What can Americans not live without?
May 28th, 2009By Sara Wolfson
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| Freiburg-im-Brisgau – Quartier Vauban : commerces et immeuble Originally uploaded by adeupa de Brest |
| A walkable, car-free street in the upscale suburb of Vauban, Germany. The community has easy rail access into Freiburg. |
With thrift the latest necessity in today’s economic struggles, people are not only trimming the fat from their budgets — they’re reconsidering what’s essential and what’s fat. According to a new national survey by the Pew Research Center, significantly more Americans now consider microwave ovens, television sets, home air conditioning, dishwashers, and clothes dryers to be luxuries than they did three years ago.
There is one item that 88% of Americans still say they can’t live without — the car. It’s an understandable sentiment. Take a look around much of America and it’s easy to understand why in most places, you are stuck if you don’t have a car.
But what if it didn’t have to be that way?
This article has made the rounds by now, but in Germany, according to a front-page New York Times article, the residents of the upscale suburb of Vauban have decided that they want to live nearly car-free lives. All streets except for the main thoroughfare are completely car-free, and cars can only be kept in one of the two car garages on the edges of town. With 5,500 residents within one square mile and easy access to public transportation, who needs their car regularly? Most families share cars for longer trips. Half of Vauban residents sold their personal cars to move there. A few similar projects are cropping up here in the United States as well, but nothing quite at the scale of Vauban.
Smart Growth America (and Transportation for America) communications director David Goldberg was quoted in the article about people looking for ways to drive less and how the future might look a little more like Vauban.
“All of our development since World War II has been centered on the car, and that will have to change,” said David Goldberg, an official of Transportation for America, a fast-growing coalition of hundreds of groups in the United States — including environmental groups, mayors’ offices and the American Association of Retired People — who are promoting new communities that are less dependent on cars. Mr. Goldberg added: “How much you drive is as important as whether you have a hybrid.”
The majority of Americans feel like they can’t do without their cars, and it’s easy to see why. Most of us are left with relatively few other options for getting around — which means our cars now own us rather than the other way around.
If we start meeting the demand for accessible, convenient, walkable neighborhoods — while changing our transportation spending to make getting around easier — then perhaps given the chance, more Americans will see cars as less necessary for daily life, too.
May 29th, 2009 at 9:05 pm
It’s amazing that the car is so often equated with “freedom,” whereas this indicates it is anything but freedom it is a responsibility.
July 1st, 2009 at 4:21 pm
Not only is a car a responsibility – to drive safely, to use it productively; but it can also be a burden – insurance costs, maintenance costs, environmental costs of its manufactor and use. Then there’s the hidden costs as exemplified in the school siting regulations that took the car/school bus as the only form of transportation.