"No more cars" vs. "not more cars"

[phantom power]

I've advocated for new development to minimize auto dependence. But many take that to mean that everyone ought to travel by train, bus, bike or foot. However, new living patterns need not resemble existing living patterns. New residents won't necessarily interact with communities in the exact same way as existing residents. We don't need to get rid of cars. What we need is to avoid adding many new cars.

Call it "low-traffic growth." Our population is growing, and our region will inevitably grow. The question facing leaders and planners is how and where that growth should take place. In the absence of infill and transit expansion, that growth will happen in Fauquier and Frederick Counties, in West Virginia, western Pennsylvania, and southern Maryland. If people live there, they'll have to drive long distances, which means they will contribute more cars and more traffic.

Or, most new housing could add infill development to areas close to jobs and to transit. We could bring in new residents who don't commute by driving. That will enable the region to have more people, more jobs, and more revenue without more traffic. In DC, Arlington, Alexandria, southern Montgomery County, and other fully built-out areas, there just isn't room for more roads. We can either grow without adding traffic, as Arlington has so successfully done on the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor, or see our roadways grow more and more gridlocked, lowering the appeal of jobs in our region.

We are in the middle of a paradigm shift in the design of our communities. The sprawl model of development that predominated for sixty years isn't sustainable and, more importantly, no longer what the market wants. Prices in established walkable neighborhoods are sky-high while nearby walkable neighborhoods are gentrifying rapidly. We have enough single-family homes for the next 20 years; in fact, nationwide, analysts predict we'll have 22 million too many.

There's nothing evil about wanting to live in a house with a yard and a picket fence. Some government policies may unfairly subsidize that form of living with cheap infrastructure, but it's still a totally valid way to live. It's just that there are lots of those houses. Meanwhile, there aren't enough condos and row houses in walkable neighborhoods. Many families want to live in them, but can't. But even without the families, there isn't enough supply.

http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post.cgi?id=3192

http://www.eschatonblog.com/2009/09/low-traffic-growth.html

[Warpy]

1. Unfortunately, out here in flyover country, we're totally dependent

on personal transportation. That personal transportation can easily evolve into short distance, non polluting transportation that will get us to a rail hub, but distances are relative. Short distance out here means 300 miles.

If the preliminary data on carbon nanotube batteries pan out, then this is a possibility for the future. Right now, we're stuck with the gas or diesel engine.

"No cars" is a great dream for the urban dweller, especially those on the east coast. Unfortunately, it's unworkable for the bulk of the country.

[phantom power]

4. This kind of planning is geared toward urban or higher-density regions.

As Atrios frequently points out, he's not really proposing universal solutions. These sorts of proposals are for reducing automobile impacts on already-urban areas, or areas that with reasonable tweaking could be made more walkable, or less auto-dependent, etc.

Rural or other low-density areas don't really figure into these proposals.

One thing that has been on my mind is that, until fairly recently in human history, rural areas were extremely isolated. Rural humans were provincial, by simple logistics. And they were very independent, by necessity. Most could live their entire lives seeing the same village of people. It took the advent of personal automobiles to significantly change that equation.

For obvious reasons, rural humans would be the very very last to give up automobiles. Because if they ever have to, they will return to that previous state of lifetime isolation, where traveling farther than neighboring villages was rare.

"You aint from around here. Are you?"

[imdjh]

5. "No cars" is a great dream for the urban dweller...

... And you can listen to their bullshit right here on KDU98.5 every day. I know, because I was one of them many years ago. I moved to the city, me and my motorcycle. I rode the busses everywhere. There wasn't a reason in the world why everyone couldn't be doing exactly what I was doing right then and there. Of course, when I had to return to the real world and take care of my real family, I bought a car.

[joshcryer]

2. I advocate intelligent city design and road depaving.

Get people out of this urbanization cycle!

[imdjh]

3. How to do it without punishing cars?

Twenty years ago, when the price of cheaply built WWII houses in close in areas was already getting ridiculous for what the person was getting in return, or when people were turning cheaply built short life houses into over-renovated dollhouses, I said "Tear this shit down now while it's cheap." IN some places that was done, over the screams of some who now claim to be for smart growth or saving the environment. See, the time to do this sort of thing is when the MONEY says to do it, not when there doesn't seem to be any other choice.

So right now, while things are as cheap as they are likely to be, and even if they aren't as cheap as they might go they are cheaper than they will eventually be, it's time to go back and tear down the post WWII low end and close-in suburbia. The inexpensive wood frame "cracker boxes" called "starter homes" which won't last much longer anyway and which are taking up too much space while contributing to blight and crime. I know that some people are offended when their houses or neighborhoods are talked about as something to be bulldozed, but this really is the way things are done.

Before ZONING got a stranglehold on urban areas, before public housing projects were considered permanent "communities", before the wealthy thought to so thoroughly protect their investment in their own home at the expense of their investments elsewhere, neighborhood went up and down. Now people only want them to stay the same or go up. The reason we have all those charming Federalist, Victorian, and Edwardian "apartment buildings" is because those neighborhoods went downhill from the time when those were single family homes, and then came back to be yuppie quarters.

The real estate market is like anything else- it has a fluidity that if interrupted or interfered with can have unintended consequences. On a final note, Richard Cohen of the Washington Post, predicted in 1978, "The suburban townhouse communities being built in outlying areas will be the ghettoes of the future."

[kestrel91316]

6. I'm doing my part. Since my car was stolen two weeks ago, I have

been getting by with bus and bicycle.

[madokie]

7. Thats a bummer

having your car stolen must be a nightmare

[kestrel91316]

9. Yeah, especially when you are struggling financially, have seen your

FICO crash as a result over the past 8 months, and have no spare money to replace the car, which at 21 years was NOT insured for anything other than liability, lol.

On the up side, my mom will probably pass away soon and there will be some money. If you can consider that an "up" side.

[phantom power]

8. Yeah that stinks. Not really the ideal way to go car-less.