I know some places are more progressive in this regard. But from the U.S., I’d like to see every person entitled to:

  • shelter
  • food
  • healthcare
  • education and higher education

(As an aside, not sure “right” is the best term here, I think of these more as commitments that society would make because we have abundance. One advantage of the word “right” is that a person is justified in expecting it - it’s not welfare/ a benefit / a privilege)

  • grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
    31·
    1 year ago

    Edit: To elaborate on why it should be a right: it is not like in the olden days when you could walk to the store or your job. Everything is simultaneously dense and far thanks to how zoning works and cities being car-oriented. The right to mobility exists in America, but what if we took it further and made sure you really could go where you wanted without having to invest in a car?

    Walkability isn’t some relic of a bygone era that we can’t have back again; it’s just a feature of building your city correctly. Traditional development patterns still work better than any of the modernist alternatives we’ve tried, even in 2023.

    In other words, the Suburban Experiment of the last 70 years wasn’t actually the progress people thought it was. Instead, it was simply a fuck-up that we need to correct. As such, although mandating access to public transit would be nice to have, it’s not actually the necessary solution here. What we actually need is simply to fix or even repeal the zoning code so that property owners are allowed to build appropriately again.

    • Electric@lemmy.worldEnglish
      11·
      1 year ago

      I don’t know where you got the idea walkability is an impossible goal, definitely agree with all of it. Much easier in the meantime to build up public transport though than it is to unfuck urban zoning.

      • grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        Much easier in the meantime to build up public transport though than it is to unfuck urban zoning.

        On the contrary, unfucking zoning can be done with the stroke of a pen. Sure, it takes time for the market to react to the change by building more housing etc., but so does planning and constructing transit projects. More to the point, building up public transit requires both legislation and allocating tax dollars, while fixing zoning requires legislation alone.