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CarCulture
MeatballWiki | RecentChanges | Random Page | Indices | Categories- Each car generates five parking spots.
- Housing parks where you can only live, shopping parks where you can only shop, office parks where you can only work mean that you have to drive everywhere to do anything.
- Office parks invented and motive midday traffic. No reading in the park or a little shopping; instead we have 30 minute commutes.
- Suburban shopping plazas require cars to get to.
- Cul-de-sacs with nothing but houses mean children cannot do anything without their parents chaffeur them from here to there.
- For the last 600 years, the average commute time between home and work/school has been 30 minutes.
- Americans make an average of 13 car trips a day.
- Calculations to determine the correct parking lot size are designed for the Saturday before Christmas. i.e. the absolute worst case.
- Teenagers have a higher chance of death in American suburbia than in inner city America. Car crashes are more deadly than drive-by shootings. (And drive-by shootings are worse than shootings.)
- A car costs on average $6 000/year to own. This equates to about $65 000 off the maximum price of the house you can afford.
- The EcologicalFootprint of one person traveling five kilometres twice each workday, 230 work days a year, varies according to the mode of transport: for bicycles, it is about 122 square metres, for buses 301 square metres and for cars 1442 square metres
Despite this
- 50% of Americans cannot get there from here. They are without cars.
- Statistically, everyone given the chance will walk five minutes. This is the quarter mile. People feel stupid driving that far unless the landscape is amazingly stupid like the shopping mall parking lot.
- Statistically, People will walk five minutes to a bus, ten minutes to a train.
Therefore
- Follow the NeighbourhoodPattern?. You should be able to walk to everything you need.
Interesting
- Retired people have taken control of Florida downtowns because they are still capable of doing things without cars.
- Southern Ontario has had a record number of smog warnings in 2001. As of July 24, 2001, there have been 17 posted. The common response is "Let's motivate people out of their cars." But this is impossible.
- ContinuousGreenSpace? causes worse traffic.
Carfree Cities proposes a delightful solution to the vexing problem of urban automobiles
CarCulture done wiki style. I love it. -- SunirShah
I was thinking today of how to stop using my car after learning about how bad smog is this year, and the fact I've gained a few pounds, but rollerblading to work takes 50 minutes. Since then I've encountered a variety of interesting facts, mostly from [Andres Duany]. -- SunirShah
- 404 on Andres Duany :-(
- is this the Andres Duany of NewUrbanism?, co-author of "Suburban Nation, The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream"? if so, i have the book on order and can pull supporting evidence from it, should it contain any. somebody kick me if i don't. -- AlixPiranha 2004-apr-13
My god, this page perfectly describes Windsor, Ontario, where I grew up. Toronto's not so bad, but certain areas are 40 minutes to anywhere, and an hour plus to anywhere fun (unless you have a car, in which case it only takes 10 minutes; sigh). -- RobHarwood
This is actually one of my major motivations for moving to Europe. -- ChuckSmith
Someone please provide sources for the following two factoids:
- Each car generates five parking spots.
- Americans make an average of 13 car trips a day.
Source was the talk by Duany. He didn't provide ancillary sources, so the facts are contentious.
- I (TedErnst) posed the question about each car generating 5 parking spots on the ChicagoCriticalMass? listserv and got the following (refactored) answers:
- Leslie Miller AP story Aug. 29, 2003 says there are more cars than drivers, 200 million cars now which means to show 5 spaces per car, we need to account for one billion parking spaces.
- office building parking garages, supermarket and shopping center parking lots, the lots around stadiums or zoos, etc., after those businesses are closed for the day. Acres and acres of concrete and asphalt, all sitting empty. And of course, during the day when all those aforementioned spots are occupied, there are an equal number of home garages, apartment building parking lots, carports, and, yes, urban street spaces, that are empty
- ~70 million - Shopping malls (intentionally not counting main street shops, roadside fast food or unattached big boxes like target/home depot by 1/3 to 1/2) take up about 8.3 million square feet and generally provide a "modern" ratio of 5.5 spaces/1000 sq/ft giving us ~47 million spaces JUST at malls (multiply by 1.4 to guess at the rest of the retail space)
- 200 million spaces are easy b/c they're at the homes of the owners.
- 133 million There are 147 million workers in the U.S. and 89% of them drive alone to work, which is an instant 133 million parking spaces.
- In places like North Dakota there are easily 10 spots per capita in the city.
- Most of North Dakota doesn't have constructed parking. People park at the edge of the street or road, or in driveways that serve an access purpose as well as a parking purpose.
- Vast expanses at amusement parks, stadiums and airports and everywhere else
- That's about 400 million we can actually count or estimate (not including North Dakota, stadiums, etc), but the question is ultimately unanswerable. Parking surveys are possible for very limited areas; I have a ten year old one of downtown Chicago, which still took months to complete. Still, a billion parking spaces doesn't sound entirely out of line to me.
- One book says 7 spaces per car. Anton Nelessen, "Visions for a New American Dream" -- maybe Princeton Architectural Press, 1993 or so. The guy's from Jersey, where there are definitely at least 7 parking spaces per car.
- Separate issues from that conversation that also seem relevant to CarCulture:
- Parking spaces average 300-350 square feet apiece, including aisle space. 5.5 parking spaces per 1,000 square feet of stores (a standard promulgated in 1954) = almost 1,800 square feet of parking. The cars deserve 80% more room than the people. No wonder the average strip mall covers only 15% of its site.
- "modern" parking ratios for offices require 4-6 spaces per 1,000 square feet -- again, more space for the cars outside than the people inside.
- Separate issues from that conversation that also seem relevant to CarCulture:
yay :0) in ireland the post May Day (2003) ReclaimTheStreets? went really well. there are some very interesting sites about RTS on the net and a few decent pdf pamphlets about "politics of the car" on the struggle website too. on of the nice quotes i came across is that "RTS isn't anti car it's anti car culture".
-- a guest
CarCulture is also one of the most explicit tactics TheSystem? has for lighting even more fires under the buns of those of us who are barely hanging on. It is one of the most aggressive means by which credit scoring is used to weed out the weaklings from the simple dignity of being a contributing member of society. Being not only a necessity, but an obligatorily insured one adds still to the brutality of marginal careerism aptitude.
All anyone needs to own a car is five hundred dollars and fairly recent page of classified ads
- The annual cost is higher than that, though it varies from one situation to the next.
- I hate CarCulture and absolutely despise shopping malls.
State mandated insurance alone costs from 100 to 150 per month in California. Cars are *not* cheap. -- a guest
An AnonymousDonor without using any RealName has begun a french translation on CultureDeVoiture. Nice for our LangueFrançaise culure on mb. Even if I feel the title is not correct : I would suggest CultureAutomobile? or CultureAuto? ? What do you think ? Let's also mention we have some nice solution in Paris (I've lost the link and will leave it later) : briefly, a company that gives you the opportunity to mutualize the car. A car always available near your home for a lap of time (week-end, one night). You subscribe a small monthly fee basis and are billed according to the distance/time with great rates which have nothing to do with the usual "rent a car". A form of co-sharing. This company does not work for suburbs. A strong CarCulture exist in the french suburbs and I don't think firing cars is the solution to make people change. -- ChristopheDucamp