To continue a theme from yesterday, not only does public policy shape the available choices between suburban and urban places but it absolutely defines how people travel from suburban locales to central cities. If you connect a suburb to a main city via a wide highway and don’t build a train link, then obviously people will “choose” to go via the highway. Alternatively, if you do what they did outside of Copenhagen and build relatively narrow roads and heavy rail lines then more people will choose the train.
I was thinking about this this morning since at the gym I was listening to Robyn’s “Cry When You Get Older”:
The song features the line “Back in suburbia kids get high and make out on the train / Then endless incomprehensible boredom takes a hold again.” This of course doesn’t make much sense in the American context where there generally is no train in suburbia (and “train” and “again” don’t rhyme). Here in suburbia kids get high and make out in the Taco Bell parking lot. But Robyn’s from Sweden where they have an extensive commuter rail network and suddenly teen culture clichés look different.
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