Calling all urbanists and sustainable environmentalists. The car-less German suburb story is the most e-mailed at the New York Times.
MOST POPULAR
Seems like the notion of living in a car-less suburb and living a car-free life has a bit of traction, at least with New York Times reading classes.
The Times follows with a nifty symposia on whether America can go car-free, with:
- Witold Rybczynski, professor of urbanism
- D.J. Waldie, author of “Holy Land”
- Dolores Hayden, professor of architecture
- Christopher B. Leinberger, real estate developer and author
- J.H. Crawford, author of “Carfree Cities”
- Marc Schlossberg, professor of public policy
Money quote from Leinberger:
“American families who are car-dependent spend 25 percent of their household income on their fleet of cars, compared with just 9 percent for transportation for those who live in walkable urban places. That potential 16 percent savings could go into improved housing (building household wealth), educating children or that most un-American of all activities, saving. “
Yowser. Now add in the housing costs at say 30-35 percent or more and what’s left over to grow the industries of the future?
Meanwhile, Planetizen links to this story on a really old car-less resort town in Michigan.
I confess to owning a car, but it’s pretty easy to go car-less in Toronto, and it’s close to America.
May 14th, 2009 at 7:38 am
That 25% figure is just stupid. If you look at areas that accomodate the carless, their real estate prices are out of sight. So it’s not an apples to apples comparison.
In another words, yeah, you can save money by being carless in Manhattan… but you’re paying a huge premium to be in Manhattan.
Anyway, do the math. The only way that a car can be 25% of your income is if you buy an inappropriate car for your income. People making $30k per year but driving BMWs and such.
May 14th, 2009 at 10:28 am
Buzzcut,
For Pete’s sake. Read the NYT article. It is about a German carless SUBURB. Again, a SUBURB. Your whole binary way of thinking (i.e. that everyone outside of Manhattan has to drive everywhere) is just plain wrong. The whole point of the Times article is that it is possible to design places that make driving less necessary (or even unneccesary) but that still permit moderate densities and reasonably-priced stand alone homes. But, I suppose your car-love and city-hate make you deaf to that argument.
May 14th, 2009 at 5:17 pm
Well yes, but it’s about a really ugly hippie commune, which the NYT describes as an “upscale community”, right next to an actually beautiful small city (Freiburg).
I think Buzzcut is on to something. Likely the supposed 16% savings would be put towards larger mortgages due to increased land costs.