Seattle Forrest

Rural ares can be wonderful places to live, if they fit your situation. Lots of natural beauty, low population density, often really good cycling, a great sense of community, etc. Cities can be wonderful places to live, too, again if they fit your needs. Lots of natural beauty, lots of culture, there's a strong sense of community but it's harder to find. And they both have their drawbacks, too. Suburbs are basically the worst of both worlds. You give up low density, like where you can't see your neighbors. You give up quiet roads that are beautiful to ride on. Trade all that for a home-owners association. You give up all the benefits of living in the city, too, like not having to drive 35 miles to and from work, having parks everywhere, too many museums to count, and being able to go about a lot of your business on foot or bike if you choose to.

I'm not car free. I hate driving it, though. I'm always on alert for a deer to jump out from behind a bush or a kid from behind a car. It's like flexing a muscle. Saves a lot of time and that's why I have one, but having things available by other means is a quality of life issue.

Seattle Forrest

Yeah, absolutely. When we retire, the price of a house in the country versus in the city is like night and day. The other side of the coin is that jobs are more available and pay much better in the city. Some costs are higher here, but most of those are optional.

mr,grumpy 

This is in response to the sentiment that people can find a car to be a useful tool, which walter quoted from some one else.

Huh? I suppose this, like any internet forum, attracts it's share of rabble rousers and trolls and certainly THIS thread has wandered away from the OPs initial intent. Sadly, this statement seems to reflect the "all or nothing" way so many people seem to express themselves these days. In the particular case, the OP made a few toung-in-cheek observations and then went on to express that he felt those of you who are able to successfully live car-free and substantially car-lite, are "heros". Cycling is the common thread that binds us all here. Even the peole who have negative attitudes twords LCF DO have valuable options to share in an open discussion about the life-style. The perspective of some one for whose it hasn't worked out, and why, may help other to make bettter choices about how to achieve or abandon the lifestyle.Posative interactions and encouragement twords a member who has had difficulty with LCF in the past may open up new avenues for them to "get back on the wagon" so to speak.

Roody

But this forum is a nice option for the minority of people who do find it practical and desirable. If that doesn't include you, I see no point in your being here. Especially when you're rude and disrespectful as well as off-topic.

Walter S

Your accuracy as it applies to me below...

No kids here.

I've live in a couple of different homes. One I've owned since 1992, the other since 1999.

I live just inside the city limits of Atlanta.

I live 20 miles from work. I could of course life closer but I like where I am and I like the built-in exercise I get from not having all my destinations be "convenient".

Running errands is a more adventurous activity when you're car free so it gets discussed more.

If you don't have a car then you won't discover that you "have to be on the other side of town in 15 min". You've made a lifestyle choice and suddenly "needing" to be somewhere miles away from you in just a few minutes is not part of it. When you have these "needs" they go unmet and somehow the world keeps turning.

It's not a choice for everybody. You need to have designed a life that facilitates not having a car AND you need to have personal values that are consistent with that so you will be willing to jump thru some hoops figuring things out, which means you need adequate motivation.

The reward for me is a healthier lifestyle, a richer experience, and living a clean life consistent with my values.

McBTC

If you don't own a home you won't discover that you need to mow the lawn. But, who really "needs" to mow the lawn when we can simply put up a tent in the hiker/biker area of a state park... after someone else mows the lawn and cleans the bathrooms.

Walter S

I mow my lawn. But I don't suddenly discover that it needs to be mowed in 15 minutes.

McBTC

In as much as we'd have to grind out ~1/3 hp on a bicycle generator to produce the ~200 watts needed to run a computer, I think it's safe to assume no one here is living a LCF lifestyle where a serious reevaluation of "needs" has really occurred, as we see in the Amish community, for example, which involves a lot more than eschewing modern conveniences like cars -- e.g., a community where several generations share a household and where most in the community do not qualify for social security, having never worked nor paid taxes into the system.

Walter S

Living car free is not about not working or paying taxes. It's about not owning a car.

McBTC

It should be about more than that, although the title of the sub-forum oftentimes reduces thinking to irrelevant and simple-minded anti-car propaganda. Many if not most of us have 'lived car free' and know all about frugal living without necessarily having to live poorly. A car really is nothing more than a very visible symbol of people leveraging personal power in the world in which we live to maximize personal wellbeing. A decision to live in NYC, for example, where personal ownership of a car is unnecessary, is just one of many choices people make to maximize their goals-- goals that probably have nothing to do with simply LCF.

Walter S

I do it because I don't like driving. My life is more interesting this way. And I get more exercise. Is that not good enough?

Roody

Same here. My life is good with the choices I have made to be carfree-ish. I have fun being carfree and posting about it on this wonderful forum. I don't care what three unhappy trolls with diarrhea of the keyboard have to say about it!

Ekdog

McBTC

Ditto... perfectly example of, Living Credibility-ish Free.

wphamilton

That's a lot of assumptions, isn't it? Just as an example, my computer runs on about 15 watts; actually all of the computers in my household are low power and yes that decision is due to an evaluation of needs vs electrical usage. Everyone in fact also has a tablet which further off-loads that use towards lower power consumption.

I'm sure that the Amish work for their living regardless of their tax status. While I do have a car presently and I consider it to be a luxury item, it doesn't necessarily indicate a hypocritical attitude about principles if that's what you're getting at. Every person writing here has to operate under the constraints of their environment, and whatever they do within those constraints shouldn't be derogated just because something more is possible.

350htrr

That is the "problem" advertising, social pressure, consumerism, WTF is the matter with you not conforming to the status quo attitude that bigger is better... Cars are sssooo much better to get around in than bicycles that there must be something wrong with you wanting/wishing/hoping to change society to a "backwards" way of life. Not understanding/wanting to understand, that you can have a 21st century lifestyle without personal cars if it was set up for that. Like lets say Copenhagen and other places that are trying to be like that...

McBTC

It seems to me that everyone makes choices, pretty much as circumstances and personal predilections dictate and then a relatively few number of them label as trolls people who love bikes and the sport of cycling but place no particular value in striving to become, carfree-ish. That's just, child-ish.

Ekdog

Are you interested in car-free living?

350htrr

Child-ish... ? Why. ? If we want to label people why not Herd-ish, for people who go along with consumerism... and No, most people make choices on the basis of status, or how they want to be perceived, even if they are not at that status, and/or they don't really need something, but they still buy it... Why?

Rollfast

I feel, from trying to read this thread, that it got put in a Mixmaster and pureed.


I join my brother Vinny Barbarino with a loud, "I'm so confused"!

Rollfast

If not in my bed, I plan to have my heart attack on my bike. But get the bloody penguins off my street.

McBTC

People on the coast in the blue cities think differently than people who live in the heartland. Should the folks in red-land become "herd-ish" and think more like New Yorkers? A love of bikes and the sport of cycling is what everyone on the bike forums should share and that pretty much is the case except on the LCF sub-forum: the title says it all: it's not about a love of bikes and the sport of cycling-- rather, it's about being carfree-ish... which, apparently is code for too many people live too well and should sacrifice more--e.g., take the bus or throw out your white shirts and ties and put on your lycra/spandex biking shorts.

cooker

LOL - You don't even love your bike enough to bike to work.

"Work to live, live to bike, bike to work".

steve-in-kville 

I'm actually shocked someone got that right. People think the amish/mennonites don't pay taxes at all. Truth be told, many are social security exempt. They take care of of their own, hence no need for SS, no need to pay in to it.

cooker

I'm pretty sure he's wrong about them "having never worked".