Cities, Cars, and our own Environment
Here’s another one of my final papers, dealing with the role of private cars in cities. A lot of the ideas I’ve expressed in previous posts, sometimes verbatim, so I’ll stick it behind a cut. Brain vomit away.
Cities, Cars, and our own Environment
Anthropology 116 Final Paper
Jonathan Davis
In Solutions to Social Problems: Lessons From Other Societies, two of the fourteen sections stand out to me as being highly inter-related. An interest in environmental issues, social concernsc and sustainability as applied to the development of urban space led me to choose Section 11: Cities and Section 12: Environment. I believe that the application of a sustainable and holistic world-view to city-planning is not only advantageous, but is becoming more and more necessary. While both of these two topics are very broad, the articles in Solutions to Social Problems focus on specific examples of ways in which European nations have carefully applied strategies and designs to mitigate problems related to these topics.
A recurring focus in both sections was the questioning of the role and merit of the automobile as a central form of transportation. The article How Information Technology Fixed London’s Traffic Woes by Malcolm Wheatley describes the design and implementation of an electronic toll system in central London designed to reduce traffic while cutting back on harmful effects of congestion like pollution. Studies of congestion in London revealed that 85 percent of the people entering the central area did so utilizing public transportation. Motorists, being in the minority, would be providing funding to benefit all Londoners with the implementation of the toll system.
Dispite the large percentage of people entering central London via alternative means of transportation, such as public transit, on bike, or as pedestrians, there still remains a large number (over 150,000 every morning) who feel it is necessary to drive a private car. This stands testament to the fact that much of city-planning, especially in modern designs, is focused on the presence of the private car. In addition, the continued exodus of from central cities to suburbs and the resultant explosion of urban sprawl brings with it an increasing number of commuters, many of whom choose to travel by private car.
Living out of range of easy public transportation coupled with the desire for personal control of transportation leads many to believe that the only viable form of transportation is the private car. As central cities face higher congestion, even those who live within the dense city centers can feel as though having their own car is the only way to get around. If the routes between residential and commercial areas are designed primarily to serve cars the denizens will defer to that mode of transportation, even for shorter trips that could easily be made on foot or by bike.
By decreasing automotive congestion in central London, the city was able to not only reduce traffic an pollution, but to improve the situation for non-motorists by making their environment more conducive to safe and easy alternative transportation. By usuing the money collected from the automated tolls to fund other civic projects to benefit all Londoners, they have created a virtuous cycle.
In the article New Lessons from the Old World: The European Model for Falling in Love with Your Hometown, Jay Walljasper extols the value of vital and functional cities. By examining the long-standing civic successes of European cities, it is revealed that many exhibit a rich and lively public life and street culture, characteristics that feel lacking in many motorist-minded American cities. Cities like Amsterdam, Paris, Luxembourg, Freiburg, and Copenhagen all display a regional pride, and their citizens highly value their cities’ historical significance and modern cosmopolitan culture.
Some of the tactics used to vitalize these urban spaces include the compacting of residential developments, renewing neighborhoods as opposed to rebuilding, and the elimination of most automobiles from city centers. In Paris, nationalized development rights reign in “American-style” sprawl, and dense neighborhoods within and out of the city promote strong community identity, more efficient use of space, and alternative modes of transportation.
Existing neighborhoods are understood to have intrinsic value, and planners in Copenhagen understand that current residents may feel threatened by the increased property values brought about by new developments. As a result of this concern, funds are allocated to restore and renew current residential areas even though it may cost more than demolishing and building anew. These practices have proven that urban revitalization doesn’t always mean gentrification.
Narrower lanes for traffic, open squares, and prolific bike lanes all promote the role of central cities as “places for people”, instead of merely functioning as “conduits for cars”. Studying these efforts to calm and reduce traffic, it is important to recognize that many have mutual benefits for communities and neighborhoods as well. By providing open public spaces and an environment that discourages the private car, citizens find more opportunities to explore, enhance, and interact with their local environment.
In Section 12: Environment, Simon Romero’s article The $6.66-a-Gallon Solution discusses ways in which Norway, the third-largest exporter of oil, has managed to effect environmental benefits including a reduction in per-capita fuel consumption, decreased car ownership, production of more efficient vehicles, and reduction in emissions of greenhouse gasses. Taken in the context of the United States’ disproportionate energy use, accounting for more than a quarter of the world’s energy usage while representing less than a twentieth of the population, Norway’s fuel policies fly in the face of Western practice.
