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

CarFree.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Sponsored by Segway and Amazon.com. Remember, buy a Segway and go car free!

Re:CarFree.com

[Thurn und Taxis]

Buy a bicycle and go car free, more like. What are the advantages of a Segway over a bicycle?
(a) You don't actually have to pedal to push your fat ass up a hill;
(b) You don't have to share the road with cars that might hit you;
(c) You can ride on the sidewalk, being relatively safe without actually breaking the law.

Let's tackle these arguments point by point:
(a) If you're so fat that you can't push yourself up a hill on a bicycle, then you're too fat. See a doctor, seek professional help. Bitch all you want about choice, I dont want to pay 10 cents extra for fries because you sued McDonald's over your self-induced aneurism. To misquote Barry White, "Your Fatness is your Weakness."
(b) Yes, riding a bike on the streets is dangerous. I know, I commute to/from work 20 miles/day on a bike, in traffic, in what has been described as the worst, most aggressive rush-hour traffic in the US. But I've been doing it for 10 years, and by being careful, I have yet to get hit by a car. I don't expect everyone to be as careful as I am, but I don't expect that in a car either. Sure, you're more vulnerable on a bike, but OTOH you're not going nearly as fast (well, okay, I've topped 40 mph under normal road conditions and 60 mph when the road was blocked to cars, but your average cyclist wouldn't do that). Seems to me that it balances out.
(c) Riding on the sidewalk rather than the streets makes you safer, sure. It makes pedestrians significantly less safe, since they become suddenly at risk of being hit by heavy objects moving at high speeds. So what's good for you *on* the Segway is bad for you *off* the Segway. In addition, you still have to either stop at red lights, or run the lights and risk getting hit by cars - in addition, in most cities you have to go at the speed of pedestrians when you're on the sidewalk. This defeats the purpose of riding on the sidewalk to begin with.

Basically, if you ride on the streets you become a bicyclist who doesn't pedal. If you ride on the sidewalk you become a pedestrian who doesn't move his/her feet. Either way, the only advantage you gain is that you don't have to actually exercise your fat ass, so you can burn even more fuel dragging yourself from point A to point B without helping yourself in any other way. Now, who wants a Segway?

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:Segway?

[macrom]

This is fine if you live in a city that supports walking. I live in Dallas, Texas, USA - a city spread out and practically designed around the automobile. I live in a suburban area that's 3-4 miles from a grocery store, 3-4 miles from a gas station, 50 miles from my office and at least 10 miles from the nearest major shopping center. It's not a matter of wanting a car, it's a matter of having a car in order to function.

I really wish, though, cities like Dallas and the surrounding area would make a more concerted effort to expand transportation and encourage companies to build and rent office space near major rail line depots. For someone like me, public transportation isn't even an option since the buses don't run anywhere near my home or office, let alone the rail lines.

Until we see not only cleaner cars or alternative forms of transportation, but also cities helping out the suburban sprawl, people won't be ready and willing to give up their transportation for something like a Segway HT.

Not for me.

[aeinome]

Maybe 5 years ago, I would've agreed with this, but now I don't. To me, it seems the main reason of "banning cars" is to make the environment cleaner. But with these new fuel cell cars and electric/gas hybrids, cars will be emission free soon. This idea doesn't really do it for me.

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...

let's be practical about it....

[stonebeat.org]

here is another alternative http://www.arcosanti.org/ Arcosanti designed by the world famous artchitect - Paolo Soleri - actaully exists :)

Car-free city must be compact

[MtViewGuy]

I think for a true car-free city to work, it has to be reasonably compact.

Take for example Tokyo and New York City. The actual amount of land used in the center city is quite small, small enough that walking or using a mass-transit system becomes quite viable.

You definitely cannot do that in Los Angeles, that's to be sure--it's so spread out that you'll need exorbitant amounts of money to build a mass transit system the cover the whole Los Angeles Basin.

Note that in the case of London, England, the Underground subway system got there first before motor vehicle traffic because London HAD to build something to alleviate the horrible street-level traffic of horse-drawn carriages of various types in the late 19th Century immediately. That's why the Underground travels all over the London metro area--in fact, the Underground helped develop a number of London suburbs!

Re:Car-free city must be compact

[jdreed1024]

Note that in the case of London, England, the Underground subway system got there first before motor vehicle traffic because London HAD to build something to alleviate the horrible street-level traffic of horse-drawn carriages of various types in the late 19th Century immediately.

