www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2007-04-08-1.html
Rhinoceros Times, Greensboro, NC By Orson Scott Card April 8, 2007 Life Without Cars Aren't cars great? In the last sixty years, we've built such a great network of roads and service stations and restaurants that whenever you feel like it, you can get into your car and drive and drive and drive and ... Between motels and gas prices and all, it's cheaper anyway, when you've got any real distance to travel. Oh, yeah -- to commute to work, because there are no trains any more, no streetcars, the buses only run once an hour and they don't go anywhere near home or work, and what if I have to work late? Kids go to lessons, practices, games, movies, parties, play dates. And, of course, to the gas station to fill up for the next day's driving. Anything we want to do, anywhere we want to go, we have to get into the car. Thank heaven for the Internet, so we can order stuff without having to find a parking place. Our life regulated by stripes marking the parking places. Shopping carts so we can make the long trek back to the far end of the parking lot and fill the back of our SUV with stuff we had to drive to get. On the weekend, drive somewhere to get away from it all -- and park the car between the same white lines we left behind at every store back home. Cars were fun, but people in the city didn't actually need them. There were streetcars and subways and elevated railways in the big cities; Get away from the crowds, to a place where we could have estates with vast lawns and woods like the rich people. None of these houses butting right up against the sidewalk -- we'd have lawns and trees! Meanwhile, the government set about boosting the automobile industry by building a vast network of roads. Gradually, the purpose of local government (besides ruining education, of course) was to redesign our cities so that cars could get everywhere and do everything. Can't do it unless you comply with the parking requirements. Stores have to be separated from each other, set far back from the street, and supplied with vast stretches of parking places. And while we're zoning, let's protect property values by making sure that neighborhoods consist of houses of comparable value and lot-size. And let's make sure everybody gets quiet streets and cul-de-sacs, so we'll wind the streets around until you can't actually tell where you are or how neighborhoods fit together. Just island neighborhoods in splendid isolation, with roads so convoluted that half our driving is just to get out of the island and onto a road that goes somewhere. You just walk around looking at other people's yards and houses. The only people you see are the other walkers -- or the yard guys working on other people's lawns and shrubs. You can see it from where you are, but please don't be stupid and try to walk there. You have to walk all the way out to the street -- or cut through prickly hedges or climb fences. Lots of parking and strict rules about turn lanes and such. But if you just want to walk from store to store, unless they're in the same shopping complex, you can't get there. Some people hate the idea of walking on their errands, breathing all that ... Some people want to live on an island and hardly see anybody except on television. Some people want to drive to work, every day, the same route, the same parking hassles, hours and hours and hours of stepping on the gas, the brake, the gas, flipping the signal, turning the wheel. There's Another Way But here and there, a new generation of planners are recreating what we once had, and threw away. Homes that provide access for pedestrians to get somewhere quickly and actually do something without ever having to get into a car. I recently read a book called Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream. The authors (Andrews Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and Jeff Speck) lay down the principles of the life many of us -- maybe most of us -- wish we were living. A life that isn't lived inside these tiny moving hovels we call cars. When people are parked at the curb, cars can't pass each other going both ways. So cars go very slowly and the drivers are constantly alert. In fact, pedestrians and bikers and skaters act like they own the street. Alleys hold the garbage cans and the garages or parking places so the street stays clean. Nobody lives more than three short blocks from a bus stop or other public transportation, and because so many people use public transit, the buses come frequently; you never wait more than fifteen minutes during the peak times. During that waiting time, or while riding the bus or train, people read or listen to recordings or -- get this -- talk to each other. People meet their neighbors because they're not all locked inside metal-and-plastic shacks moving down the street. You pass each other going to and from schools and stores and work. There are multi-family dwellings, there are apartments over the stores. In fact, the neighborhood is designed so that people from every walk of life (except, of course, the very rich, whom nobody likes anyway) see each other and even talk to each other every day. What happens to property values in small-yard, narrow-street, pedestrian-oriented, mixed-use neighborhoods like this? spending three days in a row without getting in your car one time, not because it's in the shop and you're trapped at home, but because you live in a town, a village, a neighborhood that isn't a desert island with yards. You live in the neighborhood of Dandelion Wine and you don't have to spend your days steering between white lines. We redesigned our living patterns and got rid of public transportation so that we could boost the American automobile industry. Now we are forced to pay huge taxes to Iran, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and other oil-producing countries -- and we're buying half our cars from Japan and Germany and Korea. Even if you don't want to live in the neighborhood I described, there are compelling reasons for us to cut way back on the number of hours we spend on the road in cars: 1 Stop Funding Our Enemies. As long as we're burning oil to buy groceries that used to be in the corner store and to take the kids to games and lessons that used to take place in neighborhoods and to get to work that we used to get to by bus or train, there's going to be a vast pool of oil money from which the sponsors of terrorism can draw. If you cut your driving hours in half, how much time would you get back every day, to use on things you want to do? Even if all you want to do is veg out in front of the television, that's your choice. For a lot of us, though, that would be an hour to spend with spouse and children. Going out to eat, or cooking a real sit-down meal at home. And this is a war in which the victims are children, teenagers, elderly people, adults in their prime. Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for people from 4 through 33 years old. If the American people drove only half the number of miles every year, it's reasonable to assume that the death rate would also be cut in half. People don't die randomly -- they die because of drunks, reckless teenagers, sleepy drivers, stressed-out drivers in a rage, and drivers so desperate not to be driving that they're trying to do something else at the same time. If we drove half the number of hours, the quality of our driving would likely improve. If our kids could get somewhere without cars, we could save their lives by not letting them drive when they're still so immature they endanger themselves and everyone else. If all drinkers walked to and from the bar, it would save 16,000 lives a year from alcohol-caused accidents. How many of you personally knew someone who died in a car crash? How many of you have friends or family members whose lives were torn apart by a traffic death or deaths? Why do we continue to allow our governments to require businesses and builders to follow rules that force us to spend our lives in cars? Not that anyone cares -- if we worried about taxing the poor, we wouldn't have government lotteries -- but remember that because we design our cities so that you can't function without owning at le...
|
http://csua.com/feed/