Human-sized cities: Cutting cars from our urban fabric

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/12/science/earth/12suburb.html?pagewanted=print

by mediaman • 17 years ago

21 57 17 years ago

mediaman2• 17 years ago

I posted this because I've lived without a car for seven years, and I never would have realized how relaxing it is not to have to worry about it (though I do use the ZipCar service).

And ultimately, as we reach peak oil and energy costs rise, I would like to think that we will re-evaluate how we build cities and make them more "human-sized", which could counteract many of the negative trends we face today (obesity, lack of social community, etc.). Of course, the alternative is that we find a sufficiently cheap source of energy for our cars beyond petroleum, and we continue on building our merry suburbs -- but maybe, just maybe, it doesn't have to be that way.

fortes4• 17 years ago

Out of curiosity, what city are you currently in?

I'm currently in NYC, although I used to live in Seattle carless as well. Honestly, one of the big reasons it's easier in NYC is due to social norms.

Seattle wasn't bad, but NYC is definitely a lot easier to live without a car. One of the main reasons: You're not expected to have a car.

In Seattle, people just assume you have a car and are surprised when you don't -- i.e. you have to explain why you can't just make it out to some random place to pick something up, etc.

In NYC no one expects you to have a car (at least not in Manhattan and most parts of BK, etc) -- so people don't make assumptions that you can get somewhere if it's not near public transit, or that you can haul something somewhere.

Obviously, there are other things that make NYC quite nice for carless life (delivery services, density, flat topography to name a few).

mediaman2• 17 years ago

I live in Chicago currently, which has a decent public transit system (although there's no shortage of complaints about it).

I'd be interested in your experience being carless in Seattle. I might move out there at some point and it would be nice if I could maintain a similar lifestyle there.

amalcon• 17 years ago

It's funny you should mention ZipCar. I use their service, and it's very convenient for me in some cases, but really it just reminds me of how obnoxious it is to drive around the city (I live in Boston). Before I moved into the city, I never drove within it: it was always easier (and cheaper, considering the difference in parking prices) to park at one of the several T stations at the edge of the city and ride in. When I use Zipcar, I don't get that option.

I usually get there faster than I would on the T, but the time on public transit is not wasted (I can read), while the time driving is. Unfortunately there are still things the T can't do, but I find the hybrid approach works well for me. The few occasions where I do drive only remind me of how well.

jimbokun• 17 years ago

"which could counteract many of the negative trends we face today (obesity, lack of social community, etc.)"

I had an odd serious of thoughts about your inclusion of "obesity." First, I thought of how you must be alluding to the fact that without cars, people will walk more and burn more calories. Then I thought of the study showing that almost all of the increase in obesity can be attributed to Americans eating more food over the past decades, not to exercising less.

Then I wondered about how being able to throw all of your groceries in the trunk and drive them home could lead to eating more than having to carry all your food from the neighborhood store to your house.

Which is interesting, but I still managed to gain weight in Brooklyn from knowing where all the best bakeries were (I got to the point of picking different bakeries for different kinds of cookies and pastries), despite not owning a car. :)

dkarl3• 17 years ago

I'll give you three more reasons why going carless will help people lose weight.

1. For people who are overweight, the huffing and puffing (and in summer, the heat and sweat) would kill their appetite for a while. Plus, nobody wants to eat a heavy meal if they immediately have to walk five minutes to the metro station, possibly spend fifteen minutes standing up at the station and on the train, and then walk ten minutes home.

2. For people who are overweight, the extra effort and side effects would be a constant reminder that they're fat. Nobody wants to hold up their friends on the street or be sweaty and gross on a day when nobody else is. It's easy to eat when you can avoid thinking about the downsides, but if you're still embarrassed by pausing on the stairs at the metro station that morning and stinking up the office when you arrived, you'll have a fresh reminder of why you should pass up the free donuts in the break room.

