Self-driving cars were the focus of a conference this month on The Future of the Car, but a sharply different view questions the wisdom and viability of this technological path. Urban designer Kit McCullough suggested they could be a desperate response of the auto industry to declining sales, and argued an alternative direction would help cities deal with their growing social, economic and financial crises.
Her perspective appears timely for Hamiltonians embroiled in angry transportation debates about LRT, bus-only lanes, one-way streets and bike lanes while the city cobbles together a new 25-year vision. McCullough also suggests a different way to address the city’s three billion dollar backlog in the maintenance of roads and other municipal infrastructure – a problem shared by cities across the continent.
She starts with well-documented trends, particularly among younger people, to driving less and making more use of alternatives to vehicle ownership from Uber to car-sharing to cycling. This has the automobile industry worried and McCullough argues that’s why we are hearing so much about the future car.
“You don’t like driving? We’ll build cars that drive themselves. You’d rather be doing other things or be on-line? We’ll give you cars that function as boxes for entertainment systems.”
But that response is off the mark in McCullough’s view because it assumes “that mobility trumps everything” and ignores the real purpose of travel “to give us access to places that bring people together and provide us with the services and activities that we need in our lives.” Transportation is a means to an end, not an end in itself.
“So if you start to think about the user of transportation in terms of accessibility, now we’re talking about the user of the city,” explains McCullough. “And our true objective is to create user-friendly cities – cities that have rich destinations and services in close proximity, easy to get to and a quality public realm where you can access these destinations.”
Starting with the objective of providing for cars doesn’t create that kind of city and it is now recognized as actually creating unhealthy neighbourhoods. The US Surgeon General declared this month that such cities are hazardous to our health. Noting that “one out of every two U.S. adults is living with a chronic disease, such as heart disease, cancer, or diabetes,” his September 15 Call to Action stresses promotion and support for much more physical activity.
“Make walking a national priority; design communities that make it safe and easy to walk for people of all ages and abilities; promote programs and policies to support walking where people live, learn, work, and play; provide information to encourage walking and improve walkability; and fill surveillance, research, and evaluation gaps related to walking and walkability. Action by multiple sectors of society, as well as by families and individuals, will be needed to achieve these goals.”
McCullough agrees that building cities around the automobile has made them unsafe, uncomfortable and inaccessible, and argues we should move strongly to change that so we can have more city.
“All that space in our cities that’s currently occupied by cars driving and parking, some of that may be transformed to places, to destinations, activities that we want to get to – again in closer proximity, more accessible.”
This slashes spending on building and widening roads, and shifts portions of existing ones to uses that reduce major maintenance costs, as well as freeing up valuable real estate.
“All those parking lots and garages that currently deaden our downtowns, we can think about replacing them with things like exciting mixed-use development and places that create economic value – activities, destinations, and in closer proximity.”
McCullough notes that “the most beloved places” in cities were built before the automobile and we now have the opportunity to move back in that direction.
“This is a city that will give us more city, more homes, more shops, more restaurants, more workplaces, more bars, more destinations and activities in closer proximity and more accessible, but mostly more liveable.”