This video outlines some of the relationships between US commuting culture and the perspectives that it’s engendered about the role of the city. The, when compared and contrasted to other nations’ approach to city design and perspectives shows that it’s possible to have a city core that’s more than just a workplace.
My city is currently clinging to a small area of interesting downtown core. Everything else has either been bulldozed for parking lots, turned into office buildings with no store fronts, or plowed into wider roads. Every time I show the maps of the city with how car-focused we’ve made downtown to a city council member they recoil at the desolation, but it’s so hard to get change happening.
We need fewer roads, cars, and non-human spaces in our city core areas. Making wider walking paths, biking roads, mass transit (not just busses!), and planting trees to make spaces more attractive will all continue to invite people to come downtown, not just someone desperate enough to drive there, park, hit one store and drive away.
That’s certainly one cause, but culture is as well. The American dream of a quarter acre in the quiet leafy suburbs, easy commute to work by car on the freeway, has been a pervasive part of culture for a long time. It’s only recently that we’ve started appreciating the unsustainable reality of that idea.