1/Inspired by a conversation with @mtsw and @mattyglesias, I'd like to explain why I think successful urbanism must be radically anti-car.
— Evan Jenkins (@ejenk) March 22, 2016
2/Density is great. But there's a big problem with "just" increasing density. Let's say you manage to double the density of your city.
— Evan Jenkins (@ejenk) March 22, 2016
3/Even if you manage to halve automobile mode share (by no means a given!), you're still left with the same number of cars on the road.
— Evan Jenkins (@ejenk) March 22, 2016
4/Now, these cars are interacting with (more than) twice as many pedestrians, causing more injuries and deaths. They travel slower, so…
— Evan Jenkins (@ejenk) March 22, 2016
5/…pollution is worse. In short, the experience of being in the city becomes worse. And that's the optimistic scenario! More realistically…
— Evan Jenkins (@ejenk) March 22, 2016
6/…mode share drops a little bit, and you wind up with way more cars and a much degraded quality of life for drivers and non-drivers alike.
— Evan Jenkins (@ejenk) March 22, 2016
7/Ultimately, this is what's at the heart of NIMBY worries about development. More density = more cars = decreased quality of life.
— Evan Jenkins (@ejenk) March 22, 2016
8/What NIMBYs get wrong is that *it doesn't have to be that way*. Density makes it that much easier to radically reduce our car dependence.
— Evan Jenkins (@ejenk) March 22, 2016
9/Density alone doesn't get us there. Take Paris: a wonderfully dense city that was choked by pollution despite a minuscule car mode share.
— Evan Jenkins (@ejenk) March 22, 2016
10/Nobody will ever support more density if it means more pollution, more congestion, more death and destruction.
— Evan Jenkins (@ejenk) March 22, 2016
11/Moreover, focusing on density in wealthy areas does little to help poor people who are stuck in auto-dependent areas.
— Evan Jenkins (@ejenk) March 22, 2016
12/Yes, a few might be able to escape to a newly affordable city center. But until they are, they'll be stuck with the huge economic burden…
— Evan Jenkins (@ejenk) March 22, 2016
13/…of car ownership and car infrastructure. We need a massive shift in our infrastructure priorities to make this happen.
— Evan Jenkins (@ejenk) March 22, 2016
14/To sum up, an urbanism that is not radically anti-car appeals to no one. It does not appeal to wealthy residents of city centers or poor…
— Evan Jenkins (@ejenk) March 22, 2016
15/residents who are underserved by public transit. Density is great, but it can only work alongside the goal of radically reducing car use.
— Evan Jenkins (@ejenk) March 22, 2016
16/To that end, urbanists need to make getting rid of the car the message. Everything else—the desire for dense, walkable neighborhoods and…
— Evan Jenkins (@ejenk) March 22, 2016
17/…comprehensive public transit—flows from that. And it's a message that can absolutely succeed, even though Americans love their cars.
— Evan Jenkins (@ejenk) March 22, 2016
18/50 years ago, Americans loved cigarettes. But with a concerted campaign, and a laser-like focus on the message that smoking kills, we've…
— Evan Jenkins (@ejenk) March 22, 2016
19/…greatly reduced the prevalence of smoking. With the message that cars kill cities (and people), we can have the same success.
— Evan Jenkins (@ejenk) March 22, 2016
20/We can't be afraid of having an unpopular message. News flash: urbanism is unpopular already. The issues that excite urbanists do not…
— Evan Jenkins (@ejenk) March 22, 2016
21/…excite most people. We need to make it visceral: cars kill, cars bankrupt, cars destroy cities. It's a controversial message, but it's…
— Evan Jenkins (@ejenk) March 22, 2016
22/…one that demands a response, unlike "people should be allowed to build what the market desires."
— Evan Jenkins (@ejenk) March 22, 2016
23/Anyway, this turned into a longer rant than I had intended, so I'll stop now.
— Evan Jenkins (@ejenk) March 22, 2016
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4 Responses to Tweetstorm: Cities, Cars, & Roads
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He’s right, but the comparison to cigarettes is poor. Cigarettes are a luxury, not something that is practically a necessity. Vilify cars without a practical path to robust transit that doesn’t leave people wondering how to get around, and you’ll fail.
It’s why I’m betting on electric autonomous cars for hire.
I agree. This is where I think the “Stop building roads first and then people will have to use transit” starts to sound like “With lower taxes, we’ll have to cut government.”
Build a sufficiently good transit system and cars disappear on their own. Edge cases from my life in the last couple of weeks — get five days worth of groceries with the 2.5-year-old granddaughter in tow; outdoor recreation with modest equipment outside the urban core; move three boxes of books to a recycling center that handles used books.
Pure mass public transit (trains, busses) dies on the edge cases. Taxis can handle the edge cases if they can be afforded by all (rather than just middle class and above).
Autonomous cars would ideally be affordable enough for the poor to hire (especially if they had transportation assistance like many busses & trains do).