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Car dependency is the concept that some city layouts cause cars to be favoured over alternate forms of transportation, such as bicycles, public transit, and walking.
In many modern cities, automobiles are convenient and sometimes necessary to move easily. [1] [2] When it comes to automobile use, there is a spiraling effect where traffic congestion produces the 'demand' for more and bigger roads and the removal of 'impediments' to traffic flow. For instance, pedestrians, signalized crossings, traffic lights, cyclists, and various forms of street-based public transit, such as trams.
These measures make automobile use more pleasurable and advantageous at the expense of other modes of transport, so greater traffic volumes are induced. Additionally, the urban design of cities adjusts to the needs of automobiles in terms of movement and space. Buildings are replaced by parking lots. Open-air shopping streets are replaced by enclosed shopping malls. Walk-in banks and fast-food stores are replaced by drive-in versions of themselves that are inconveniently located for pedestrians. Town centers with a mixture of commercial, retail, and entertainment functions are replaced by single-function business parks, 'category-killer' retail boxes, and 'multiplex' entertainment complexes, each surrounded by large tracts of parking.
These kinds of environments require automobiles to access them, thus inducing even more traffic onto the increased road space. This results in congestion, and the cycle above continues. Roads get ever bigger, consuming ever greater tracts of land previously used for housing, manufacturing, and other socially and economically useful purposes. Public transit becomes less viable and socially stigmatized, eventually becoming a minority form of transportation. People's choices and freedoms to live functional lives without the use of the car are greatly reduced. Such cities are automobile-dependent.
Automobile dependency is seen primarily as an issue of environmental sustainability due to the consumption of non-renewable resources and the production of greenhouse gases responsible for global warming. It is also an issue of social and cultural sustainability. Like gated communities, the private automobile produces physical separation between people and reduces the opportunities for unstructured social encounters that is a significant aspect of social capital formation and maintenance in urban environments.
As automobile use rose drastically in the 1910s, American road administrators favored building roads to accommodate traffic rather than disincentivize the behaviors that lead to it. [3] Administrators and engineers in the interwar period spent their resources making small adjustments to accommodate traffic such as widening lanes and adding parking spaces, as opposed to larger projects that would change the built environment altogether. [3] American cities began to tear out tram systems in the 1920s. Car dependency itself saw its formation around the Second World War, when urban infrastructure began to be built exclusively around the car. [4] The resultant economic and built environment restructuring allowed wide adoption of automobile use. In the United States, the expansive manufacturing infrastructure, increase in consumerism, and the establishment of the Interstate Highway System set forth the conditions for car dependence in communities. In 1956, the Highway Trust Fund [5] was established in America, reinvesting gasoline taxes back into car-based infrastructure.
In 1916 the first zoning ordinance was introduced in New York City, the 1916 Zoning Resolution. Zoning was created as a means of organizing specific land uses in a city so as to avoid potentially harmful adjacencies like heavy manufacturing and residential districts, which were common in large urban areas in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Zoning code also determines the permitted residential building types and densities in specific areas of a city by defining such things as single-family homes, and multi-family residential as being allowed as of right or not in certain areas. The overall effect of zoning in the last century has been to create areas of the city with similar land use patterns in cities that had previously been a mix of heterogenous residential and business uses. The problem is particularly severe right outside of cities, in suburban areas located around the periphery of a city where strict zoning codes almost exclusively allow for single family detached housing. [6] Strict zoning codes that result in a heavily segregated built environment between residential and commercial land uses contributes to car dependency by making it nearly impossible to access all one's given needs, such as housing, work, school and recreation without the use of a car. One key solution to the spatial problems caused by zoning would be a robust public transportation network. There is also currently a movement to amend older zoning ordinances to create more mixed-use zones in cities that combine residential and commercial land uses within the same building or within walking distance to create the so-called 15-minute city.
Parking minimums are also a part of modern zoning codes, and contribute to car dependency through a process known as induced demand. Parking minimums require a certain number of parking spots based on the land use of a building and are often designed in zoning codes to represent the maximum possible need at any given time. [7] This has resulted in cities having nearly eight parking spaces for every car in America, which have created cities almost fully dedicated to parking from free on-street parking to parking lots up to three times the size of the businesses they serve. [7] This prevalence in parking has perpetuated a loss in competition between other forms of transportation such that driving becomes the de facto choice for many people even when alternatives do exist.
