Im not gonna argue anymore based on your views on future tech development without considering the consequence I don't think we're getting anywhere. You fell for the same car centric propaganda you've been fed. Also you walked to the store which is already better than what Americans can do in their suburbs. That's legitimately not an option for most people here.

I guess I didn't make it clear enough but the UK tore down a lot of the prior existing cities or never rebuilt them after WW2 so that they could make way for the same type of development that America did. You are suffering the same problem but your neighbors in places like Amsterdam aren't.

You know what is miserable? Sitting in traffic and wasting my life away every day. Not being able to walk like we were naturally born to do in order to pick up something to eat or buy groceries. The noise of highways, and the likelihood that you'll die there. Pedestrians getting mowed over by cars. The insane amount of pollution and waste they've created. I would take getting rained on a little bit if it was substantially less full of oil byproducts.

The reason cities were built how they are now in America, and by extension the UK, was because of aggressive lobbying by the oil and vehicle industries to remove pedestrian centric spaces and create ridiculously expensive suburbs. We changed our plans once and we can again, some cities have already made moves in the right direction.

Bikes and buses are the most reasonable transport. You know what is even worse than some idiot on a loud ass bike at 6 am? Some idiot revving up his jet powered hovercraft in your weird dysfunctional future. Have you been anywhere near a flight line? Or even a fairly large drone? That will never be allowed near residential areas.

If you want your personal vehicle, move to the countryside and don't ruin public spaces for everyone else. The only unrealistic thing about living in a walkable city is how insanely expensive they are for housing right now. And that's because too many people are trying to live in them and instead of building more vertically we are building useless parking lots for suburbanites that can't afford to live here currently.

That's an entirely American problem. Suburbs only really exist like that in America and a select few places that were ruined by people trying to plan cities like we did.

If you properly plan a city there is no reason to drive around downtown, those areas are reserved for people.

Buses in America are currently unreliable because they are not funded and infrastructure is not made with them in mind. That can also be fixed.

The reason americans don't live downtown (often) is because instead of making our cities dense we have created few homes in those areas and allowed single family home zoning which needs to be entirely done away with. If you just replaced parking lots with more housing there would be no issue. If you want to visit dense areas like that you would just bus in or use other transit. It's not really about what people want right now because Americans have not been exposed to living like that.

It's an objectively happier lifestyle just by the numbers. I barely even use my car because I moved to a dense enough city that I can just walk everywhere.

Infrastructure that supports everyone driving cars can be removed from dense cities. We don't have to leave it up to individuals to decide. Just remove enough streets/parking or create bus route only lanes in downtowns with wide sidewalks and protected bike lanes. It naturally cuts down on traffic by making it more inconvenient to drive in than just using a different mode of transport.

There's a need for cars in remote locations but no need in an urban center.

Incredibly likely. The CCP really did not have much access to US user data and they were already in the process of moving all data centers for US users into America, which would also be run by Americans.

They're no different than tencent, just making a metric ton of money for CCP investors. There's basically zero chance or even motive for them to hand over any more user data than American companies are also collecting and selling to whoever wants it.

I really don't want us to even switch to relying on electric cars so much, we need to focus on mass transit and walkable neighborhoods both for the environment and just for the general life satisfaction that comes from it.

I promise you I don't have a private jet and I would push for fossil fuel bans until the day I die.