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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   6830 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 21, 2026

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Tongue-in-cheek extension to Europe:

  • Urban living: public transit is so ubiquitous people never check schedules for departure times. public transit within the area is significantly faster than car travel - mainly because of parking and congestion, which means transit that ignores congestion (subway, light rail or reserved track trams) are available.
  • Suburban living: public transit provides at least 4 departures per hour in any direction. public transit within the area is as fast as car travel, but slower when going to a different suburban area (and again faster when traveling into the urban core).
  • Exurban or rural living: 2 public transit departures per hour or less, requires one car per household, transit is to slow as primary transportation for working adults, reaching a transit stop requires at least a bike.

Housing style is a bit useless as definitions, since both the suburbs and rural villages will have a double digit percentage of residents living in apartment buildings.

I would put the suburban threshold at 2 rides/hour rather than 4. Hell, at the height of the train maintenance crisis a few years ago, some inner-ring parts of Berlin were reduced to 1/20min at peak hours, and I've lived in areas with 20- and 30-minute period transit that were nevertheless within 20 minutes of the centre and largely housed urban commuters.

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