B. Carfree

I don't know which city will be the first to be car free, but I would wager that the first few to make the claim will NOT be truly car free. Maybe the twentieth one will raise the bar and be absolutely car free, but the first few will be so eager to push the propaganda that they will cleverly ignore their many exceptions.

You must not have been paying attention when you were here. The city is almost evenly split between right and left wing folks while the surrounding county suburbs are about 90/10 right wing/left wing. There's a reason the city council has a four-four split between D's and R's while the county board has 4 R's to one D.

Now, about the behavior of the city residents: Since 2009, we have (fairly uniquely) lost 25% of our bike commuters, according the the US Census American Community Survey. If we're going to be the first car free city, we're heading the wrong direction. Actually, those "progressives" you seem to think will lead the way seem to be the cause of this decline in cycling. Without going too deeply into the P/R aspects, let's just say that free hot meals and no enforcement of "no camping" and "no alcohol consumption in public" ordinances have some pretty predictable outcomes.

Roody

Why do you insult those you disagree with? Are you unable to respond on a fact-centered basis?

Roody

Thanks for the update on Eugene. I probably wasn't paying much attention, as you said. I stayed in a big commune for the few days I was there. There were plenty of *cough* herbal preparations to take my mind off the local political situation! One highlight of the visit was a huge banquet in the backyard, to which "everybody" was invited. Most food came from the farm or from local dumpsters, so more than 50 people were sumptuously feasted for less than eight dollars.

Ah, communalism...a beautiful dream that never dies, but also never goes very far. I hope the dream of carfree living does a lot better!

El Cid

Oh now c'mon, I think you know darn well that you are the exception to the rule.

You exercise, eat well, and handle your money with some discipline. Those are good things, but the fact is most people would rather sit around, eat garbage, and borrow as much as they can for instant gratification.

wolfchild

Just imagine all the filth, crap, ****, bacteria on the streets from all those animals. No wonder infectious diseases were killing more humans back in those days then our modern pollution from cars.

Walter S

In the present day, we don't need to chose between disease from unsanitary conditions, or smog and noise and a paved landscape and air pollution. We have more choices than staying where we are or going backwards.

We can all function adequately and more sustainably by clean technologies and human powered vehicles. Plus evolving towards manufacturing and distribution networks that require less travel over long distances. And I have every hope that manufacturing can be moved closer to the place where the goods are needed. Things similar in concept to the 3d printing technology.

Fast and unassisted locomotion over vast distances doesn't have to be the God given right of all humans. That's how it felt when I was a kid in the 60s. But we were living on borrowed time using practices and technologies in ways that can't last. It may in fact prove difficult to provide that and also sustain a population of ten billion or so people over tens of generations. I have little doubt that eventually either billions of people will be denied the right to affordable travel, or we'll manage to grow up and not call it a right. It's a convenience afforded the naive beginnings of the industrial revolution. We should be redesigning our world while there's time to make this transition less burdensome on our society.

CliffordK

There are many studies indicating that rural individuals living around animals are healthier than their city counterparts.

Certainly with different farming practices, the Europeans brought different diseases to the Americas than the Americans donated to the Europeans (although I think Syphillis was American, and some of the European explorers just couldn't resist the temptation).

One of the most deadly diseases, Malaria, has no animal hosts, other than the mosquito vector.

Who knows, perhaps small pox developed from cattle, but exposure to cow pox also gave immunity to small pox.

Anyway, some of the dangers of the primitive lifestyles was not the "filth" from animals, but rather the poor sanitation of human waste. Fecal-Oral transmission of diseases from human waste to human consumption.

Hmmm... perhaps the Bubonic Plague is due to rats... (not livestock). I suppose some of the diseases that can jump from livestock to humans such as tricanosis or mad cow disease are caused by animals that are fed meat products, and don't hardly exist in animals that don't eat meat products.

cooker

There was spongioform encephalopathy in animals and humans before we started "rendering" dead animals and feeding them to themselves, but that practice increased it. Influenza can spread at least between humans, pigs and chickens.

CliffordK

The prions responsible for spongioform encephalopathy, mad cow disease, and Creutzfeldt Jacobs disease are not easily passed from individual to individual. They do spontaneously generate from time to time (malformed natural protein). Thus "rendering" amplifies them in the population.

It most commonly occurs in humans that practice the eating of human brains.

Machka 

Yes! We took a step in the right direction with cars.

Of course, that doesn't rule out the possibility that we might take another step toward, say, electric or solar cars or something ... who knows.

But there will always be personal, independent convenient methods of transportation. The simple fact of the matter is that people like to go places ... and not necessarily the same places as everyone else.

Roody

You don't have any pets, do you?

Seriously, you do know that you're arguing against nobody, don't you? Nobody ever said we should go back to using horses and donkeys. although from now on we sure know how to get your goat! No pun intended.

Booger1

Amboy CA...Population 4....Normally you can't see a car being driven for 100 miles in any direction...You can be there for days at times and not see a car moving...Go there in summer and you might not see a car for weeks....

Nothing there now but a half restored Route 66 gas station/motel,post office that's open 4 hours a day M-F and the leftovers of a volcano cone....

fietsbob

I'D say one on an island , maybe not an Island Now , but once the sealevel comes up and the inland becomes the sea coast Things will be different

Of course America also includes the whole continent between the Polar Seas.

Wilfred Laurier

It might be necessary to engage in political activism and trickery to push the cars out, just as the car lobby did with pedestrians and horses and bikes.

Roody

Good point.

Wilfred Laurier

That might not be the most profitable venture.

Wilfred Laurier

You are looking at the problem backwards. People who live on farms are generally more healthy, not less, including less asthma and less allergies, probably because exposure to **** and all the ****ty things that go with it make the immune system stronger. The advance of modern medicine and advent of antibiotics and modern vaccination campaigns might be a better explanation for improved health.

Machka 

You should go to Edinburgh some time, go on some of the tours and let them describe to you the conditions way back when.

Walter S

The uncomposted feces per square foot is much smaller on a farm than inside the city of New York in the 19th century.

Roody

Have you conducted measurements?

Horse waste was certainly a problem in 19th century cities, but one that was dealt with. Sanitation departments were among the first public services that cities provided. (These are the comical little guys with shovels and brooms that you see in so many silent moves.) Compared to horse droppings, human waste was a much more serious problem, as it was just dumped into the nearest river.

I have read a lot of diaries and other primary documents from the time period in question. Rarely is horse waste mentioned as a major nuisance. Much of the documentation about the automobile "saving cities from the horse" was pure propaganda from the auto companies and insurance companies as they fought to convince the public that cars should take the place of horses.

Machka 

It wasn't just horse waste on the roads in Edinburgh.

cooker

I think we're now sophisticated enough that cities of the future could recapture what was good about medieval cities - compact, lively, mixed use, everyhing you need close at hand - but without the sewage.

Roody

Do you think anybody here is trying to persuade you that you should live like th people in medieval Edinburgh (or whatever the heck you're talking about). What is all this crap about horse crap? What does this have to do with anything in the realm of reality?

Machka 

Roody, you'll have to read back through the thread.

But it stems from the fact that people will never give up their personal, individual, convenient methods of transportation. And people will continue to seek out new personal, individual, convenient methods of transportation.

In the "old days" it was horses, etc. ... then the car came along as an improvement to the horse ... next up ... ??? But there will be something.

Public transportation won't be the solution ... and neither will any sort of transportation where a person has to exert themselves, such as cycling.

wolfchild

I predict solar powered hyperloops