The design of city roads can contribute significantly to the perceived and actual need to use a car over other modes of transportation in daily life. In the urban context car dependence is induced in greater numbers by design factors that operate in opposite directions - first, design that makes driving easier and second, design that makes all other forms of transportation more difficult. Frequently these two forces overlap in a compounding effect to induce more car dependence in an area that would have potential for a more heterogenous mix of transportation options. These factors include things like the width of roads, that make driving faster and therefore 'easier' while also making a less safe environment for pedestrians or cyclists that share the same road. The prevalence of on-street parking on most residential and commercial also streets makes driving easier while taking away street space that could be used for protected bike lanes, dedicated bus lanes, or other forms of public transportation.
According to the Handbook on estimation of external costs in the transport sector [8] made by the Delft University, which is the main reference in European Union for assessing the externalities of cars, the main external costs of driving a car are:
Other negative externalities may include increased cost of building infrastructure, inefficient use of space and energy, pollution and per capita fatality. [9] [10]
There are a number of planning and design approaches to redressing automobile dependency, [11] known variously as New Urbanism, transit-oriented development, and smart growth. Most of these approaches focus on the physical urban design, urban density and landuse zoning of cities. Paul Mees argued that investment in good public transit, centralized management by the public sector and appropriate policy priorities are more significant than issues of urban form and density.
Removal of minimum parking requirements from building codes can alleviate the problems generated by car dependency. Minimum parking requirements occupy valuable space that otherwise can be used for housing. However, removal of minimum parking requirements will require implementation of additional policies to manage the increase in alternative parking methods. [12]
There are, of course, many who argue against a number of the details within any of the complex arguments related to this topic, particularly relationships between urban density and transit viability, or the nature of viable alternatives to automobiles that provide the same degree of flexibility and speed. There is also research into the future of automobility itself in terms of shared usage, size reduction, road-space management and more sustainable fuel sources.
Car-sharing is one example of a solution to automobile dependency. Research has shown that in the United States, services like Zipcar, have reduced demand by about 500,000 cars. [13] In the developing world, companies like eHi, [14] Carrot, [15] [16] Zazcar [17] and Zoom have replicated or modified Zipcar's business model to improve urban transportation to provide a broader audience with greater access to the benefits of a car and provide "last-mile" connectivity between public transportation and an individual's destination. Car sharing also reduces private vehicle ownership.
Whether smart growth does or can reduce problems of automobile dependency associated with urban sprawl has been fiercely contested for several decades. The influential study in 1989 by Peter Newman and Jeff Kenworthy compared 32 cities across North America, Australia, Europe and Asia. [18] The study has been criticised for its methodology, [19] but the main finding, that denser cities, particularly in Asia, have lower car use than sprawling cities, particularly in North America, has been largely accepted, but the relationship is clearer at the extremes across continents than it is within countries where conditions are more similar.
Within cities, studies from across many countries (mainly in the developed world) have shown that denser urban areas with greater mixture of land use and better public transport tend to have lower car use than less dense suburban and exurban residential areas. This usually holds true even after controlling for socio-economic factors such as differences in household composition and income. [20]
This does not necessarily imply that suburban sprawl causes high car use, however. One confounding factor, which has been the subject of many studies, is residential self-selection: [21] people who prefer to drive tend to move towards low-density suburbs, whereas people who prefer to walk, cycle or use transit tend to move towards higher density urban areas, better served by public transport. Some studies have found that, when self-selection is controlled for, the built environment has no significant effect on travel behaviour. [22] More recent studies using more sophisticated methodologies have generally rejected these findings: density, land use and public transport accessibility can influence travel behaviour, although social and economic factors, particularly household income, usually exert a stronger influence. [23]
Reviewing the evidence on urban intensification, smart growth and their effects on automobile use, Melia et al. (2011) [24] found support for the arguments of both supporters and opponents of smart growth. Planning policies that increase population densities in urban areas do tend to reduce car use, but the effect is weak. So, doubling the population density of a particular area will not halve the frequency or distance of car use.
These findings led them to propose the paradox of intensification:
At the citywide level, it may be possible, through a range of positive measures to counteract the increases in traffic and congestion that would otherwise result from increasing population densities: [25] Freiburg im Breisgau in Germany is one example of a city which has been more successful in reducing automobile dependency and constraining increases in traffic despite substantial increases in population density. [26]
This study also reviewed evidence on local effects of building at higher densities. At the level of the neighbourhood or individual development, positive measures (like improvements to public transport) will usually be insufficient to counteract the traffic effect of increasing population density.
