Communities without roads is an exciting concept that allows people to live within walking distances of colleages, customers, friends, medical and educational facilities, shops, restaurants, etc. The sedentary lifestyle of many people is a result of the way cities are currently designed. Instead, we should facilitate the opposite, i.e. people coming out of their houses, offices, and especially their cars, in order to meet other people, getting better food and becoming more healthy in the process.
The car has come to dominate the urban landscape, resulting in a metropolitan conglomeration of suburbs, stringed together along highways. Our most fertile land is now used for roads and cars, and the industries needed to support them. About half the urban area is for buildings, mainly three-bedroom homes on small blocks of land. The other half is used for roads, parks and grassland between roads. A large part of roads, buildings and gardens is also used to park cars.
Ever less fertile land is available food. Global warming forces us to rethink all this. As prices of oil skyrocket, more land is being dedicated to grow bio-fuel, resulting in less land available for food. Also, more extreme weather conditions can be expected, resulting in increasing crop loss.
We need more land to grow fruit and vegetables, in ways as was once the case in traditional gardens and on smaller farms. One place to find such land is by converting roads and office blocks into gardens. This doesn't mean a return to those ‘good-old-days’ of small towns and villages. Instead, we should consider an entirely new type of urban design: communities without roads. Technological progress is not the enemy here. Better security and communication systems can help get such communities off the ground. Electric vehicles can be instrumental in getting such communities off the ground.
What I propose are communities with footpaths and bike-paths instead of roads. Houses would be built close together, around a local center of shops and restaurants. In communities without roads, houses could be smaller, since there's no need to park cars in front or in garages. Building houses close together itself reduces travel distances between them. Pathways to a nearby center could suffice for further daily travel, leading to shops, markets, restaurants, lecture and meeting rooms.
In such a center, people would conveniently eat in restaurants, without traffic and parking hassle and noise - just a short stroll by foot or ride on a bike or in an electric scooter. Eating out means less shopping, since food makes up most of our shopping. It also saves a lot of time - no more shopping, cooking, dishwashing and cleaning, no rubbish to get rid of. Walking more would be good for our health as well.
Living closer together means people could see each other more often, both at home or at such a nearby restaurant. Why travel to an office or University, when you can work or follow courses online? Homeschooling has long proven to be much more effective than school. Why should people be institutionalized, kids packed away into school, the elderly people into ‘homes’ and the sick in hospitals? Instead, we should encourage families to stay together as much as possible and as long as possible in communities without roads.
This would result in huge savings on the current cost of cars, roads, office buildings, car parks, garages, gasoline stations, etc. How much time and money could we save by reducing our daily travel between home and work? And how many lives would be saved if we had less car-accidents? Because of the shared walls between them, townhouses save on the cost of heating in winter and cooling in summer.
To start it off, a University campus could be transformed into a community without roads, where people live and come to learn and work. Anyone who would like to nominate one?
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Comments: 32
I'd rather be lost in the country than found in a city.
There's a New Urbanism community near where I live called King Farm. It's very walkable with nice amenities but allows cars. Also, for some people it seems to act just as an apartment complex while for others it's more permanent--there can be something artificial about the attempt to create instant community. The city still offers a lot that a small community can't.
I think making Manhattan car-free would be best, since it's relatively small with a tremendous transportation network. It's not too likely to happen, though, but perhaps limited car-free times or places would be viable.
I know that there have been some attempts at urban planning for this - (Singapore in the 80's) - the savings in resources, the increase in the quality of life - we can hope that there would be possibilities to make this possible, even if on a limited basis.
Thanks for thought-provoking article!
I strongly disagree that home schooling is better than classroom instruction. And that online classes could replace college classes. As a university educator, I can tell you that not all students can be successful with online classes. I see it all the time. Personally, I don't think I could be successful with online classes. I want the face-to-face interaction. And I have met some students who were home schooled who have no social skills--a critical piece of the education pie.
Fredericksburg VA has experienced a come back. Some of the residents have established their business in town, sometime from their home. There is a lot of walking but cars have increased also because of commuting.
Before we can reach the possibility you present we could begin by building a small community versus a subdivision where the homes would be closer with small gardens in the back and large sidewalk in the front connecting the row of houses. A large area of land would surround the development that could be used for walks,bikes, picnics, and fields to play games, etc. A community center for children and housing for seniors would be included to resemble a little town community.
I think small stores could cohoexist in that setting to provide certain necessity and reduce the amount of small trips.
It would effectively be a better use of the land and aid the community to get to know eachother.
http://www.newurbanism.org/
Indiana is one of the most separated and sparse American landscapes east of the Mississippi, towns are small even today and separated by miles and miles of farmland. The car seems like an inevitability to such an isolated and agrarian population.
But it was not the only option in the fifty years from 1885-1935 (dates aprox.).
Indiana had an interurban rail, a system of privately owned rail lines interconnecting the entire state, north to south and east to west. They were reliable, inexpensive and clean running. They were electric, a fact which would eventually spell their economic doom.
