In Seoul, most people, especially those who don’t have a family, don’t have automobiles. Instead, the city’s set up with an amazing subway system. If you get lost, just walk for like 10 minutes down a main road, and you’ll find a subway station. From there, you can connect to anywhere.
In Bangkok, I visited a Muslim school that didn’t have air conditioning. Instead, the windows had awnings so the windows could always stay open, even when it rained. The bottom half of the walls weren’t solid either. They had decorative holes in them to let air blow through. That, and they had tons of fans running, blowing paper everywhere but keeping everyone cool.
Living without a car, living without A/C, living without – or just living with less – doesn’t have to mean settling for less. It’s just a matter of setting up for it. Build the subway system. Build the walls with holes. Build the infrastructure for less to work.
Otherwise, trying to do it without setting up for it – living without a car in a sprawling, subwayless city, living without A/C in a sealed up, fanless building, or any other “less” lifestyle – will of course be hard, maybe even impossible.
