Bullshit urban sprawl

While, of course, decarbonizing means that most future vehicles will someday be electric, this is inevitable if we are to depreciate fossil fuels, the main problem with transportation is NOT that cars burn gas. Cars are vastly more efficient and less polluting than they were when I was born.

No, the main problem with cars is that we design everything around and for cars, instead of around and for people. And because of this, there is no way for the advent of electric cars to solve any of the problems caused by cars and car-centric urban design. And the main problem there is that this focus on cars is utterly unsustainable and is bankrupting cities all over North America.

To fix those problems we have to change the way we do urbanism. We need to redevelop and restore our traditional dense walkable urban centres and rebuild out the transit that we pulled up in the 50s and 60s as a subsidy to the auto industry.

And this is not in any sense optional. The current status-quo of car-dependent urban sprawl is not just awful in that it lays waste to all our productive land. That kind of development is a net financial loss to cities and has to be effectively subsidized by older, denser development, typically where poorer people live, in order to exist. And that is a battle many many cities, particularly in the US are losing badly. Cars are bankrupting them.

And we do not need to discuss if this is true. It is just sums on spreadsheets. Numerical data that cannot be wished or beliefed away.

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Dave

I am an experienced freelance graphic artist and sometime canoeist. I feel strongly about the quality of professional work and like sitting by a remote lake on a sun-warmed rock.

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