Would you want to live in a carfree city?

I don’t think I’d want to live in a carfree city, but perhaps an electric car city =)

I would.

Sounds great.

I would so love this!

Yes!

I live a car-free life as it is, but I’d love to live in a place that was truly safe to bike in. Unless one’s a daredevil, I really wouldn’t call NYC that place.

I think this is the reason many people in other countries are so much healthier—more walking as transportation, and taking the stairs in buildings.

lmao… I kept reading it as CAREfree and was like “I don’t get it.”

Yes. i.e.: Venice
I am not a fan of cars. Especially driving through the streets of Boston. It always seems like the streets are too small and we are about to just hit something. I hate the feeling.

It’s coming wether one likes it or not. I think in roughly 100 years the “automobile” as we know it will be a dying breed, as it is unsustainable on so many different levels.

Yes. I have lived in a large city with good public transportation without a car. It was very workable.

I am gonna say no guys. I love driving around! However, I am sure they will come up with ways to make automobiles greener. I don’t see car companies going away and I don’t see people’s passion for cars going away either.

I’ve visited places with no cars; on a much smaller scale. Places like Mackinac Island (MI), Bald Head Island (NC), Brugge(Belgium),Catalina (CA), Daufuskie Is.(SC) are all “no car” locations. It’s a beautiful thing to not have cars around – for many reasons. Although I love the convenience of my car when I’m home.

sure, but there would have to be an extremely good bus service (or trams or something) plus exceptions for when you want to move stuff: for example you might not be allowed to own a car, but there’d be vans or something for hire, so that you could move heavy things around, maybe even some sort of system for people carrying huge bags of shopping.

I remember when Prague was car free (simlpy because no one could afford a car) and it was great. I could get home (on the outskirts of the city) in 15mins, and never felt the need to have a car.

Having said that, all these researchers are assuming that cars are only used by people such as myself: young, healthy, with perhaps a couple of bags of shopping at most. They do not take into consideration people who are too old to even walk to the bus stop, single mothers, businessmen whose jobs require them to move around the city all the time, etc. I think a city like that would need to be really well planned. Otherwise, you end up with something like Athens, where they tried to ban cars in the 80s, but ended up making so many exceptions that it made no sense. And then thought of a new, brilliant, extremely intelligent method to reduce them…which actually doubled cars in the centre within a couple of years.

American urban planning, or lack of it, is based upon a car culture. In other cities, most of what you need to sustain your life is around you, within walking distance. Most stores that require larger purchases will deliver. I believe in a carfree lifestyle people are better bonded to their community, because they interact with their neighbors, are healthier, because of purchasing less processed foods, and getting more exercise, and are able to live more simply.

I am so there!

If the city is going to be “car-free” the subway system has to be advanced and huge. For instance, Boston can technically be car-free but there are still parts of Boston (like where I live in Brighton) where the subways don’t run and it’s three miles to walk to one. That’s ridiculous.

In Paris, however, everywhere in the city is walking distance to a subway station and a bus line and there are electronic monitors in subway stations that tell you how many minutes away the first train AND the second trains are. It’s just incomparably nicer.

that sounds lovely. i haven’t checked out the link yet, but the only problem i can even think of really is not being able to travel out of city. but i’m sure there’s a solution to that, i’m just rattling off a half-assed answer because prior to clicking on this i thought this said “would you want to live in a carefree city?” and that’s what i was about to answer. ;p

If all the major cities in the US were care CAR-free would we, as a nation, be thinner? I’d like to think so.

I would love that! Cars are such a waste of money and insurance is an incredible government backed scam. There would be lots of tweaking to make the city car-free but I would like to be a part of it. How would someone go to the grocery store and get all that crap on a mass transit system. I just bought a 52’ TV, how the hell would I get that home? They would have to figure out how to make up for the revenue generated by DUI’s too.

@Sooner_Coolkat You make a good point about the grocery shopping. I will have to check my copy of the book to see what Crawford said about such things. I am sure he did not overlook it.

I don’t know how much revenue is generated by DUIs, but I think we would be able to get along without it.

I would live there in a second if it was in a general geographic area where I wanted to be. There are some car-free cities in the world already. A town in Switzerland, (not sure the name) as well as somewhere in asia but I can’t remember exactly where….India or Pakistan?

VVRROOOOOOOM VROOOM!

I would not like to live in a car-free city. There are times when you really need a vehicle to transport things. How would retailers get their goods to stores without cars or trucks?

I would like to live in a city that has a good public transportation system, so that I don’t HAVE to use my car every day. And I definitely would like to see more hybrid vehicles and electric vehicles.

The plan calls for using a subway system for moving goods in the city in addition to a subway for moving people. It is kind of ingenious

A car free city sounds great in an ideal world, but as someone has already mentioned it could make life very difficult for some people. I would have to set off for work nearly 1 and 1/2 hours sooner than I do now if I didn’t have a car and relied on public transport. I survived for 2 years without a car when my daughter was younger, we biked and walked everywhere, but I had the luxury of not having to work and my journeys were only short or for pleasure. I admit I used my husbands car for shopping though!!

@sakura—- the difference is that in a car free city, the public transport would be EFFICIENT, so it probably wouldn’t take you that long. The city would be designed so that people could easily get to their place of business…..

Sounds like a good idea then, But who would finance all the changes? Here in the UK because Manchester voted against congestion charges they were denied upgrades on a very delapadated tram and railway system. It would have to be thought about very carefully especially for people like travelling salesmen, who are passing through, out of town deliveries, farmers etc… Ideal world maybe? The idea needs some serious thought behind it, and some serious investment from somewhere…