When I look around on the subway here in NYC I see every type of person imaginable. There are wealthy people going to work and unhoused people and everyone in between. There are certainly transit deserts and I have friends that live in them who do have cars -- largely out in Queens, East New York, etc -- but many of the people I know in the city with cars are financially doing just fine.
It's also important to note that the extreme cost of living in Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn is relatively recent. My friends that grew up here in the 80s, taking the subway to school, were far from bougie. They were living a car free lifestyle then and now just because that's how the environment of many parts of NYC is built. It's not like NYC was constructed as a walking paradise only for wealthy people in the 19th century.
True, I'm an old urbanite/suburb-hater. But because of ppl like me, I don't think there's any place left in the USA which has 'good' transit and isn't expensive. (And solutions like congestion tolls only work because of the boogieness.) What's done is done.
Yeah, agreed. We built the country for the car and there’s no easy path out of that. Every time I’m in LA I think “man we could have had a city like Barcelona” and get bummed it’s just a sprawling car dependent amalgamation of suburbs. There’s clearly demand for more cities like NYC in the US, but we’re not going to get it.
Yeah, some local billionaires want to build "San Francisco by the Sacramento Delta", and it's been nothing but NIMBY opposition. My guess it will be McMansions in 20 years instead. Politically, we can't even build one high-density suburb.
It's also important to note that the extreme cost of living in Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn is relatively recent. My friends that grew up here in the 80s, taking the subway to school, were far from bougie. They were living a car free lifestyle then and now just because that's how the environment of many parts of NYC is built. It's not like NYC was constructed as a walking paradise only for wealthy people in the 19th century.