True, however it's important to note that the London Underground started with simply putting trains (regular huge trains with steam locomotives) underground. The main reason for this was the fumes and soot caused by the steam locomotives, and also the fact that there were so many lines coming into the city, they needed to go somewhere, and underground was the best place to put them. It did not start off as an urban transit line or a subway system.

That's why the Underground travels all over the London metro area--in fact, the Underground helped develop a number of London suburbs!

The concept of mass transit creating suburbs is not unique to London. The concept of a "streetcar suburb" is known in nearly every large U.S. city, and others around the world. (It's important to note that the word "suburb" became corrupted somewhere along the line. With the advent of Levittown and the postwar boom, "suburb" became synonymous with "suburbia" - the land of tract housing, large yards, a car in every driveway, and the split-level ranch. That is not, however, what it meant at the turn of the century)

Streetcar companies would buy cheap land at what was then the city limits, built streetcar (or elevated) lines out to the land, parcel it up, and sell it off. Many families bought it, since it was away from the noise of the city, they could have a small yard and such, and yet getting to the city was still easy. The land sales paid for the initial investment of the line, and made a tidy profit for the companies, too.

yes, ban the cars

[GMontag]

Cars keep getting in the way of my Jeep and the pickup trucks of my friends.

Hydrogen baby! The fuel of today.

Preplanning

[wmspringer]

I can see maybe designing a city to be car-free, but it seems like it would be next to impossible to convert a typical city to such. Consider:

1) People like cars. Tell them they can't use thier cars anymore, and you're liable to be voted out of office.

2) If you get rid of cars, you have to have an alternative system of transportation in place. Unfortunately, the only place to PUT that system will many times be where the roads are now. Result: you can't build the system until the cars are gone, and you can't get rid of the cars until the system is ready!

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.

Transitioning

[egeorge]

The biggest problem I have found with these types of advocacy groups is that no one is proposing sensible plans for transitioning away from car-centric urban development.

I am all for living car-free, (In fact I have gone out of my way to organize my life so I only drive about once a week), but the fact of the matter is that we are currently saddled with ugly, sprawling, single-use zoned cities. With the possible exception of places in China, nobody is building large metropolitan areas from the ground up. What we really need are feasible intermediate steps to gradually eliminate the sprawl and the dependency on cars.

Intermediate steps need to have both the short term benefits as well as moving cities towards the goal of reducing auto-dependence.

Not in the U.S.

[aerogeek]

Too bad they don't address the cultural barriers to car-free cities in the United States. Cars represent freedom here, plain and simple. Until that mindset changes, we won't have a car-free city for all the urban planning in the world. Can you even imagine something as benign as London's new car toll happening in Los Angeles or New York? People would scream bloody murder. Granted, there's a geographic component to consider as well; our cities are larger and more sprawling than in Europe or elsewhere.

The problem with Utopian ideas...

[galen_rhodes]

...is that it is based on the assumption that you can get everyone to agree on the same thing. I think it's safe to say that, unless you are ready to brainwash everyone or legislate them to the point of living in a mental prison then, it's never going to work.

I think we can all remember the end-result of that last great Utopian experiment known as the U.S.S.R.

don't think mfg a car / roads roads is harmful?

[the_REAL_sam]

Consider all the human labor and parts, each part built of resources harvested from the environment. Each hour translating into time you spend working to support that car. Consider the sum cost of your car / insurance / fuel / registration / parking tickets in a year. You WORK to support that. Wouldn't you rather be free of that?

Consider all the NOISE that comes off a freeway, as well as the fact that tar / asphault highways must be MAINTAINED. If you live in a city, think about how many times you've suffered the noise from a jackhammer. Think of all the times they've torn out a road to fix a pipe, and then replaced the road with something worse than you had in the first place.

Consider the environmental eyesore that a TEXACO / CHEVRON / SHELL station is. Try to remember what the country looked like before the drivethrough convenience store. You used to be able to walk to those places. Now our cities are half parking, guessing 5% auto maintenace commerce, roadside billboards. Where's the soul?

If you've been victimized by them (i have), consider the involuntary stress / tightening of your jaw muscles when you see a parking enforcer. Ever had your car hostile-towed?

How about car breakins / vandalism / theft? Been there, suffered that.

Been to a bar lately? Had to get home lately?

Consider the sound of a heavy delivery truck in reverse (beep beep beep). Now scale that to the number of times you hear it. Live in a real city? Ouch.

