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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 8, 2025

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Other public transit pros:

Generally the density of places with it means I can add a second or third destination after the primary museum, gallery, glory hole, restaurant on a whim

If your social sphere lives in the same area, it's much easier to meet up with people while doing any of this

You can read or do other stuff while you travel, no attention required

I can get drunk or high at the destination without coordinating a DD

Other public transit pros:

Generally the density of places with it means I can add a second or third destination after the primary museum, gallery, glory hole, restaurant on a whim

If everyone else drives to a destination neighbourhood, then once you get there the place is necessarily dominated by parking so you can't walk from the theatre to the restaurant to the bar. There are ways of fixing this problem - New Urbanists talk about "park once" districts and point out that the proof-of-concept is the mall, which forces people to get out of their cars and walk from shop to shop by putting the "street" the shops are on indoors. But it means giving up the ability to park right outside the building you are going to.

Self driving cars make this a lot easier because (even if they are privately owned, rather than robotaxis which don't park up at all) parking in a lot outside the destination neighbourhood becomes zero cost. On the other hand, they will add a whole different set of moving congestion problems that we haven't really thought about yet.