Deutschland ist OK
Look, Dave, Germany can't be all bad. This nearly car-less suburban community looks pretty amazing. Now how can we convince North Americans to ditch their cars? Including me.
Update: Discussion panel at NYT on being Car-Free in America. Completely car-free doesn't seem like the best option to me.
Two problems:
ReplyDelete1) The only reason they're able to ditch their cars is because the town grid was originally a car-less nazi base. Hardly applicable to existing, non-nazi base-based towns. It's like saying "why don't we do things more like they do in Venice? They don't have cars there."
2) It's still in Germany. ;p
As I see it, the solution is some combination of looser zoning laws to allow for a better mix of stores and shops in our residential areas* and greatly enhanced and expanded public transportation to make up for the loss of personal mobility. If people can't get from A to B comfortably then they aren't going to give up their car.
The problem is, to do it effectively you're basically going to have to tear down and rebuild huge chunks of existing cities, which costs money. Simply saying "here's how they do it in Europe" ignores the fact that most European cities were built around people hundreds of years ago. Until someone comes up with a viable, repeatable, cost-effective way to transition from car-based city to people-based city, we'll be using the car for a long while yet.
* For example, current zoning laws in Ft. Collins and I'm sure many other places require that any shop opened be able to guarantee parking spaces for its customers. In other words, building a downtown area on par with Pearl Street in Boulder or Old Town in Ft. Collins nowadays is illegal.