"Thanks to the automobile, the American dream has become the American nightmare. If you are like most Americans, you drive alone to your job, drive your kids to school, soccer practice and music lessons, and jump in your car for every little errand because no stores are within walking distance.... To compound the frustration, it's no longer safe for your kids to play in the street like you did as a kid because the traffic has become so fast and reckless. You don't know half your neighbors because you never see them except when they zip by at 35 mph.
...CarFree City, USA's goal is to provide Americans with an alternative: carfree cities. By creating new neighborhoods and cities or redeveloping existing areas on a scale that is for people and not cars, yields a host of personal, community and global benefits. It's an ambitious task, but not mere wishful thinking..."
http://www.carfreecity.us/home.html
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Brilliant idea. The day we no longer have to get into cars to get around will be a great day.
I had several conversations about sprawling American cities (and thus our NEED for cars) while I was in England this summer. They have a population density greater than any state except Connecticut, yet there is open countryside everywhere (except around London). You can drive from center city York (a sizeable city in the north) and be in open countryside in five minutes. English cities are much more compact-- which makes them much more walking friendly. So, me and some friends of mine were trying to decide why this difference between English and American cities exists, and we hit upon something that I think is at least interesting if not statistically provable: why did people immigrate from England to the Americas? They came over here to have their own piece of land (from the early colonists to the Oklahoma land rush), and we-- their descendents-- all want to own our own half-acre of land around our house. There is a culutral premium on owning land, which makes compact cities difficult to sell. [There is also the issue of English nobility owning most of the land around cities and prohibiting the peasants to build on it-- they didn't want their hunting grounds to be more than a morning's ride away, after all.] Anyways, I think the carless city is a cool idea, and one of the few things I don't love about Austin is that it is a driving city.
that should read "car-less" city
Coye, I think you're spot on; people in the US don't really want to be right on top of each other. Your description of how you can be in the open country five minutes outside of any big city reminded me of my own trip to England, and how it was so easy and safe for me to get from London to Northampton by myself after only being in the country for a few days.
I'm not very travel savvy, but it was so easy to get around I felt so confident. Just typing right now makes me want to get out of suburbia asap.
I read in Thursday's Dallas Morning News that Brazil will stop importing petroleum within a year because of their successful ethanol production program. This is the result of a 30 year commitment to freeing their country from dependence on petrol--when are we going to begin a serious effort to break away from oil?
When oil companies stop having so much influence?
When the President and Vice President aren't both oil executives?
I just think Americans, who have grown up in completely car-saturated environment, and for whom the idea of getting around without cars sounds impossible, need to realize how much of a negative impact cars have on quality of life, and how possible it would be to get around without cars if we weren't designing our cities expressly for car use.
1. Car deaths - we all know several people who have died in car accidents. It's a sacrifice our society continues to be willing to make.
2. Antisocial - It's hard to talk to other people when everyone has a 2-ton sound-proof metal box around them.
3. Not efficient - Once again, 2-ton metal box. For each person.
4. Ugly city design - Have you noticed that most areas or cities you consider beautiful are car-free, or were at least designed for pedestrians rather than cars. Old towns and cities with shops right along the streets, not separated by a football-field-sized parking lot. Usually wide roads of noisy, smelly, dangerously fast cars are not thought of as "nice", unless you're inside one of those cars.
Oh please let this not be the future of transportation! Ack!
ethanol or no ethanol, I don't like cars.
Here's what you can do to fight cars and the evil oil barons:
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/050611/344/fkx04.html
Based on where I live, I do not need a car to get to work, shop, go to church, or visit friends. However, I still have a car and am glad that I do. I use it when I either want to get some place more quickly, or I do not want to get to my destination with frostbite appendages in the winter or hot and sweaty the rest of the year. I'm very much in favor of reducing the number of vehicles in America and their size, but I also don't see the need to completely wipe them out.
