David S.F. Portree

10 Responses to “Carfree cities”

1. 1 Gretchie May 16th, 2007 at 6:00 pm

   Very interesting site at Carfree Times. I was particularly taken by the walled city of Masdar in Abu Dhabi. It reminds me of ancient walled cities in some ways, only updated. Could it be that walled cities were and still may be the best way to design a city?

2. 2 deborahbyrd May 16th, 2007 at 7:26 pm

   That reminds me of my favorite book of all time, which is He, She and It by Marge Piercy. It’s a science fiction novel about a woman who falls in love with a robot. It takes place at a time in the not too distant future, when corporations have created a huge culture on Earth in which many participate. But there are also people who lived in walled towns - also covered - to keep out the pollution. Anyway, the general idea is that - in the book - a woman falls in love with a robot. It has one of the greatest-ever scenes of traveling in virtual space - inside the space of a world wide web - to accomplish a mission. Great stuff.

3. 3 deborahbyrd May 17th, 2007 at 10:03 am

   By the way, I love the idea of carfree cities …

   My partner is a landscape painter, so we often drive from where we live in the center of a city, to the nearby countryside. We have to drive farther and farther - many many miles - through housing developments and shopping centers. Sometimes I imagine a future time when those shopping center will become like the little urba center near our home … with a grocery store, dry cleaners, restaurants, coffee shops, bookstores … so that people can center on their own neighborhoods …

   It seems possible!

4. 4 Ben Z. May 17th, 2007 at 10:09 am

   Car-free cities seem like a good idea, but all the local examples I could find were destination shopping malls that have humongous parking lots for people to drive to and park in. I guess an outdoor shopping mall is car-free, but so is the inside of Walmart.

   The newsletter’s feature city Rothelheimpark is pretty cool sort of turned me off from carfreeism, though. It looked like they were more focused on trying to hide the problem than solve it. Sort of a NIMBY-istic approach: getting rid of parking and safe roadways without providing alternatives for major employers whose employees can’t afford to live there because of the premium associated with car ownership. I have the feeling it’s a nice place to be at the end of your commute by car, if you can afford it, or a nice place to be a student, with little reason to travel outside immediate cycling range, but there are more cars than people in every picture with a roadway, and every single thing in the pictures that isn’t a plant that was grown there from seed was delivered by truck - There just doesn’t seem to be any evidence of it being a practical city to be truly carfree in, like London or Boston could be. A carfree lifestyle supported by the carfull lifestyles of others seems unsustainable, and kind of fake.

   For all my gripes, though, it did look very cool. I would be tickled pink to have such elegant bicycle thoroughfares at home. Their greenway was gorgeous - it reminds me of Florida’s amazing rails to trails greenways, and the immense amount of greenspace in the other public areas has a healing effect to even look at in a picture. I’d just like to see what it looks like in the middle of a work day, or know how long the average Rothelheimpark resident commutes, and where they buy their groceries.

5. 5 lindsay May 17th, 2007 at 11:18 am

   Thanks for pointing out this website. It led me to this book and this article on how to live without a car. This has been dawning on me recently - just yesterday I moved to a new apartment and took a nice walk to visit friends instead of driving and dealing with all the hassle of parking in crowded areas, negotiating one way streets, obligatory emissions guilt, etc. It was a nice night, and very pleasant. But this morning I had to wake up early and get my vehicle inspected so that I can stand in line at the DMV and pay to register my car so that I can get new insurance before mine runs out. It was very unpleasant, not to mention that the inspection guy was really awkward.

   By the way, this month is Bike Month, and tomorrow places around Austin are offering free breakfast…

6. 6 David S. F. Portree May 17th, 2007 at 10:01 pm

   Lindsay:

   In the 20th century, we redesigned our cities to make them friendly to cars and those who profit by them. In the process, we created many, many problems; not least, I think, social alienation and isolation.

   I’m ashamed to admit that we own two cars. This is a vestige of our life in sprawling, polluted Houston, where we really did need two. Our plan is to ditch both after Samantha gets into public school and replace them with a single fuel-efficient new car.

   If we could get along without *any* car we’d ditch ‘em both in a heartbeat. I’d probably convert mine into a backyard greenhouse.

   David

7. 7 sam May 19th, 2007 at 7:51 am

   there is an island i visit and camp on regularly here in florida called sanibel island. there are strict rules on vehicular traffic and excellent trails that run along the road and beach. it seems as though the local govt. wants only bicycles and thats why i love it so much. there are also strict rules on buisness signs and pedestrian traffic.you wouldnt believe the difference it makes in the noise level.

8. 8 Erika May 22nd, 2007 at 3:37 pm

   After traveling extensively, it is obvious that the US is unique in its car dependency. However, the infrastructure is such that I think a “carfree city” is and will probably remain more science fiction that an achievable reality. There are just way too many factors that have brought us to this point and eventhough there are things we can change, others we’ll just have to live with.

9. 9 Dan May 24th, 2007 at 11:59 am

   Ben Z. mentioned Boston as a potentially carfree city. Would that it were! Because of a medical condition, I’m carfree in Boston, and after graduatng from college it’s impossible to find anything without a car. Nearly every place that’s hiring is in an office park in the suburbs, and Framingham and Chelmsford are just too far to walk. This gives Boston a huge “reverse commute.” Some have asked me about the commuter rail system- could that take me out in the morning and back in the evening? Well, yes and no. I could get out of the city, but as we say in New England, “You can’t get there from here.” Commuter rail goes to parking lots each as big as Lake Michigan and nowhere near the office parks where the good jobs are. Anything in town demands a car to cover a territory. Anything left is in fast food or hotels, and I didn’t get my degree to change beds. It’s better than Miami or L.A., but a long way from being carfree.

10. 10 Kelly Starks Jul 16th, 2007 at 9:49 am

    Futurists and architects love to talk about the evils of cars, and how we’ll abandon them for some glorious car free future, in “cities designed to a human scale”. The reality is that were abandoning the cities for suburban sprawl or smaller towns. There’s some excellent books written on why, but the bottom line is that if a urban area gets crowded and cramped enough to efficiently use mass transit, its to difficult to get to or from, so people and businesses migrate out for more accessible new developments.

    So our (and other nations around the world) see our skyscrapers and quant downtowns abandoned or left for tourists and conventions. Old neighborhoods left for the poor, or the trendy rich – or just abandoned to fall apart. From DC to Detroit the city cores are rotten out “inner city” area abandoned for the thriving and rapidly growing burbs.

    Futurists and architects long call for the abandonment of the car and a reversion to the joys of Venice (also abandoned to its burbs) or other poster child human scaled cities. But Futurists and architects don’t get to build cities. Builders building for the citizens, giving then the Malls, parkjs, highways and the rest they demand – do.

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