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Once more with feeling: The functionality of a city, and of its transport system, arises from the sum of everyone’s choices about how to travel, not just the preferences of elites. When elites make pronouncements about what “people” will tolerate, while really speaking only of themselves, they mislead us about how cities actually succeed. They also demean the contributions of the vast majority of people who are in fact tolerating extreme weather to do whatever will give their lives meaning and value.
The human ability to adapt is the key to our spectacular success on this planet. Our problem is that the people who lead our public conversations, our elites of wealth and opinion, are often some of the least adaptable people on earth. And when societies assume that we should listen to those people, we all end up internalizing the message that there’s something wrong with us if we even try to walk in Phoenix in July or Chicago in January.