Heavy usage of cars and trucks is detrimental to urban communities; we should implement policies that reduce car-based access to city centers and other densely populated areas. This is mainly focused on the USA.
Some points:
- Cars interfere with the movement of pedestrians and small vehicles (bikes, scooters), making dense urban areas less usable.
- Cars require a lot of space, both for roads and parking. This competes with housing and green-spaces in cities, making urban areas less accessible and pleasant.
- Cars are dangerous and dirty - especially when at high densities, such as in cities.
To address this, a variety of changes may be instituted:
- Traffic arteries (e.g. expressways going to the city center) should be slowed and narrowed as it approaches the city center, so that passenger cars/trucks do not use it. Instead, they should be reserved mainly for motorcycles, buses, single-point delivery trucks (e.g. stores or to transfer packages, not trucks that will drive to each residence), and vehicles required for the disabled.
- A portion of city roads should be closed to most cars, either by making barriers that they cannot pass through, or resurfacing and shaping them to be pedestrian focused rather than car-focused. It is especially important that side roads do not allow access towards the city center (so that commuters don’t just drive on side roads when main roads are over-capacity).
- Space reclaimed from cars should be re-engineered for greenspace, trees, mass-transit (trolleys), and pedestrians.
- Cities should stop subsidizing the construction of massive attractions (e.g. pro sports stadiums), or at least move them to more peripheral locations that are accessible from suburbs while assuring good mass transit from the city center.
- For situations where individuals feel that cars are essential, congestion fees should be charged and hefty penalties should be levied on traffic violations within dense urban areas – including prohibition on driving in those areas.
- Suburban communities will be told that if they wish to enjoy the ammenities of the central city, they will have to support the expansion of mass-transit networks into the suburbs. We will no longer tolerate the double standard where they insist on having access to urban neighborhoods via cars but intentionally block carless urban residents from accessing their neighborhoods.
so I comment with ancap-leaning assumptions. so maybe it often is but it could be privatized or be privately owned (including expressways)
well idk I had in mind a quick vehicle for emergencies, independence from bus or train times or things out of your control, etc. Frequently these things “other people” are running are unreliable so then people give up on them. And versus a lower tech option (walking, bikes, scooters, etc.), cars can shield from storms or snow a bit.
it seems possible. either devs can factor in building their own parking without it being required, or if there’s enough demand some spot could be created as private parking lot, or shuttles could take people to destination.
sounds subjective. which can be fine (I might share your goal too). But the car drivers probably think they’re plenty livable already. So, perhaps I might ask for more precise definition of goal or what livability means.
ahhh I thought I saw something on no or low tech magazine.
I thought I saw this one design where there was basically one central road or rail and the city built off in either directions from it
then of course there’s floating cities…
Ok. I’m not sure where to go with that, society would be radically different which makes it difficult to discuss any specifics. But I still think this would be an issue – but maybe the issue would be neighborhoods forming HOAs to buy up local roads or something (if they didn’t already belong to HOAs). Or maybe the issue would be how we assess damages for pollution/noise/hazards caused by cars… I assume that would be different depending on whether we considered cars the default way of getting around vs. a luxury.
Cars are useful, but the question is whether they are worth the cost when the user has to pay all of the costs.
I’m not proposing any sort of car ban or rationing law. I just think that we shouldn’t be using them for every little thing and we shouldn’t build our infrastructure around the assumption that cars are the way to get around. Imagine a situation where there is (typically) one car per household rather than one car per driver. When I was young and single, I lived in a mid-sized city and didn’t feel any need to own a car because I could walk/bike wherever I needed to go (granted, I was near parents and could borrow a car in a pinch, but there are also car-sharing organizations that can provide cars for occasional use).
My point is that insufficient parking has a negative impact on the usability of roads. If the road manager can’t assuring that there is enough parking, then the road manager needs to find a way to keep vehicles off the roads in the first place.
By ‘livability’ I mean favoring the interests of the city residents, and that cities are able to increase housing supply as population increases. The current layout of cities (or the city center) is often built to favor the interests of people who don’t live in the cities (e.g. suburban commuters and absentee property owners).
I don’t think that drivers find cities ‘livable’ – I constantly hear drivers complaining about driving.
That’s not to mention that half the reason people move out to the suburbs is to escape the noise/dirt and hazard that cars create in urban neighoborhoods (motor vehicle fatalities are usually the leading cause of death among people <20, though gun fatalities were more common in 2020).
Our reliance on cars is holding us back because people are unwilling to change their assumptions. We’re in a horrible prisoner’s dillemma where we just keep doubling down on the activities that make everyone else worse off.
Some publications: