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I think its the other way around. The car-oriented city was a mid 20th century fad starting from the end of WW2. Dense cities with "real" walkable cores have been build since the start of civilization. Look at how dense some of the old historic cities are anywhere in the world.. from Europe to China to Middle East. Its not just about convenience or preference - its about energy efficiency, land use efficiency/conservation, and effectiveness as a city. You can only defy the laws of nature for so long with unstastainable development and subsidies, but eventually all of those shenanigans are going to catch up.
If that's case, than that's a problem for every city. No city(like Dweebo said earlier) is really sustainable.
Back when I was younger in the 80s and 90s, LA was largely considered to be a more exciting, dynamic, hip city than Chicago. Even without all the public transportation improvements in LA, and other great attractions in addition to everything else built in the last 20 years (IE: Getty Center) so many on online forums, think Chicago is a "real city", a better, or more "urban city"
I think what it all comes down to is basically centrally located convenience. Yes, public transportation is very important, absolutely, but do you think its simply trendy in the 2000s to simply be so anti-car?
People were no so anti-driving as they were 15-20 years ago as they are now. Do you think that it is more of a novelty to judge cities based on their public transportation and centralization than what the city and surrounding area actually have to see and do? I mean seriously.
I don't want this to turn into another LA versus Chicago thread. But the only thing I can think of, is that people are simply so extremely pro centralized and anti-driving to the extreme.
It does seem in the world outside of online forums, its not nearly so intense, but even still, people seem to feel as if they have to drive somewhere its not worth going to.
No. 10 years from now it will more anti car than it is now. And 10 years after that it will be more anti car than it will be 10 from now... you get the idea.
people are realizing what a dependence on automobiles have done to us, not just financially but environmentally.
unlike a lot of people though, i don't think cars will ever die out. even as their practical use wanes, the automobile provides more than that. there is something about owning a car that is very freeing and very appealing. the feeling that i can go anywhere. it's nice and people will never stop wanting that feeling. there will always be cars, there will always be roads and highways.
Now those cars may look a lot different then they do now and they likely won't use gasoline, but they will still exist.
But people are beginning to realize how public transportation is just so many thousands of times more efficient and the demand for better, cleaner, and more accessible public transportation will only rise in the coming decades.
And i'm just talking about local transportation but long distance travel especially. The ability to safely and cheaply and without the hassle of flying transport people from philadelphia to new york in half an hour is pretty amazing, and by all accounts it will exist within the next 20 years.
combine that with the renewed desire in healthy living that is resulting in far more people biking and walking, and you can understand why people are moving away from the car as their primary means of transportation.
so no, i don't think it's a fad, i think it's here to stay.
but i also don't think it will go as far as some say. cars will always exist, especially in rural areas where they will continue to be a necessity. in cities though cars will become more and more scarce over the upcoming decades.
I have no problem with cars. If I lived in New York, I would think about owning a car. The problem I have with cars is how you need it to do.every.little.thing.you.need.to.do. If I had a car, I would use it occasionally. I don't need a car to go to the corner store, the coffee shop, the bookstore, the museum, pick up a few groceries. You pretty need a car in the post ww2 suburbs and it's annoying.
If that's case, than that's a problem for every city. No city(like Dweebo said earlier) is really sustainable.
Cities actually become more sustainable than even villages after a certain point of population density of the country (not talking about the suburbs since its the most unstainable form of living). Yes, this even includes the fact that you have to expend energy to bring food, etc from the countryside to the city. This has to do with many factors, but the main ones are:
- as the population density increases, people start to occupy fertile land with housing and start to farm inefficient farmland. This is why farm yields in Africa are so poor - too many people live in fertile land and can't farm it. A city consentrates all of those people in a relatively small area and frees up the rest of the land for farmland and nature. People start farming the most fertile land and thus actually decrease the amount of land needed for agriculture per capita. We can see these examples in developing countries right now where there is a large flood of people into the cities and the villages become ghost towns and are getting reclaimed by nature/forests.
- the rate of innovation does not increase linearly. A city like NYC with 8 million people has much higher GDP and rate of innovations coming out of it compared to 8 million worth of people living in villages and small towns somewhere in the Midwest. This has nothing to do with the "quality" of people from villages or small towns, but everything to do with density. This effect is actually tracable all around the globe and is due to a fact that people are much more exposed to other people in the city. With greater networking, sharing of ideas, and diversity of experiences comes higher amount of innovation and creative thinking. This is why civilizations = cities.
For better understanding of these issues I recommend reading Stewart Brand.
One thing I like about cities that have great transportation and vibrant downtowns is that you have real options as far as work, housing, entertainment etc.
Location: Pittsburgh (via Chicago, via Pittsburgh)
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It is by no means a fad. It also depends on your preference. Relying on a car in Houston is much easier than relying on a car in NYC. Europe had it right long ago with their impressive public transit systems. We need to continue to follow suit.
No. Europe's basically always been doing it this way, so it comes off as typical self-absorbed American ignorance to call it a fad.
There is a real cultural split here, but the people that fall on the side of the European way of thinking aren't going to suddenly go back to the other side in four years because it's a fad. Home brewing is a fad. Fixed-gear bikes are a fad. Having the geographical center of a city also be its social and intellectual center, instead of a warehouse for the poor and immoral, is anything but a fad.
Don't get me wrong, I loathe the snobbery some people of the European mentality have. I also understand the American suburban mentality and although it's not for me, I would never call it a fad. So yeah, neither one is a fad.
