People Hate the Idea of Car-Free Cities—Until They Live in One

I love living in a car free city. I can't believe America doesn't build more cities like mine.

I feel like this is people about most things. Most people aren't very imaginative.

They're kind of stupidly in favor of how things are, but once it changes they're like this is great I don't know why we didn't do it before.

Like imagine if free public libraries didn't exist and someone tried to create them. Conservatives would shit their pants hating it.

I'm living a car-free lifestyle, despite holding a license to drive. It's more freedom than I've ever had.

"What seems to work best is a carrot-and-stick approach—creating positive reasons to take a bus or to cycle rather than just making driving harder."

I guess this is why we shouldn't only play the "fuck cars" tune but also include melodies like "we love to bike" and "public transport is fun" 😉

As French :
Amsterdam my love.

Almost no cars at all,
Pure joint, with no tobacco,
No noise,

I imagine bikes will be very useful in making US cities walkable. The streets have been built very wide to make space for cars, which would make walking more tedious, but bikes are the perfect solution to this bc they let you cover more (flat) distance with just the power of your legs.

Disneyland is a good comparison for some Americans: imagine having to drive to each ride and restaurant

Removing cars from urban areas means lower carbon emissions, less air pollution, and fewer road traffic accidents

Not to mention how much quieter it is.

Is there a FAQ about living in car free cities? For example, how do you travel to another city? What do you do if the city has high slopes making walking and biking too hard? Or how do elders deal with what other citizens would take for granted in terms of mobility?

Why would anyone hate that? To me it sounds like a utopia. I just had to buy new tires for my car @#$%*!

I've already warmed up to the idea that we'd have to force positives changes through in the dead of night. With all things said and done, watch those who'd rail against it say they've always been in favor of it.

I love living car free with my needs in walking/biking distance. However I feel like the car centric problem runs deeper than basic groceries and transit to work. I live near the gorgeous rocky mountains, but our buses only really run to the ski slopes, and only in winter. It's a true shame to be so close to nature and have my option for access restricted to a rental car. So naturally there's a plan to build the worlds largest gondola directly to resorts to address traffic. Cause god forbid we just ran more effective bus service year round.

Hating the idea..? Is this another American thing?

I don't hate the idea. I want a car free city.

This conforms to my own experience. I first got on the "anti cars" train back when I was a lib, and I got on that train precisely because I worked a job in a place where I wasn't allowed to have a car, but there was a bus that took me directly to work in the morning and everything else was walkable/busable and occasionally I would take a price-controlled taxi.

Not having to pay insurance or buy gas, not having to find parking, not having to wait in traffic, being able to read or use my phone during my commute - it's all so nice, I got converted before I had ever heard the word "urbanism" and before anyone had invented the term "fifteen minute city".

Show me a car free neighborhood and I'll show you insane real estate prices due to demand.

I dream of the day I can bike safely to my places. Right now I basically have the supermarket and two bars in distance, and then it's a mess of double lane roads and highway ramps before I get to any bike friendly paths to go further afield. It really sucks.

Don't know about other Americans, but I would love to be able to have this kind of lifestyle. It's just not realistic over here due to the infrastructure. It's not within my power to make the changes necessary for it though.

Bullshit. I wanted and haven't found one.

It's crazy to see how the city centre of Ghent (Belgium) changed when they banned non-emergency cars from people not living/working in the centre. It went from some huge carparks with a few people walking between them to large squares filled with people enjoying the city and people who live here.

Every day I bike besides the Coupure channel to the train station and in the city I work in, I walk to the office besides the Dender river. Good infrastructure is basically keeping my mental health afloat.

I lived across the street from a department store, a grocery, some pizza places, a "smoke" shop, video game stores, and everything else I could want on a normal day. It was amazing. I walked everywhere except to work. I miss living there. The main downside was that it was in Florida.

Totalled my car three years ago. Never bothered buying a new one. I save a lot of money and accepting my faith when relying on public transport has given me so much mental freedom. I take the train to work and the last part of the route is by shared bikes. Love it.

I don't live in a car-free city, but I wish I would. Fuck cars and especially fuck the people in them. I live in a pedestrian zone, but connected to the main artery through the city. You would think that labeling something as a pedestrian zone would reduce the amount of cars going through, but no, it's just a second main street. Might as well take down the ped zone sign, it gets ignored anyway, so why waste money making one?

My 2 cents: Living in a climate that gets all the seasons, a car makes things much easier in the winter for numerous reasons. Also, as someone that lives with chronic pain issues, walking or biking places on a daily is quite difficult for me, again, having a car resolves this.

I wouldn’t mind being able to give up my car and truck. But since I’m out in rural parts. It wouldn’t workout too well when it came to other needs.

I'm almost there.. The area I live in basically all my needs are within 3 miles

Article is paywalled after the first paragraph. Can anyone post the text ?

Really good article. Someone was kind enough to post the contents in the comments since the article is paywalled- its worth the read :)

We don't just want "car-free cities" for the sake of it... We want walkable cities with infrastructure and proximity to needs/wants built with pedestrians in mind

I wanna live in one 😭

Taking suggestions on cities lol!

Cool article but Wired already published this 2 years ago. Wonder why they're repubbing?

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/car-free-cities-opposition

To answer your question on why people are hesitant: they’re not worried about the cities per se, but about the mentality that will then turn its attention to the suburbs and rural areas. There are people who don’t want to live 10mins away from grocery stores because they don’t like grocery shops, or other crowdy places with people milling about. Some of us want to be hermits and live relatively secluded

All that said, I like car free cities. I don’t want denser suburbs tho

A bicycle is not good enough to transport cargo or large items and this is very important when the city is large. In a very large city, riding a bicycle is problematic. It is very easy to accidentally puncture a bicycle wheel tube and the bicycle will become a burden. A bicycle can be stolen from you more easily than a car. The bicycle does not protect you from rain and snow and is more difficult to ride on ice, mud and puddles.

Meh, I've spent time in walkable cities. Months of renting small apartments in the EU on a work trip.I still prefer cars.

I didn't think you're going to convince these people.