Creating Car Free Cities

Silas writes "CarFree.com is a great site that "proposes a delightful solution to the vexing problem of urban automobiles." The site presents a fascinating, detailed proposal for a major city (1 million people in 100 square miles) that doesn't require the use of cars. This isn't a new concept; a lot of the ideas are modeled off of major car free cities in Europe (like Venice)." The page on Morocco is fascinating.

Comments

Whew!

[Gortbusters.org]

Anything is better than the car-clogged cities we have today. Small trips have big cap fares as it takes longer to get there. I tried walking from one hotel to another in Las Vegas, I thought I was going to die from inhaling all of that pollution. At least Las Vegas is moving in the right direction with mono-rails (yes, MonoRail!)

If only NYC and others followed with some awesome inovations.

Segway?

[DarkBlackFox]

I was under the impression this is exactly what the Segway HT was designed to accomplish. Cleaning up cars obviously means much less pollution.

It's a great concept in general- people would be more likely to walk to where they had to go, rather than drive half a mile to the store to pick up the ice cream and chocolate syrup.

Re:Not for me.

[Wampus Aurelius]

Even with "emission free" cars, you still expend the energy to move the car to being with. Getting rid of pollution is an important goal, but the ultimate goal should be to conserve the environmental resources required to produce and operate cars. By creating a city in which cars are less necessary, you reduce the energy consumption of the average citizen, even after you factor in the energy required to operate the 24-hour mass transit systems.

Re:Not for me.

[American AC in Paris]

To me, it seems the main reason of "banning cars" is to make the environment cleaner.

...consider that no cars = greatly increased public safety. Consider, too, that having that no cars would encourage diverse, "fun" neighborhoods--residences and businesses intermingled, instead of huge, dull blocks of houses. Things like neighborhood markets and restaurants would make a real comeback. And of course, there's always the very real health benefit of that much more walking on a daily basis...

People's Republic of Boulder

[Chagatai]

One problem about this concept is that you have to fully dedicate to the concept and not start off with a city or town that already has cars going through it. Case in point: Boulder, Colorado, USA.

Boulder is big into trying to dissuade people from driving cars and to use public transit or other means of getting around. People, bicycles, and other man-powered (or small engine-powered) vehicles have the right-of-way and will use and abuse this fact at any opportunity, walking in front of moving cars and riding against red lights. This causes nasty traffic jams, accidents, and generally pisses people off. The roads are quite cozy and not accomodating to any sort of car larger than a Honda Civic, like my pickup truck.

I would love to live in an auto-free town, riding my bike and using monorails or whatever transport the city provides. But trying to adapt existing cities to this mindset is asking for nothing but trouble.

public transportation in NYC works well

[g4dget]

NYC is one of the best cities for public transportation in the US. The subway system alone is extensive.

But what many people overlook is that a large fraction of the cars are taxis and limousines. And taxis are fairly affordable.

You can get by without a car in NYC because you can just flag down a cab any time, day or night. Widespread availability of taxis is an important part of a city free of (personal) automobiles. If other cities had a taxicab system as good as that in NYC, far fewer people would need cars. As a bonus, it is politically and practically much easier to convert taxi fleets to new standards (natural gas, hydrogen, electricity) than personal automobiles.

A Pattern Language

[Allen Varney]

Some of the city-design ideas on this Carfree.com site echo those advanced over 25 years ago in the influential book A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander, Sara, Ishikawa, Murray Silverstein, and others. This book details a "working alternative to our present ideas about architecture, building, and planning," with over 250 specific advisories starting at the very high overview level ("Independent Regions" instead of our current nation-states) and moving in successive stages down through town design, becoming always more specific ("Mosaic of Subcultures," "Industrial Ribbon," "Nine Percent Parking," placement of food stands and bus stops), and then to low-level details of individual building design ("Sequence of Sitting Spaces," "Light on Two Sides of Every Room," very specific construction details, and "Paving With Cracks Between the Stones").

A Pattern Language is a remarkable book, the principal influence on Stewart Brand's The Whole Earth Catalog and used by the city designers for the upcoming STAR WARS GALAXIES online game. I suspect, but don't know for sure, that its "patterns" concept influenced the current mode of "design patterns" among coders. For other examples of the book's influence, and of the theorists' current work, see their Web site, especially the overview of patterns.