If you live in a snowy area, think of how it is, scraping ice off your windshield in the morning, and hoping your car battery didn't die. And if it did, paying the tower, or buying a replacement battery.

AND, finally, think of all the money you give to the auto and insurance industries. They ARE the same folks who make tanks and HUM-V's. And, yes, they ARE corporate lobbyists. So when you get a lame war, or when the trolley system in your city gets dismantled, remember whose money was used to give them that political power. It was yours.

I'm sure there's more, but that should press the best buttons.

Think b4 you drive.

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.

Re:public transportation in NYC works well

[NoData]

Spent a lot of time in NYC, which has one of the "best" public transportation systems in the world. Spent a lot of time in Atlanta, which has one of the worst.

Here's the problem. Make all the claims you want about the great convenience of public transportation, but nothing--nothing--NYC has beats the convenience of getting in your car, pulling right into a parking spot 100ft from the store (one of dozens of spots available), putting your purchases in your trunk, and then pulling right back up to your abode. This is city life in Atlanta. You don't walk anywhere, ever. Even if it's right across the street, chances are the street is 4 lanes wide and you have to traverse a couple acres of parking lot to get there. Besides residential streets, just about every commercial street is a first class highway.

NYC? It's a hassle. Everyday life is a hassle. Going grocery shopping is a hassle. Purchasing anything that you can't carry easily in your arms is a hassle. People do it, but it's a hassle. Subways are extensive, but crowded, stations are nasty and ridiculously hot. You have to walk for a quarter mile in the maze of some large stations to just chage lines (i.e. times square/42nd street station), Trains often have panic-inducing delays where youre stuck on the train--hey the system's old, sometimes something malfunctions, sometimes somebody pulls the emergency break, sometimes somebody's causing trouble and they need to wait for authorities---maybe for 5 minutes, maybe for 50 (god help you if really were planning to jump off at the next stop to hit a restroom).

Taxis? Always available?! HA. Try catching a taxi anywhere in midtown around 11 to midnight on weekends when the theaters let out. Try catching a taxi anywhere during rush hours.

Now, transport in Atlanta isn't all fun and games either. Try coming home from work 5:30 on 285-West (Atlanta's perimeter). Atlanta's regarded as having one of the worst traffic situations of any major city in the nation. Already Atlantans have longer average commute (in time) of any major city. But on weekends, or during non-peak traffic times...it's simply a breeze.

Atlanta is a new city, that really began growing after the invention of the automobile. So where as an old city like NYC or Boston is actually built at the scale of the human, Atlanta, like most big western cities, is built at the scale of the car. Pedestrians are the exception, and they're taking big chances.

This makes for a really sprawling, uncozy, alienating, uninviting city life. But I don't feel like NYC, for all its humanscale traffic is much more cozy. It's a hectic headache.

There's gotta be new thinking in people moving...focusing not just on environment, but quality of life and practicality,

Make the market do it

[dschl]

For someone like me, public transportation isn't even an option since the buses don't run anywhere near my home or office, let alone the rail lines.

Why do you live 50 miles from work? Is there no affordable accomodation within 10 miles? If you (and everyone else with similar desires for change) actively sought housing closer to your workplace, you would create a demand for a different type of housing supply, rather than the endless monotony of suburbia.

Everyone could live near work, but few are willing to change their lifestyle. There are a few things that would have to change from today's norm, including adapting to slightly smaller houses, much smaller yards, etc. Think of row housing, with enough yard for a small garden, and you get the idea. It would be much more sustainable, but most people want a freestanding house in the 'burbs, with a big driveway, and lots of useless lawn.

I live 25km from work, and commute via bike and bus. It takes about twice as long as a car, but I don't get to work frustrated from the traffic. Five or ten years from now, I expect that my next house will be closer to work, smaller, and better designed. Many poeple I know expect to keep upsizing to ever-larger houses on more land, further from work. Most environmental problems are not someone else's fault, they result from decisions we make every day, magnified by millions or billions of people.

Re:Make the market do it

[macrom]

Do you think we always choose the way things are? When I bought my house, it was just a few miles from work. Then I got laid off and took the only job I could find. If you own a house, you'll know it's not always feasible to just sell every couple of years and move, so I commute a great distance in order to have a decent job.

I also bought where I did because I get more house for my money. Why move to a neighborhood near my office where I pay $30K more for half the house? The neighborhoods outside of the area my office is in are home to majorly affluent people (to me at least). What I think you don't understand is that developments are built by corporations that determine what type of people they want to live in a particular area. Just because some average Joe like me comes along demanding less expensive housing doesn't mean they'll create it for me and the others. If you've ever been house shopping, you'd understand that you have to buy in the areas that meet your budget. One just can't go out and build a cheap house next to their office because that's what fits their daily life.

