In 1998, a back-and-forth email exchange between James Q. Wilson and James Howard Kunstler got to the heart of the debate over the role of the automobile in America. Slate.com preserves the correspondence, dubbed “The War on Cars,” in its Dialogues series. The series features “e-mail debates of newsworthy topics.”
Wilson, who is a professor of public policy, former Chairman of the White House Task Force on Crime former Chairman of the National Advisor Commission on Drug Abuse Prevention and has been a member of several public policy commissions, initiates the discussion in response to Kunstler’s 1996 publication Home From Nowhere: Remaking Our Everyday World for the 21st Century. In Kunstler’s book, he promotes the “new urbanism” movement which advocates mixed-use live/work neighborhoods and takes aim at sprawl, zoning laws, the U.S. property tax system, and particularly the automobile that makes it all possible. Wilson protests the depiction of American suburbs and reliance on the car as “catastrophic.”
Kunming, the capital of Southwest China’s Yunnan province, has become China’s first city to institute a monthly “No Car Day.” The fourth Saturday of each month, the city bans private cars within Kunming’s ring road from 9am to 7pm.
Kunming was one of over 100 Chinese cities to ban private cars from downtown on September 22nd for World Car Free Day. Although other Chinese cities reported minimal impacts to people’s behavior and downtown traffic, Kunming’s effort reported a significant decrease in pollution.
A grassroots initiative to decrease car traffic in Barcelona, Spain is underway. Menos Coches en Barcelona (Fewer Cars in Barcelona) seeks to decrease the amount of car-caused “noise, stench, and danger.”
Barcelona currently has some streets in the Barri Gotic area that are car free. Menos Coches hopes to expand the car free zone, increase the use of public transportation, and help to build a sustainable future.
I just stumbled across some beautiful, downhome photos that glorify those sweet, beloved bicycles of ours. Bike Rubbish is Derek Pearson's personal, daily journal of bike photos in and around Oregon. The bike-subjects range from hipster commuters to utilitarian Xtracycle haulers to downhill race rigs - but all images share an obvious love for the 2-wheeled, people-powered transport machines.
The City of Seattle is getting serious about reducing car traffic. The One Less Car Challenge encourages citizens to leave a vehicle at home, and offers some pretty hip incentives in return.
Households which forego use of one of their vehicles for one month, and have more drivers than cars, receive $50 in Flexcar use (a car-sharing company similar to Zipcar) and a discounted membership to the Cascade Bicycle Club. Participants willing to make a more permanent commitment can sell or donate one of their household’s vehicles so that the household has more drivers than cars. They must refrain from replacing that car for at least one year. Incentives for this “Level 2” commitment receive $600 in Flexcar use, a free membership to the Cascade Bicycle Club, and a free membership to the Bicycle Alliance of Washington.
In July, 2006, a subway car on Chicago’s famous El line careened off the tracks in a dark tunnel. The crash injured 150 people and sent 1,000 passengers scrambling for safety as a fire began to smolder.
Unfortunately, as AP reports, the accident is more harbinger than isolated incident. And the decay of our nation’s subway systems is not isolated to Chicago.
New York subways suffer from chronic overcrowding; Boston’s system is so far in debt that any funds not gobbled up by loan-interest go towards basic maintenance, with none left for improvements; Washington D.C. faces a soaring ridership without the funds to invest in new cars to keep operations running smoothly; and Chicago’s tracks are in such poor shape that in many sections subways are forced to travel at 5 miles per hour rather than the typical 50 these sections should allow. One-third of the cars in Chicago’s service exceed the 25 year-old maximum age recommendation by federal authorities. The El line has suffered numerous derailments, fires, and evacuations.
The World Carfree Network just released a video (embedded below) documenting their seventh annual Carfree Cities Conference. This year's edition, from August 27-31, took place in Istanbul Turkey.
The Carfree Cities Conferences are a global summit for alternative transportation and urban planning gurus. Partcipants exchange ideas, give progress reports and brainstorm over how to improve cities around the world by decreasing car traffic.
The theme of the Istanbul conference, "Building a Livable Future in a Changing Climate," focused on creating compact cities where walking would be a viable transportation solution for many citizens' daily activities. Global warming and the car's role was under fire, and urban planning was touted as an important component of the solution.
The 2008 Carfree Cities Conference will be in Portland, Oregon. Themes will include mixed-use development, local agriculture, accessible public space, and sustainable transportation.
Cars are the most inconvenient convenience we have. We're required to have them, but increasingly, we dislike them. At Carectomy, we're trying to figure out how to extract cars from people.
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