areas, needs into the cities where they were either built or changed over time to try and replicate the open spaces in dense areas. That is primarily possible because of all the open land, and being a new country that had killed or kicked out the previous inhabitants, the cities did not have centuries of existing as dense urban centers. Instead we got suburbs as a bastardized combination of cities and rural areas.
Walmart likes to live on the edges of cities around here for land costs and tax purposes, and since they cater to rural folks who already have to drive to get there, they end up with huge parking lots and massive amounts of wasted space. They are basically the business version of the suburbs.
The only solution would be to actively plan dense cities, but it runs counter to what we are taught to want, and the intentional destruction of public transportation we used to have along with ideas that public transportation must be self funding while roads get paid by taxes means change has some massive obstacles to overcome.