When my Malaysian Chinese / Singaporean grandmother was alive, I called her daily. We were very close. When I started traveling out of Asia she would say ‘you’re hungry? It’s still early, 10pm! Why don’t you get noodles downstairs?’ And I would struggle to explain to her that in other parts of the world there’s no food in the streets and certainly not at 10pm and certainly not noodles. She asked me every day
When my mum first visited the US she was like ‘I’ll just hang out in the suburb until you’re done with work then I’ll take a bus to get food’ and she never quite understood when I told her there was no bus to food in that particular place
Then she said oh I’ll walk then and she walked into a massive freeway
Only then did she say ‘oh some places don’t have buses. Or ways to walk to other places’
Truly unfathomable to my family
@skinnylatte Flip side: I moved to Portland and my mom (lives in a suburban US town) wanted to know if she should rent a car when visiting. And I was like, why?!?! Light rail from the airport to downtown, bus home if we don't want to walk from the station. Walking distance from home to a good number of places to eat or shop, even more by bus. A city with even a half decent transit system is a revelation if you've never had that before. It might be the thing I miss most about Portland (and maybe real seasons).
@SRLevine @skinnylatte
Could anyone explain to me how are places not reachable on foot or public transport livable at all? Does it mean that you don't get out of your house without the car? I mean, other than having no contact with nature and society, there is also an inherent cost to this. What happens if you break a leg or loose sight so you can no longer drive?
@arno_in_sing @skinnylatte @mapto My mom lives in a "suburb" and she gets in her car to go anywhere other than the county park that her back yard runs into. She goes hiking regularly which is why she won't move someplace else even as she gets older...a rant for another day. The nearest place to buy groceries is ~3 miles away, most of which is down a road with no sidewalks and lots of trees so you can't even walk on the side of the road.
@mapto @SRLevine @skinnylatte As a disabled person, I’m privileged to have a wheelchair accessible car. But I still can’t drive it. So if I don’t have anyone who can or wants to drive me to places I need or want to go, I don’t go. Sometimes I can afford to have things delivered, which is newer and not something I had when I lived just a little further out of town. Idk how people like me survived suburbia physically or socially before the internet.
@skinnylatte @SRLevine @mapto I lived in a Boston suburb and the front door was purely for show and I strongly suspect it couldn’t even open in half the homes on my street. You walk into your garage to get into your car to go anywhere. When you try to walk the dismal state of the sidewalks quickly discourages that.