This leaves policy-makers with four choices:
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Smart growth is an urban planning and transportation theory that concentrates growth in compact walkable urban centers to avoid sprawl. It also advocates compact, transit-oriented, walkable, bicycle-friendly land use, including neighborhood schools, complete streets, and mixed-use development with a range of housing choices. The term "smart growth" is particularly used in North America. In Europe and particularly the UK, the terms "compact city", "urban densification" or "urban intensification" have often been used to describe similar concepts, which have influenced government planning policies in the UK, the Netherlands and several other European countries.
Transport economics is a branch of economics founded in 1959 by American economist John R. Meyer that deals with the allocation of resources within the transport sector. It has strong links to civil engineering. Transport economics differs from some other branches of economics in that the assumption of a spaceless, instantaneous economy does not hold. People and goods flow over networks at certain speeds. Demands peak. Advance ticket purchase is often induced by lower fares. The networks themselves may or may not be competitive. A single trip may require the bundling of services provided by several firms, agencies and modes.
Bicycle-friendly policies and practices help some people feel more comfortable about traveling by bicycle with other traffic. The level of bicycle-friendliness of an environment can be influenced by many factors including town planning and cycling infrastructure decisions. A stigma towards people who ride bicycles and fear of cycling is a social construct that needs to be fully understood when promoting a bicycle friendly culture.
Since the start of the twentieth century, the role of cars has become highly important, though controversial. They are used throughout the world and have become the most popular mode of transport in many of the more developed countries. In developing countries cars are fewer and the effects of the car on society are less visible, however they are nonetheless significant. The development of the car built upon the transport sector first started by railways and bicycles. They introduced sweeping changes in employment patterns, social interactions, infrastructure and the distribution of goods.
Urban sprawl is defined as "the spreading of urban developments on undeveloped land near a more or less densely populated city". Urban sprawl has been described as the unrestricted growth in many urban areas of housing, commercial development, and roads over large expanses of land, with little concern for very dense urban planning. Sometimes the urban areas described as the most "sprawling" are the most densely populated. In addition to describing a special form of urbanization, the term also relates to the social and environmental consequences associated with this development. In modern times some suburban areas described as "sprawl" have less detached housing and higher density than the nearby core city. Medieval suburbs suffered from the loss of protection of city walls, before the advent of industrial warfare. Modern disadvantages and costs include increased travel time, transport costs, pollution, and destruction of the countryside. The revenue for building and maintaining urban infrastructure in these areas are gained mostly through property and sales taxes. Most jobs in the US are now located in suburbs generating much of the revenue, although a lack of growth will require higher tax rates.
The car-free movement is a broad, informal, emergent network of individuals and organizations, including social activists, urban planners, transportation engineers, environmentalists and others, brought together by a shared belief that large and/or high-speed motorized vehicles are too dominant in most modern cities. The goal of the movement is to create places where motorized vehicle use is greatly reduced or eliminated, by converting road and parking space to other public uses and rebuilding compact urban environments where most destinations are within easy reach by other means, including walking, cycling, public transport, personal transporters, and mobility as a service.
Sustainable transport refers to ways of transportation that are sustainable in terms of their social and environmental impacts. Components for evaluating sustainability include the particular vehicles used for road, water or air transport; the source of energy; and the infrastructure used to accommodate the transport. Transport operations and logistics as well as transit-oriented development are also involved in evaluation. Transportation sustainability is largely being measured by transportation system effectiveness and efficiency as well as the environmental and climate impacts of the system. Transport systems have significant impacts on the environment, accounting for between 20% and 25% of world energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions. The majority of the emissions, almost 97%, came from direct burning of fossil fuels. In 2019, about 95% of the fuel came from fossil sources. The main source of greenhouse gas emissions in the European Union is transportation. In 2019 it contributes to about 31% of global emissions and 24% of emissions in the EU. In addition, up to the COVID-19 pandemic, emissions have only increased in this one sector. Greenhouse gas emissions from transport are increasing at a faster rate than any other energy using sector. Road transport is also a major contributor to local air pollution and smog.
In urban planning, transit-oriented development (TOD) is a type of urban development that maximizes the amount of residential, business and leisure space within walking distance of public transport. It promotes a symbiotic relationship between dense, compact urban form and public transport use. In doing so, TOD aims to increase public transport ridership by reducing the use of private cars and by promoting sustainable urban growth.
