Proximity and the automobile

I asked my good friend’s husband, an architect I’m getting to know when we travel back to Nebraska from time to time, what he misses most about Germany, his home country. He considered the question very briefly and responded with one word: “Proximity.”

By this he meant the availability of a pedestrian culture. In Germany you can walk to most places, if not everywhere, around town — at least where he’s lived. He went on to lament how everything in the U.S. revolves around the automobile. So true; so sad.

Later in the trip I was delighted to hear another friend say out loud “Cars are overrated.” My sentiments precisely, verbatim.