Despite the opposition of a vocal minority, the high taxation of the sale, ownership, and fuel of automobiles provides Norway with funding for large socially beneficial projects. By treating the private car as a milk-cow, Norway also manages to remain free of foreign debt and able to support its independence of the European Union. Lower car ownership and more expensive fuel also serve to reduce and calm traffic in densely populated areas.
Randy Cohen, author of New York Times Magazine column The Ethicist, recently appeared in a short video interview with Mark Gorton, of StreetFilms and The Open Planning Project, to discuss transportation ethics. Focusing on transportation in New York City, Cohen’s insights are easily applied to other large cities. Cohen argues that the private car undermines the happiness, health, and economic life of New Yorkers. While on a cultural, national, and social level we are capable of making wise policy choices, Cohen predicts that leaving decisions about the ethics of transportation to the individual will result in the continued purchase and usage of inappropriately large and inefficient vehicles, despite higher costs and the risk of increased harm to others in a collision.
Using a private car for daily transportation within a city like New York, especially when such excellent public transit and alternative modes of transportation exits, is selfish and morally indefensible, Cohen posits. What results is a city in which the inhabitants eventually cease to notice the myriad of ways in which the personal car undermines ordinary happiness.
One of the key points made by Mark Gorton is that the biggest problem is that of the city you can’t see. Gorton suggests that there is a massive capacity for improvement in the quality of life in the city, in the happiness of it denizens, in the promotion of street life and a unique cultural identity of city, and that it is tragic to be in a state of affairs where such important measures are not being maximized and where the failure to do so is so hidden from view. Gorton describes a winter in which the snow stopped almost all automotive traffic, and yet people took to the streets and experienced regularly congested areas in a new and revitalizing way; he recalls neighborhood parties and outdoor gatherings the night of the city-wide blackout when it became unsafe to drive. The Gorton presents is that there is an untapped potential for innately valuable human interaction that isn’t seen because of a current pernicious status quo.
The concept of “Negawatt Power”, as coined by Amory Lovins, can be applied metaphorically to this kind of situation. In terms of electrical energy production, negawatts are “generated” by increasing the efficiency of energy production, transmission, or consumption. Used as a measurement of reduced energy demand, negawatts increase the market supply of energy to combat growing demand, without the need for increased conventional energy generation capacity.
The auto-centric city discussed by Gorton and Cohen is highly inefficient at serving one of it’s primary purposes, which is to provide for meaningful human interaction. Instead of attempting to engender happiness through the accumulation of more stuff, via provisions for unrestrained consumerism and car-culture, those who design cities would do well to consider ways to improve the efficiency of the current paradigm.
A clear example of this is the intelligent application of bike lanes, pedestrian paths, and public transportation, along with judiciously locating residential and commercial areas to encourage the development of strong neighborhood ties. If few destinations are within easy walking range, and as a result private transportation is a must, something is wrong. By increasing the “walkability” of a living space the efficiency of daily life can be improved, costs to the environment reduced, and community fostered. This is the “generation” of social negawatts.
Another example of social negawatts can be drawn from three books published by Cristopher Alexander in the 1970’s. The Timeless Way of Building is Alexander’s account of an architectural methodology in which the occupants of a space draw the design from within themselves to form a democratic and decidedly human-built environment. In A Pattern Language Alexander defines the terms or “patterns” that constitute the building blocks and guiding principles of his method. The Oregon Experiment takes the previous two books and documents the application of their ideas upon the expansion of the campus at University of Oregon.
The design philosophy presented by Alexander is one that greatly enhances the ability of our environments to nourish and sustain meaningful human interactions. Designs like these don’t reduce the demand for happiness, they don’t themselves produce happiness, they instead more effectively allow for for the interaction of citizens in a way that elevates and encourages human interaction.
By reconsidering the way living spaces are designed and maintained, specifically in the way we cast the role of the private car in densely populated areas, it is possible to greatly improve the livability of a space, along with the quality of life of its inhabitants. To do so we must recognize the many ways in which decisions about our everyday lives shape our environment and effect the lives of our fellow citizens. Transportation is one area in which the potential exists to effect vast changes. By eliminating or greatly reducing the use of the private car, vast social, economic, environmental, and interpersonal benefits can be realized.