Not to quibble much with an excellent post, but home brewing is not a fad. It falls under the same category as gardening, knitting, and other hobbies that bring the concept of local solution for local need. I've been brewing beer for fifteen years, it's a way of life.
No. 10 years from now it will more anti car than it is now. And 10 years after that it will be more anti car than it will be 10 from now... you get the idea.
people are realizing what a dependence on automobiles have done to us, not just financially but environmentally.
unlike a lot of people though, i don't think cars will ever die out. even as their practical use wanes, the automobile provides more than that. there is something about owning a car that is very freeing and very appealing. the feeling that i can go anywhere. it's nice and people will never stop wanting that feeling. there will always be cars, there will always be roads and highways.
Now those cars may look a lot different then they do now and they likely won't use gasoline, but they will still exist.
But people are beginning to realize how public transportation is just so many thousands of times more efficient and the demand for better, cleaner, and more accessible public transportation will only rise in the coming decades.
And i'm just talking about local transportation but long distance travel especially. The ability to safely and cheaply and without the hassle of flying transport people from philadelphia to new york in half an hour is pretty amazing, and by all accounts it will exist within the next 20 years.
combine that with the renewed desire in healthy living that is resulting in far more people biking and walking, and you can understand why people are moving away from the car as their primary means of transportation.
so no, i don't think it's a fad, i think it's here to stay.
but i also don't think it will go as far as some say. cars will always exist, especially in rural areas where they will continue to be a necessity. in cities though cars will become more and more scarce over the upcoming decades.
Again, I'm not saying that we should stop making our cities more sustainable. I'm really talking about "Chicago is better than LA period because of its downtown, and easier to live without a car"
If trains, subways are running late at night with one or two people per car, is that really more sustainable than driving a smart car or electric car?
And then theres walkability. Like when people talk about cities not being walkable, and people put down LA. When I go to LA, yes walkable areas have larger tracts of non-walkable areas, and not all the attractions are accessible by light rail yet, but I walked aroud Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, Pasadena, Hollywood, El Pueblo in downtown and loved it.
A city can always improve its public transportation.
A city like Chicago may be very centralized, but its outer neighborhoods and suburbs have comparatively little to nothing of interests.
In fact I think because you have office complexes/business centers/small downtowns every five miles in the LA/Orange county area one may find it actually easiers and to live closer to work, than in Chicago, where everything is comparatively concentrated in a freaking huge downtown, with chunks of generic midwest urban-suburban landscapes outside of there.
Don't get me wrong, I live in Oak Park, eight miles west of downtown chicago , and love it, its an early charming suburb.
Thats what I'm saying.
I suppose this is a little bit of LA versus Chicago. Its still trying to wrap my head around the idea that Chicago is more of a "real city" or even worse "has more culture" than LA.
Again, I'm not saying that we should stop making our cities more sustainable. I'm really talking about "Chicago is better than LA period because of its downtown, and easier to live without a car"
If trains, subways are running late at night with one or two people per car, is that really more sustainable than driving a smart car or electric car?
And then theres walkability. Like when people talk about cities not being walkable, and people put down LA. When I go to LA, yes walkable areas have larger tracts of non-walkable areas, and not all the attractions are accessible by light rail yet, but I walked aroud Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, Pasadena, Hollywood, El Pueblo in downtown and loved it.
A city can always improve its public transportation.
A city like Chicago may be very centralized, but its outer neighborhoods and suburbs have comparatively little to nothing of interests.
In fact I think because you have office complexes/business centers/small downtowns every five miles in the LA/Orange county area one may find it actually easiers and to live closer to work, than in Chicago, where everything is comparatively concentrated in a freaking huge downtown, with chunks of generic midwest urban-suburban landscapes outside of there.
Don't get me wrong, I live in Oak Park, eight miles west of downtown chicago , and love it, its an early charming suburb.
Thats what I'm saying.
I suppose this is a little bit of LA versus Chicago. Its still trying to wrap my head around the idea that Chicago is more of a "real city" or even worse "has more culture" than LA.
well then in that sense no. chicago is not better than la because it has better public transportation and it is more walkable.
public transportation and walk-ability are simply aspects of what makes a city good. most would argue they're very important aspects, but none the less there is more that goes into it than that.
cleveland has a metro and is more walkable than los angeles but no one is saying that cleveland is better than la.
they're just factors in deciding which city is better.
but yes a lot of people think that due to many things including it's walk ability and public transportation that chicago is a better city than LA, i count myself among them. that's not to say you can't disagree though.
Everyone here seems to be forgetting about technology. All we need are all-electric cars (which seems to be the direction the auto industry is taking) and all of our electricity to come from sustainable sources such as solar, wind, hydroelectric, etc. Once that happens, car culture will be sustainable as far as greenhouse gasses are concerned.
Land use is another issue. In the immediate future, we should be concerned about farmland being eaten up by suburbs and roads being clogged. Someday way down the line when we have flying cars (Terrafugia - Transition®, the Roadable Light Sport Aircraft : Home) zipping us around in a matter of minutes, sprawl will become all but uncontrollable. When the average New Yorker could live in say White Plains but be in Manhattan in 5 minutes via a flying car, no part of rural America will be safe.
Flash forward even further when we just teleport places (see: Teleportation Is Real – But Don't Try It at Home - TIME), there will be no such thing as rural. Over population will be rampant but by that point we will probably be colonizing Mars so who cares?
Seriously though, most likely cities will for the most part, continue to develop as they are doing now. Some changes might occur such as an infill spurt, or a little jump in sprawl, but nothing major.
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