Car culture has decreased the walkability in cities and cheapened life in general. Until architects and planners start designing for people again, urban sprawl and all its atrocities will continue to flourish. 

Once an easy stroll across town has turned into a perilous mission not taken on by many pedestrians.  Furthermore, car drivers frustrated with constant traffic have developed road rage, which doesn’t stop at just other drivers.  There have been many accounts of drivers that run bicyclists off the road or even kill them.  Pedestrians are not safe either – all too many times one can hear cars speed up at intersections in order to claim their space.  Remember, it is the pedestrian that has the right-of-way. 

A walkable, livable community that does not depend on the personal automobile for everything would save residents a lot of money.  Car insurance, maintenance, gas, the car itself all have their price.  In the history of the automobile only once did the trend of owning and buying newer cars actually come to a halt.  The Great Depression in the 1930’s would seem to be an obvious answer however this is not the case.  Even when people could not afford to live and eat, statistics show that families owned at least one car.  Often, people drove to the food lines.  Only during World War II did the US as a whole move towards conservation.  For a little bit over two years, public transportation, car-pooling, and walking dominated over the single driver.  The trend was that it was unpatriotic to be wasteful.  After the war it became unpatriotic not to be wasteful. 
 

The car as a status symbol has a lot to do with why people feel they have to own a car.  Non-car drivers are often looked down upon.  Affording a car is almost just as important as affording food and shelter.  In a community based around the human scale people would not need cars to do the everyday tasks. 

“The saying goes that a good society takes care of its people at the three most critical times in the human cycle: in the dawn of life, in the darkness of life, and in the twilight of life.  A car based society cripples all three – those in the dawn of life, the young; those in the darkness of life, the disabled; and those in the twilight of life, the elderly.”  (53)

Areas where expressways cut through cities usually isolate the residents of that immediate area.  Generally, expressways are built where the community is poor which results in further impoverishing the community.  Owning a car sometimes determines whether or not people can find work. 

“Distance and spatial segregation – here housing, there stores, elsewhere work – make every trip a separate car trip to a separate place.”  (21)

Car Independent Solutions

3D’s: Density, Designation, & Design

1) Density – Enough people living in an 8 to 10 minute walk of public transportation to sustain mass transit.

2) Designation – Changing land use designations and codes that forbid mixed neighborhoods.  Multipurpose codes would allow restaurants, day care, shops, etc. 
to be mixed with housing would enliven the streets.

3) Design – Designing for the human scale and not the car.  Narrower streets, more trees, pleasant paths, all allow for a more livable, walkable, and strollable community.
 

Towns that are more walkable reduce the dependence on automobiles which has obvious benefits on the environment, also.

Codes need to be adjusted to benefit livable and walkable cities instead of the current system which segregates all building types and functions.

Drive-ins, strip malls, and parking in front of buildings should not be permitted.
 

Widening streets often ends up causing more traffic, yet engineers design for wider roads to alleviate congestion.

“We’re only going up to ten lanes and no further."
 -Florida’s Secretary of Transportation

Wider streets allow for traffic to flow at faster speeds which endangers pedestrians and bicyclists.
Often, wider streets bottleneck into towns causing more traffic which deters livability.