A living street is a street designed with the interests of pedestrians and cyclists in mind by providing enriching and experiential spaces. Living streets also act as social spaces, allowing children to play and encouraging social interactions on a human scale, safely and legally. Living streets consider all pedestrians granting equal access to elders and those who are disabled. These roads are still available for use by motor vehicles; however, their design aims to reduce both the speed and dominance of motorized transport. The reduction of motor vehicle dominance creates more opportunities for public transportation.
A carfree city is an urban area absent of motor vehicles. Carfree cities rely on public transport, walking, and cycling for travel as opposed to motor vehicles. Districts where motor vehicles are prohibited are referred to as carfree zones. Carfree city models have gained traction in the second half of the 20th century due to issues with congestion and infrastructure, and proposed environmental and quality of life benefits. Many cities in Asia, Europe, and Africa have carfree areas due to the cities being created before the invention of motor vehicles, while many developing cities in Asia are using the carfree model to modernize their infrastructure.
Mixed use is a type of urban development, urban design, urban planning and/or a zoning classification that blends multiple uses, such as residential, commercial, cultural, institutional, or entertainment, into one space, where those functions are to some degree physically and functionally integrated, and that provides pedestrian connections. Mixed-use development may be applied to a single building, a block or neighborhood, or in zoning policy across an entire city or other administrative unit. These projects may be completed by a private developer, (quasi-)governmental agency, or a combination thereof. A mixed-use development may be a new construction, reuse of an existing building or brownfield site, or a combination.
Compared to other popular modes of passenger transportation, the car has a relatively high cost per person-distance traveled. The income elasticity for cars ranges from very elastic in poor countries, to inelastic in rich nations. The advantages of car usage include on-demand and door-to-door travel, and are not easily substituted by cheaper alternative modes of transport, with the present level and type of auto specific infrastructure in the countries with high auto usage.
Established alternatives to car use include cycling, walking, kick scooters, rollerblading, skateboarding, twikes and motorcycles. Other alternatives are public transport vehicles.
In urban planning, walkability is the accessibility of amenities by foot. It is based on the idea that urban spaces should be more than just transport corridors designed for maximum vehicle throughput. Instead, it should be relatively complete livable spaces that serve a variety of uses, users, and transportation modes and reduce the need for cars for travel.
Public transport is a system of transport for passengers by group travel systems available for use by the general public unlike private transport, typically managed on a schedule, operated on established routes, and that may charge a posted fee for each trip. There is no rigid definition of which kinds of transport are included, and air travel is often not thought of when discussing public transport—dictionaries use wording like "buses, trains, etc." Examples of public transport include city buses, trolleybuses, trams and passenger trains, rapid transit and ferries. Public transport between cities is dominated by airlines, coaches, and intercity rail. High-speed rail networks are being developed in many parts of the world.
The compact city or city of short distances is an urban planning and urban design concept, which promotes relatively high residential density with mixed land uses. It is based on an efficient public transport system and has an urban layout which – according to its advocates – encourages walking and cycling, low energy consumption and reduced pollution. A large resident population provides opportunities for social interaction as well as a feeling of safety in numbers and "eyes on the street". It is also arguably a more sustainable urban settlement type than urban sprawl because it is less dependent on the car, requiring less infrastructure provision.
An automotive city or auto city is a city that facilitates and encourages the movement of people via private transportation, through 'physical planning', e.g., built environment innovations and 'soft programming' e.g., social policy surrounding city street usage.
Missing middle housing refers to a lack of medium-density housing in the North American context. The term describes an urban planning phenomenon in Canada, the United States, Australia and more recent developments in industrialised and newly industrialising countries due to zoning regulations favoring social and racial separation and car-dependent suburban sprawl.
Cars affect many people, not just drivers and car passengers. The externalities of automobiles, similarly to other economic externalities, are the measurable difference in costs for other parties to those of the car proprietor, such costs not taken into account when the proprietor opts to drive their car. According to Harvard University, the main externalities of driving are local and global pollution, oil dependence, traffic congestion and traffic collisions; while according to a meta-study conducted by the Delft University these externalities are congestion and scarcity costs, accident costs, air pollution costs, noise costs, climate change costs, costs for nature and landscape, costs for water pollution, costs for soil pollution and costs of energy dependency.
Transport divide refers to unequal access to transportation. It can result in the social exclusion of disadvantaged groups.