3. Psychology. I've lost a lot of weight "through exercise" because I overeat less when I exercise. Many people who exercise regularly find that they feel miserable, and eat more, when they stop exercising for some reason (injury, time, whatever.) I feel kind of like an exercise addict -- I know I'll feel down and gain weight if I don't do it. I suspect this exercise addiction is inborn in a lot of people, not created by exposure (like addiction to crack, for example) and is therefore more of a basic human need than an addiction. Adding twenty minutes of walking to everybody's day would boost the mood of all the unwitting exercise addicts and reduce their compulsion to eat.

erlanger16• 17 years ago

Cars are unbelievably important unless you're either very wealthy or willing to accept squalid conditions. Is there an invention more egalitarian than the automobile?

fortes4• 17 years ago

Huh? Cars cost thousands of dollars and require upkeep, etc, etc. People use cars to flaunt their social status all the time. They're also an incredibly dehumanizing way to interact with people (see road rage, etc).

Cities which weren't built for the automobile are very different that those built in the last 50 years (sadly, in the US you can't really see this, but in much of Europe and Asia you can -- even South America has some pockets here and there).

erlanger16• 17 years ago

A car allows me to travel anywhere I please, not where the Transit Authority deems worthy. Cars are very cheap when you consider the tremendous benefits of such independent mobility.

khafra2• 17 years ago

I believe the "human-sized city" proposition is meant to remove the requirement for wealth or squalid conditions from a car-free lifestyle. Let's not forget that the car itself still requires more wealth than most people in the world have access to. My pick for egalitarian invention would lean more toward municipal public utility systems. If restricted to transportation-based inventions only, the bicycle.

erlanger16• 17 years ago

Yes, you could go wherever you pleased in such a place, within the city. A car allows its operator to travel great distances cheaply and quickly, seeking only the road's permission.

stonemetal• 17 years ago

Bread

jibiki• 17 years ago

That's the opposite of egalitarian, isn't it?

stcredzero9• 17 years ago

In one way, they are egalitarian, since their ownership is widespread. However, the cost of a car is a much larger proportion of the budget of those with lower incomes. Given a choice, many wouldn't own a car if there was some other, equally convenient way to get around. (My sister is one example. When I'm in Minneapolis, I'm another.)

Many city dwellers and those who live in regions with well developed rail and light-rail systems do not have to accept "squalid conditions." You're mistaking cultural expectations for economic realities.

erlanger16• 17 years ago

But that's the point: There cannot, logically, be a more efficient way to reach certain destinations than with a car. Because transit systems serve the needs of many, nodes must be set up for each destination, which is terribly limiting.

Within a city, of course transit is usually the best option. I'm not arguing against that. However, it's important that we not exclude cars from cities, because of their importance for the vast majority of the population.

joeyo3• 17 years ago

I don't understand the connection you posit between wealth and not using automobiles. I would expect that there is if anything a positive correlation between wealth and automobile use (though perhaps not between wealth and driving).

At the very high end you may be right that helicopter, yacht and private jet transport could somewhat offset automobile use. But I would expect that that chauffeured cars still play a huge role in the transportation for the very wealthy. I wouldn't expect many of them to be using buses, trains and subways, for instance.

erlanger16• 17 years ago

As you leave the city, transit options become increasingly sparse. The US lower-middle class cannot afford to live in the close suburbs, or even in the suburbs. I see it where I live: People commuting from Luray or Richmond to DC (about 2.5hr each way), or even farther, because their hometowns have no jobs. Without cars, this would not be possible, unless they were to uproot their families and move into a very poor part of the city, hence my reference to "squalid conditions."

bmj• 17 years ago

I suggest you read a bit of Ivan Illich on cars and transportation in general (http://ranprieur.com/readings/illichcars.html). The money quote, as it were:

Bicycles are not only thermodynamically efficient, they are also cheap. With his much lower salary, the Chinese acquires his durable bicycle in a fraction of the working hours an American devotes to the purchase of his obsolescent car. The cost of public utilities needed to facilitate bicycle traffic versus the price of an infrastructure tailored to high speeds is proportionately even less than the price differential of the vehicles used in the two systems. In the bicycle system, engineered roads are necessary only at certain points of dense traffic, and people who live far from the surfaced path are not thereby automatically isolated as they would be if they depended on cars or trains. The bicycle has extended man's radius without shunting him onto roads he cannot walk. Where he cannot ride his bike, he can usually push it.

mixmax• 17 years ago

I think this is an Amwrican thing. I live in Copenhagen, and have never owned a car. Neither have many of my friends, and it isn't a problem. There are probably a few reasons for this

- Many European cities don't have the American version of suburbs that basically require you yo have a car. Homes and businesses are generallly more intertwined and have sprung up over the ages around a town center.

