[Carfreeliving] "Car-free living"

[Tom Radulovich]

Emily and Jason,

Good points both. One of the challenges of promoting car-free living  
is that many of the best places in the city for living car-free are  
overrun with cars. We ought to point out the inequity of city in  
which many of the city's densest, least auto-oriented neighborhoods  
have huge volumes of traffic channeled through them. These  
neighborhoods also have a lot less green space, street trees, and  
urban greenery. Streets like Guerrero, South Van Ness, Larkin, or  
Ninth are hardly complete or very livable. So we have a situation  
where the communities in the city who contribute least to the problem  
have to bear a disproportionate share of the impacts, which is what  
environmental justice is all about. A city commitment to making the  
densest, most transit-intensive neighborhoods as amenable, walkable,  
green, and safe as its finest residential neighborhoods would go far  
towards promoting sustainable lifestyles.

There is also a catch 22 around some of the arguments around the need  
to drive. Emily is right that we haven't created a city where it is  
easy to have kids without a car, so a lot of folks who have the means  
get a car. But the equity issue cuts both ways; a lot of families who  
don't have a car just make do, and as a result have to do without.  
Ecology has this concept of the 'indicator species', a species whose  
vitality can be used as an indicator of the health of the whole  
system. Penalosa talks a lot about children, and has said that he  
wanted to design a city where a nine year old could safely walk or  
bicycle around. Maybe we need to think about 'complete  
neighborhoods', where the indicator species, say a single working  
parent with school-age children, can get around and give the kids  
access to education, recreation, and so on without undue hassle.

Making car-free living work means changing the social contract; in  
exchange for foregoing the "entitlements" of easy and lavishly- 
subsidized auto access and parking, one is entitled to green and safe  
streets, quality public facilities and open spaces, good schools and  
childcare, good transit, bike, and taxi access.

On Aug 24, 2005, at 9:38 PM, Jason Henderson wrote: