Marc Lore is working on this, throwing his billions into a concept for a new city out in the desert somewhere: https://cityoftelosa.com
The team at Culdesac are trying this in a "compliant" way, they built an apartment complex with basically no parking in Tempe, AZ but are positioning it as a car-free neighborhood. I believe this is their prototype and they hope to scale it up in future projects, this is about as realistic of a path as I think anyone has.
Building for cars is required by law across North America, and getting around that is quite hard.
I'm optimistic that I can make strides closer to home. I have only ever lived in places that predated the advent of automobiles. At one time, they were very accessible via walking, biking, rail, and trolley. So, last fall, when I moved back to Providence, I made it my mission to get involved in local transit activism. It's been a great source of social and civic satisfaction, and I intend to repeat the exercise when I move again next Fall.
It feels like positive change is (slowly) happening.
The book itself is a beautiful physical object. I really wish we could do cities from scratch.
As NotJustBikes has taught me, you don't have to start from scratch. Many cities in Europe were bulldozed for the car only to regret this decision decades later. Now you have bike utopias like Amsterdam.
- Rapid gentrification. Foot/bike accessible urban infrastructure turns out to be the hottest possible commodity.
- Luxury pricing of car parking, insurance, and spacing. This seems harmless until you remember that e.g. poor people shop at box stores (which depend on a car to access) in order to bring down the cost of living. Intentionally pricing car access as a luxury good makes the poor pay for climate progress. Making cars more expensive to own and operate is an inflationary force that disproportionately afflicts the poor.
- Gentrification + Inflation = Displacement. It's almost a joke at this point -- if your neighbourhood is putting in a bike lane, and you don't own your home, you are basically watching them tidy up for the next tenant, who will be like you, but better-off, and will pay more in rent.
When I see a bike lane getting put in, I know I'll be moving in a few years. And those twee little bicycle-lane-only traffic lights? Cute, right? Those are basically tombstones for your local art scene, because that whole block is 'going Vanhattan' (portmanteau of 'Vancouver' and 'Manhattan').
Now, there's nothing inherently wrong with bikes, and I listed the above adverse outcomes as 'concomitants', and not side-effects. I don't want to suggest that the lines of causality are that clear.
But talk about 'optimizing' cities is fundamentally talk about redistributing those cities, and redistribution creates (or effaces) winners and losers.
This is a transition problem more than anything. Those are used by poor people today because the state subsidizes that way of shopping. If the state subsidizes a different way of shopping, that will become the cheap way of shopping
They are very, very real for the people experiencing them. Life itself is transitory, often on a shorter timeline than the problems encountered throughout.
No it isn't. I think you know the answer to the question "are transit riders more or less affluent than drivers on average?"
> And those twee little bicycle-lane-only traffic lights? Cute, right? Those are basically tombstones for your local art scene, because that whole block is 'going Vanhattan' (portmanteau of 'Vancouver' and 'Manhattan').
Name one place where this has occurred in Vancouver (which I am intimately familiar with).
Trains for intercity travel.
It's a painful problem to actually make it happen because cities are all about network effects (you live there because people you know are there, etc). I just think it would be very appealing to me to live in a city that is optimized for biking + walking instead of having to own a car.
If I were ever to get rich, this would be an area I'd throw funding at to figure out. Is anybody aware of any research in this area?