In regard to Steve's why cars are bad. 4. Overuse of cars leads to ugly city design, not use of cars entirely. Cities where you encourage mass transportation and restrict car use to certain degrees, such as carpooling during rush hour, closing some streets to auto traffic, making streets that discourage fast driving, etc. can do the trick. 3. Not efficient, cars are often efficient from an individual standpoint. It makes life for me more efficient, even in one of the most congested areas of the country. Less harmful to the environment would be more accurate here, and cars use more energy, but what else do you want to channel that energy towards? 2. Anti-social. Cars can foster more socialization than some forms of transportation. It is easier to talk to other people in your car than a person riding in front of you or behind you on a bike. As for trains, how often do you see commuters talking to each other? It seems that the majority of people opt to read or listen to music rather than socialize. In some ways cars foster socialization, because the driver had best not be reading a book.
1. Car deaths. They encourage survival of the fittest. Just kidding, I can't really argue with that.
What I'm saying is that I'm all for less reliance on motor vehicles and think we should move that direction, but I'm not prepared to junk my car either. Cars shouldn't be demonized, just their excessive use.
PS I like to drive fast on the hilly, narrow, winding streets of my home town, which are almost never congested.
Yeah, I'm buying a car this week, in Arlington, and driving it back up here to Amarillo, so I can take it with me when I go to Austin. I think I should involve a few more Texas cities starting with the letter "A". I also have to admit that I'm pretty excited about it, although I'm also very thrilled with the tube every time I go to London. Adios.
I have to replace my catalytic converter ($1100) just a year after I had to replace my timing belt and battery ($1200) and who knows what's coming next year.
Cars are just pretty sinking expensive.
Strauss, if you think about it though, it makes perfect sense that cars seem efficient: amost every modern human system has been built around the automobile! But there are times to question the system itself, are there not?
I, for one, would never dream of questioning the system itself.
1. Survival of the fittest, Andy?! You were lucky you didn't kill anyone when you fell asleep at the wheel and totaled your civic.
3. And, no I meant cars are not efficient. How much money do you spend on cars? The price of the car, the gas, the insurance, the repairs. It's a stinking huge amount of money. Are you saying you don't have better things to do with your money? For example, if everyone in a particular big city took the money they spend every month on cars, and instead put it into some kind of public transportation fund, that city would have an EXTREMELY nice, even luxurious public transportation system.
I said I don't like cars. I should have said I don't like cars in cities. And I don't like the trend of building cities in such a way that you cannot not own a car.
I feel the need to say more after the response to my last post.
Alright, I should have said this sooner, but I like the idea of a city design that renders cars less worthwhile. I just think that completely eliminating driving as an option of worthwhile consideration is extreme.
I am not advocating the status quo, just not quite as extreme a step as a carless city, if for no other reason than change takes time.
Personally, I only drive about 3 days per week. I would have to cut out church softball, going to the grocery store only once per week, visiting DeGroot and Swearingen, etc. if I did not own a car. Those are the types of thing that I pay to have a car for. I like to think that I'm not wasteful by having a car. In fact, living a twenty minute walk from the metro station saves me roughly $400 per month in rent, or about $5000 per year. Add on the cost of using mass transit more frequently, and I easily save money and time, by owning a car for limited use.
Now back to Steve's 1 through 4:
1. I was kidding, and I even said so. As for the accident, I really don't appreciate that being thrown at me. I should probably tell the whole story, but I will save that for a separate post. Steve, a fair bit more happened than just me totaling my car. I have experienced that things can go bad beyond just getting a ticket or ruining a car. I did not take the responsibility of driving lightly before the accident, and I definitely do not take it lightly now. To be in a situation as good as I am now, credit should be given to God's protection rather than luck.