- Public transportation is a lot better. In the rush hour it's often quicker to use public transportation than a car. A bike is the fastest.

- It's socially accepted. As mentioned many people don't even have cars, and it's not because of a lack of money.

erlanger16• 17 years ago

"Many European cities don't have the American version of suburbs"

That's because most European cities don't have remotely this kind of population growth, let alone the space to accommodate it on the fly.

kiddo• 17 years ago

I don't think it has much to do with population growth. I think it has more to do with planning in advance where you want your growth to be. In the US we just let developers put new houses pretty much wherever they want, which turns out to be where land is cheap, which is usually far from existing developments. In Europe the govt has more direct involvement and only allows development to happen where they want it to happen.

pchristensen• 17 years ago

Copenhagen has also consciously moved in that direction for over 30 years. Lots of little, incremental progress adds up a lot over decades. The American method tends to change every 4 to 8 years and look for a big bang within that time frame.

msluyter• 17 years ago

When you think about it in isolation, our culture of commuting seems crazy. Imagine designing a system in which people live far from their workplaces, wake up every morning and drive en masse to their destinations, and then do the reverse in the evening, devouring huge amounts of natural resources in the form of energy and time in the process. You'd be laughed out of the room. And yet, here we are...

Austin is currently developing a number of mixed use communities roughly of the New Urbanist school, usually a mix of 3-4 story condos/apartments and restaurants/shops. I'm hoping the trend continues.

Here's more info on New Urbanism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Urbanism

dkarl3• 17 years ago

Where are they? I'm aware of developments like the Triangle and the Domain, but they feel like a love affair between plasticky high-end retailers and a captive audience of consumers. The yuppie d-bag quotient at the Flying Saucer was ridiculous last time I was there. I think the problem is that the Domain and the Triangle seem to be planned by the same MBA types who plan malls, so they feel like malls with housing attached for people who really, really like the mall. By contrast, I like the pedestrian culture on South Congress and even South 1st, even though those areas were designed for cars. I'm more optimistic about old neighborhoods evolving in dense, pedestrian-friendly ways than I am about synthetic neighborhoods having any significant effect. (Maybe it's just because I don't trust real estate developers.)

On another note, living far from workplaces is a given if you want people to have reasonable job mobility and reasonable home stability. You need a public transit system so people can live ten years in the same place without being tied to a single, possibly crappy job for that long.

Luc• 17 years ago

I'm 37 and I never learned to drive a car. I do own a car I inherited, which my wife drives about once a week. We use bicycles, not because we're nuts but because we live 5 minutes from work or work at home, and everything's close by in the city we live in - restaurants, entertainment, shops, parks, etc. I've always lived close to where I work, in cities where it's nice to live.

sokoloff• 17 years ago

First of all, I should disclaim that I love cars, own 5 of them (only 3 are registered/insured at the moment), so feel free to view my comments through that lens.

I believe that the car allows workers a significant freedom to choose employers not based on which ones are within a few miles bike ride or a few line changes of subway, but rather within an acceptable driving radius. And for many people, myself included, acceptable commuting time in my own car, with my own radio and peace/quiet is far longer than what I'd accept on the green line subway in Boston, or waiting in the rain/snow/slush for a bus.

This freedom radius is particularly important when you consider that most (American anyway) families have at least two incomes, so I must choose to live where I can get to my employment and my wife to hers. With cars, at least in America, that opens up a much wider range of options than if we could only look at jobs on the subway. As it stands, we chose to live in Cambridge (a "city suburb" of Boston); I drive; she takes the T. Either one of us could easily change jobs to literally dozens of different employers without having to move houses or change fields. There's significant value there.

Naturally, had American cities evolved differently, that might also be true just by us living on a better-than-current-reality subway system, as most desirable employers would also have located near subway stops, because that would be a competitive advantage. As it stands now, companies needing white collar talent intentionally locate where there is parking and good access to ring highways, for that is a competitive advantage.

The network effects to overcome to make car-free living are daunting, and just because you can find a few thousand people with lifestyles perhaps overly suited to car-free living in planned communities does not mean that those communities are scalable.

Human-sized cities: Cutting cars from our urban fabric

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