Thread by @torrHL

"More Americans now say they prefer a community with big houses, even if local amenities are farther away -

Liberal Democrats prefer walkable communities,
conservative Republicans prefer drivable communities"

pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021…

"That gap of 35 percent between Liberals who want to live in walkable neighborhoods and Conservatives who do is larger than the gap between those with postgraduate degrees and high school diplomas"

vice.com/en/article/wx5…

"...who want walkable neighborhoods (14 percent) or 18-29 year olds versus 50-64 year olds (12 percent)."

"The poll also shows a 26-point gap between Asians who want walkable neighborhoods (58 percent) versus whites (36 percent), although the poll was only conducted in English."

"But one of the most striking findings is that the gap in walkable neighborhood preference according to extreme political views is even wider than the gap between urban and rural respondents, where 50% of urban residents polled want walkable neighborhoods and 25% of rural ones do

"In other words, whether or not you actually live in an urban or rural area is less of a predictor of whether you want walkable neighborhoods than the political beliefs one holds regardless of where they live."

"But, there is still a lot of disagreement on the issue, even among people who consider themselves part of the same ideological cohort. "

"If we put the above a slightly different way, 42% of liberals prefer to live in places where they have to drive everywhere.

That is a very high number for the group in the survey one would think is most concerned about climate change, of which driving is a huge contributor."

"And while electric cars may help reduce emissions from cars significantly in the long run, they need to be accompanied by an equally significant reduction in how often and how far we drive."

"The most obvious and attainable solution is to live in places where we can sometimes walk to the places we need to go."

"It is wrong to equate the above with the idea that everyone has to live in cities.

Rural towns have and continue to thrive with houses and businesses clustered around a main street or town center built around a transportation hub to a major city."

"his is how much of the country looked, especially but not only in the northeast and midwest, prior to World War II.

And it is how much of, say, Europe and East Asia still look."

"In fact, the U.S. is one of the few places where massive, suburban sprawl with mandatory single-family zoning that legally bans businesses from opening near people is the rule, norm, and general expectation."

"It is, also, ironically, one of the most dramatic examples in modern U.S. history of government mandates interfering with the rights of private property holders, which the Conservative movement was once ideologically opposed to."

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