3. Cars are far from perfectly efficient. I would even be willing to agree that they are not efficient; however, that does not automatically make the alternatives more efficient. See my personal experience above. I claim driving around a thirteen year old vehicle that has a laundry list of things wrong with it, while I fix only the safety hazards and run the vehicle to its death has saved me time and money rather than cost me extra. Maybe my experience is abnormal, but for those of us in abnormal situations, why not use the most efficient option?
I am with everyone else in that I don't like the degree of car usage in America, and want to see our mass transit systems improved, even if it requires more taxes and tolls. I want to see bike riding encouraged by more bike paths and over road bridges between areas that people currently travel by car, for fear of killing themselves in monster traffic. I'm not in love with cars.
I wish that I could cut out the car without reducing quality of life but that's not the case, and based on every one else's posts I am not the only one wanting to rely less on cars. I just wanted to give cars some defense as the dialogue struck me as lopsided. Having done that and done it again in a hopefully more conciliatory manner than the first time, I will rest, unless someone wants me to go another round.
It's much harder to take a girl out on a date without a car, and if that car happens to be a red Ford Mustang with a 5-speed manual transmission, all the much better.
Sorry I didn't bring up the crash to throw it back at you, but to throw it at the idea that driving is generally safe. When you have millions of people driving themselves around in fast, heavy cars of unrestricted freedom of movement, there are going to be lots of hard crashes and shatters and bangs and thuds and splats. Almost everyone has experienced it. You have to admit, you were lucky you didn't kill someone, including yourself. Or I could phrase it more passively: It's a good thing (for all of us) that you didn't die. But I'm glad you don't take the responsibility of driving lightly, because a lot of people do. One of my friends, going 60mph stuck her arms and head out of the sunroof and shouted "I'm invincible". That's a really extreme example, but a lot of people don't realize the responsibility.
I am not saying drivers are bad, or owning a car is bad. I'm saying it's too bad that people have no choice but to own cars. It's too bad that the way our cities are designed makes cars the ONLY efficient way to live comfortably.
I think a carless city is a radical change, pretty extreme, down the road a ways. But I think it's worth looking into. Until we have that figured out, I'm all for the kinds of tricks and techniques you mentioned for making cars a less prominent part of the cityscape. In Japan, land space is at a premium, so a lot of stores use their roof as a parking lot. You drive up a ramp to the roof, and you can park there. For a Super Walmart, that could cut the space needed for parking in half.
Once again, I'm not saying people shouldn't drive. I'm going to be coming back to America next month, and I'm going to be as car-dependant as anyone. And I like driving.
Roof parking would cut the space needed for parking lots in half, but it would also double the cost of construction. Since there are few places in the US where land is at such a premium (especially in the West) normal economic pressures are not going to create such a practice. Do you encourage stronger centralized planning for cities or perhaps some kind of grant/penalty combination for making it economically feasible? I don't know how else it would ever happen in Texas or Minnesota or Indiana (although Boston, San Fransisco and some other cities might eventually have land prices that would make it attractive).
Good question. Would it really double the cost or add an 1/8th to the cost? To make a good decision, it'd be nice to know an exact figure. Whatever the case, I think you're right that the usual 'blind hand of capitalism' would not provide enough pressure.
Do I support the city government getting involved in the process? Yes: In my home town of Plano, there are strict building codes, including restrictions on how the building's exterior looks. They are basically aesthetic mandates. The result is a nice, clean looking city. Without those laws, of course many stores would put extra effort into making their establishments look nice, but many (*cough* Walmart, Albertsons, Home Depot) would not. So looking at Walmarts in Plano, they actually look surprisingly nice, not an eyesore. All thanks to city government regulation of how development takes place. The world is a better place when you don't have people doing things as cheaply and sloppily as possible.
I bought a car today, and I drove it 300 miles across North Texas and the Panhandle, and it was fun (but tiring... I go sleep now).
As this topic is dead, I'd like to thank you for helping me develop my thoughts on carfree living.
Carfree?!? I thought we were talking about CAREfree living! I was way off...
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