Also works for me, though it is not optimal in my more rural area. Big cities should be fine.

People also just adjust. If you don't drive--or at least can't rent a car easily/don't want to--you just tend not to do activities or go places requiring that you do so. I couldn't get by day-to-day without a car but even if I lived in the city, I'd regularly want to drive one to visit people, do weekend activities, etc.

Eh, I find I can get wherever I need on public transport, in general. Now, that said, I'm not regularly going to very rural areas, or anything.

I mean, it definitely wouldn't work for everyone, but for me, I can walk or get public transport anywhere I need to go (and this is in Dublin, a city that is... not known for the excellence of its public transport; they'll finish the underground train one day...)

Now I'm in my late 30s, I also have the vague superstitious belief that the enforced walking is keeping me alive; if I wasn't doing that I'd be pretty sedentary.

If I lived in Boston, there's basically no way I'm getting to the mountains, north shore, Cape Cod, western suburbs/exurbs where a lot of people I know live, etc. without a car that I either own, rent, or someone else does. The city itself has a pretty good public transit system and there's even a pretty good commuter rail--but that's designed for coming into the city from suburban train stations with parking lots. So I'd be pretty much limited to the metro itself without a car in some form.

Which is fine for some people. They'll just naturally tend to avoid activities that are a pain to do in one way or another.

Yeah, my impression visiting the US has been that once you leave a big city, things become difficult to navigate alarmingly quickly. It's a bit different here; the suburbs and other cities and towns are usually fairly accessible via public transport.

I think that's generally true. While it's not like you can easily get to every corner of the British Isles or Western Europe generally without a car, there's a lot you can do out of Dublin or London with public transit and maybe the odd cab ride. Generally good as Boston's public transit system is, other than taking the train to New York City, flying somewhere, or taking a bus to someplace that is mostly not very interesting without car transportation on the other end, your options are pretty limited beyond what's covered by the greater metro transit system.

That's interesting to me because my family's weekend trips were almost always to such places.

There's more to do than in the city and the restaurants are generally better - you just need to drive there.

Ah. So I think basically anywhere near here that has restaurants that anyone would be bothered about making a trip for would also be within walking distance of a bus route. The places that you really _can't_ get to on public transport are very rural.