I lived in Stockholm for sometime before moving to London. There are a lot of parts in London where it's very easy to live without a car. I think the main reason is because it's essentially made of small towns that eventually all merged together. One is never too far from a fully functional high street and etc. Stockholm is built differently and having a car there makes life much easier even though the public transport is very good.

I have lived in london for the last 10 years (and counting). I don't own a car and I wouldn't want one to drive in London.

I live in zone 2 though. Probably things would be different if I lived further away.

we left London last year after spending there 10 or so years. We spent the last 5 in a leafy part of South London. Commuting to work( before covid) was pretty easy with trains but also time consuming. Arrival of our child did change things and not having a car was putting limits on certain things by quite a lot. If I'd turn the time back, I'd definitely buy a car.

There are many boroughs in London with a majority of households not owning a car - more than 60% in Islington, Hackey, Tower Hamlets, Camden, Westminster, City, with Haringey, Hammersmith/Fulham, Kensington/Chelsea, Newham, Southwark, Lambeth, Newham, being over 50% without a car.

Oddly the Isles of Scilly, which are tiny, and lack a proper vehicle ferry to the mainland, has about 50% of the population with a car or van. The furthest you could actually go would be able 2 miles.

Add it to the long list of popular misconceptions about Sweden in general, most of which are held by the Swedes themselves, lol.

It’s not all of Sweden though. I live in Malmo and I haven’t felt the need to drive at all.

There are people who drive of course by the bulk of the city feels like it’s for the pedestrians and cyclists, and driving through the city itself is simply awkward.

I moved here from London. If that helps lay context.

The city council in Stockholm in the 60s had a plan to empty what they saw was the slum-center of the town, the residents of which they felt were morally degenerate, and move them out to the suburbs.

The working classes would then commute into work on public transport, while ‘fine’ office workers would take their car. The cachet attached to traveling by car has never been lost, and any attempt to curtail car use is always met with enormous resistance ever since.

Looking at pictures of Stockholm in the 40s and 50s one can see the streets were full of cyclists.

Having 2-3 major automobile (cars, trucks, busses, etc) manufacturers in a country half (or less) the population of NYC probably explains why.

New York City proper (five boroughs) has a population of 8.4 million. Sweden has a population of 10.35 million. But yes, I agree with your sentiment about having high density of manufacturing in a particular segment will probably skew your policies towards it. This might explain why Munich is so rich, but has such poor mass transit compared to Berlin.

What surprises me more is that big Japanese cities like Tokyo and Osaka chose to build enormous rail networks (above and below ground) instead of wide, fast boulevards and raised expressways.

Tokyo has an extensive network of raised expressways. They're just so extortionately priced (roughly $1/km) that nobody uses them unless they really have to, but since Tokyo is so crowded, they're jam-packed all the time anyway.

https://www.japanistry.com/shuto-expressway-explained/

I was thinking of NYC metropolitan area w/ 20 million in population :) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_metropolitan_area

Overwhelmingly, it's the Social Democrat party, not evil capitalists or car manufacturers, who are responsible for aggressively promoting cars and car centric policy and infrastructure in Sweden. This fact will grind the gears of both Swedes and misinformed Americans alike, lol.

Interesting, what sort of aggressive promotion of cars have the SD party being doing?

The history of "folkhemmet" is a topic about which entire books are written, but I'm not sure there are any that focus specifically on the car, I've appended some stuff from a quick google below.

As a result of this history, today, the social democrats (just like all other parties) pay lip service to environmentalism, curbing emissions, fighting climate change etc etc, but the truth is they rely heavily on the utterly car dependent rural, small town and suburban voters they themselves have created, and are thus constrained in how much they can really push policies that meaningfully reduce car dependency.

---

https://mhrf.se/broschyr/hjulspar

När väl vågorna efter andra världs- kriget började lägga sig blev vår in- ställning till bilen och bilismen oåterhållsamt positiv och Sverige blev det land i Europa som hade det snabbast växande antalet bilar per in- vånare. Det blev snarare det övriga samhället som fick anpassa sig efter bilen än tvärtom. Dessa hjulspår kan vi idag se lite varstans, inte minst i våra städer och tätorter som så småningom fick genomgå genomgripande förändrin- gar och i många fall till stora delar byggas om för att biltrafiken skulle fungera rationellt. I samband med det stora genom- brottet under 1950-talet förändrades synen på bilen. Man såg den inte längre som en lyxartikel, bilen kom till och med att bli en byggsten i folkhemsbygget. I skriften ”Har vi råd med bilen?” slog socialdemokraterna inför valet 1956 fast att bilen både var leksak och nyt- tosak och att den inte längre enbart var en angelägenhet för överklas- sen. Bilen kallades till och med för en demokratisk kraft...

...Man drömde om att komplettera folkhemsidyllen med en lagom stor bil – kanske en Volvo PV 444 eller en Saab 92.

---

https://www.tekniskamuseet.se/lar-dig-mer/100-innovationer/b...

Med det utbyggda vägnätet och det stadigt ökande antalet bilar började samhällsplanerarna övergå från att anpassa bilismen till det gamla samhället till att istället bygga ett bilsamhälle enligt förebilder från USA. Bilen ingick nu i ett gigantiskt tekniskt system där motorvägar och bilanpassade köpcentra med väldiga parkeringsplatser ingår. För att nå fram till bilsamhället började också Sveriges städer omvandlas — stadskvarter revs, vägar breddades, parkeringshus byggdes och städernas förorter utvidgades allt längre från stadskärnorna. Resultatet blev ett kulturellt och ekonomiskt bilberoende.

You have to remember that after the self-imposed devastation of WW2 all European countries wanted to catch up with the US. Fridges, televisions comfortable houses and yes cars- these things were available to every worker in America. Living standards equal to the US were finally reached in the 1970s.

Just to note. The abbreviation for the Social Democrats in Sweden is "S". The "SD" party is the Sweden Democrats, a socially conservative right wing nationalist party.

I thought that the social democrats have been having close ties to the industry for a very long time? Maybe not capitalists in a strict sense, but industrialists? To me it seems like it's the social democrats, the industrialists and the unions who for long time worked quite a lot together and aligned?

I think Stockholm's greatest problem is the geography. Everything going north or south in the entire region has to pass through the same few islands in central Stockholm, all options are awful. Therefore we end up with the horrific traffic on for example Hornsgatan or Sveavägen used for essentially thoroughfare when they instead should be calmed nice livable streets.

The way to solve it is by finishing the bypass (Förbifart) Stockholm and an eastern ring connection and then start greatly limiting traffic going through the center.

Completely agree outside the inner city. You can feel that it was designed in the 60s and 70s and then never touched again.