As far as a useless lawn...you don't have kids, do you? There's something to be said for having a nice backyard where your kids can play and have a bit of independence without having to always drive to the park (no parks really near my house).

Re:Make the market do it

[Guppy06]

Cars are cheaper to own and maintain than midtown/downtown apartments.

Problem: cars are very, very expensive

[g4dget]

All it takes to move via car is a relatively flat piece of land.

In the real world, it also takes insurance, traffic police, highway patrols, traffic courts, road cleaning, snow removal, over- and under-passes, gas stations, refineries, planning offices, car junkyards, emergency roadside assistance, fast-responding emergency medical services, helicopters, traffic surveillance, traffic computers,and on and on. Many of those costs are much lower or non-existent for public transportation, and you do pay for them, through taxes, fees, association memberships, auto and medical insurance, etc., expenses you may not associate with cars but expenses that are nevertheless very real.

And those are only direct, easily quantifiable costs. When you add in costs for maintaining a presence in the Persian Gulf, for respiratory diseases caused by pollution, for lost productivity due to traffic jams, for ecological damage from paving over large parts of the country, and other such effects, the costs are even worse.

As an exercise, just total up what you pay in terms of gas, insurance, license fees, interest, amortized purchase price, amortized disposal fees, and other car related expenses per year. I think you'll be surprised how expensive driving it, and that only accounts for a fraction of the costs mentioned above.

Oh, by the way, I don't know whether you are in good shape or not, but if you drive less, chances are you would also be in better shape than you are now (and save on medical bills, too).

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.

Transportation will not work in the US because ...

[axelbaker]

The major problem with having a car free city in the US is lack of transportation. The reason we don't have transportation is the way the cities we live in are built. The cities we live in are built the way they are cause every one has a car. Here lies the problem.

The root of the problem is we build our housing in too low a density in the US.
For transit to work there has to be a minimum number of riders for the system to work economically. To get enough riders to do that transit need a certain density of population. Also transit will normally only get riders to walk 1/4 mile to a transit top.

The problem is most Americans want conflicting things in housing. They want a big house, and they want open space. These don't sound like the conflict but they do.

Say you have 10 acres of land. If on that land you you build like most modern subdivisions do, you will build 1/4 of the land in to streets, and then 3-5 houses per acre. Most people see this and think it is great. they have a big yard and a big house and a street. But, what they don't see is that 1/4 of all our property is covered in streets. Now on top of that land getting used for streets tons of other land gets used for parking lots and freeways. Leaving nearly as much land in the US tied up in places for cars to go as places for people to go. Also, because of the low density of this housing to driver from that house to another house (or school or store) you have to drive a lot farther. The result is more cars on the streets making longer trips. People who design networks will see the problem here. In addition this method of building houses results in a very low density of people. For transit to move these people it has to make long trips and people have to walk a long way to get to it. Also because it is making long trips it takes a long time to get anywhere making transit inconvenient. Because its inconvenient no one takes it anywhere, they have to raise prices, less people take it, etc...

Now, if you look at cities where transit works, NYC, SF and most European cities houses are built differently. In all of these places houses are built much denser. Most Americans will bitch that they would feel crowded. But the result is less crowding. The reason for this is by building denser, say 15 - 20 unit per acre you now can house all those people in less space. Also because people are closer together there is less street getting built and less land dedicated to cars. You can now use that extra space for some thing like a park. Because most people are not home most of the time, building public areas results in more efficient use of that space. Some one will be using it all the time.
Now that people are closer to each other, they are also able to walk from place to place. you no longer have to walk past those huge lots, you walk past a nice small lot.
Most importantly now you have the critical mass of people required to make transit work

Now for all those people in Dallas, San Jose, and Los Angeles who say they cant survive with out cars, try traveling to another country and you will quickly learn it happen every day. All we need is to express interest in living that way and we can start building that way. Many cities are pushing very hard to get more people living in the urban core of the city. They are offering tax breaks, low interest loans and other incentives. Developers build houses the market demands. If people demand better housing that works with transit, they will get it. If a city doesn't zone in such a way to build affordable housing near jobs go down to the city planning department and tell them, they can (and will) change the zoning. Cities want to build smarter. It saves them money by decreasing the infrastructure they have to build and the area in which they have to supply services.