It was possible for someone in my hometowns of Alexandria or Anderson to commute to Indianapolis or for a family to take a trip from south to north, Bloomington to South Bend to visit relations, all without a single thought to either moving off the farm or purchasing a costly smelly car.
But there was a conflict of interests developing. Many of the people using the interurban rail lines were using them to get to jobs at auto plants. Car manufacturers, GM and Ford in particular, were becoming enormous presences in the state economy. And naturally this began to reflect in politics, the interurban's days were numbered.
Then came the depression and individual lines began failing, threatening to cut off corridors of the transit system. Fortunately for 1930's Indiana a single concern began buying up all of the failing private lines and unifying them under a single schedule and business model. By the early years of the decade the entire interurban was under one corporate umbrella and actually turned a profit in the depths of the depression.
The interurban, however, stood as competition to the most stable economic force in the state, the automakers. So, with their leverage in the state house legislation was passed no longer allowing special status for businesses in the use of utilities. The quantity of electricity used no longer entitled the rail lines to a break and the price of the utility forced the lines out of business in only a couple of years.
Now, seventy years later, the social geography of Indiana is much the same as it was before. Farming families separated by tens of miles from the nearest town and by possibly hundreds from the nearest urban center. Our biggest cities don't even boast adequate public transit. My sister can't get a bus from her apartment to her job, three miles away in downtown Indianapolis.
The auto industries have passed away as a force in Indiana. Cars become more and more untenable for the bulk of the population as gas prices soar and all but minimum wage service industry jobs leave the country. To say nothing of the ever present environmental impact of a car driving population. If the interurban rail were revived the social landscape of Indiana would remain as it always has, we know this because there is precedent. It didn't kill the farmer a hundred years ago and it wouldn't now. We don't have to all live in cities we just have to stop taking cars for granted and realize there have been, and can be, better ways of getting around.
As a mother, I think parks are a very good use of land! Kids can get together and play while parents talk. This is one of the best examples of community that I can think of.
Eating out is almost always more expensive than eating at home, and there's nothing like a home cooked meal for family time.
I agree with Susan E. that online classes and home schooling are not better than being in the classroom. A child with special needs or learning disabilities needs help from people other than the parents. If all those kids were home schooled, the specialists or the kids would need to travel from place. School also creates a very good place for community involvement.
Walking everywhere is nice, but we've had to make some compromises to that.
You cannot believe the level of frustration I'm experiencing having moved to Foster City, California. Close to San Francisco, it might as well be in some outlying suburb. The one (!) bus that takes you out of town, to connect to the train system and the rest of the bus network, runs once an hour, and usually not according to schedule, so it's very hard to make things like medical appointments. My kids were taking some classes at school in the summer, and they were scheduled such that, if they took the bus, they got there either an hour early or 10 minutes late, for which they were penalized. Same with their classes through the Park District.
Everyone around here seems to be for public transportation in theory, but nobody really seems that interested in putting it into practice.
The End of Suburbia
http://www.endofsuburbia.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHr8OzaloLM
Escape from Suburbia
http://escapefromsuburbia.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2y9BbNjLAY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4xEsBy2rIw
Perhaps after watching this, you'll accept that there are problems that need to be addressed. Simply voting against against people who seek solutions won't make these problems go away. I hope that this will make you understand that we need to have this discussion and that you will change your votes accordingly.
The challenge is to have the political will to make it easier and cheaper to build right and grow right. Vermont created what they call Act 250 for this, to limit sprawl, and it has had mixed success. The challenge is to zone intelligently to limit sprawl, have clear guidelines of how to develop so the greater good is considered from the outset. Some areas have developed Car Share programs to bridge the gap between this preferred lifestyle and the realities of having to get to places not accessable.
I live in the country, but I also see the downside. My kids are physically isolated from friends, and there is no way to get away from the use of cars. It looked really appealing when we bought, but now I wish I lived in town, and was not so dependent on driving. This is the direction we need to take as a society, to live more sustainably. Soon there will be little choice.
http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474976952727
Many people never take taxis because they are too expensive and you cannot get them when you need them. Deregulating the monopolies and cartels that rule the taxi world should be seriously considered. Why shouldn't someone earn an extra dollar by sharing his car with three more people who happen to go the same way? Issuing licences for taxis has become a revenue earner for government that is not working in the interest of the public.
Too much freight goes by truck instead of rail and this is inefficient use of energy.
Norman Riger
Minneapolis MN
Math problem number one: food. How me acres of land does it take to grow enough food for everyone in the community. Today, in the US, there is approximately 1.8 acres of food producing land per person. If you have a community of 100,000 people, you'll need close to 200,000 additional acres of farmland. Let me tell you, 200,000 acres is a huge chunk of land.
In our little garden, (20 x 30 feet) we get to eat really well for about a month and a half out of every year. This year, the garden was devastated by two woodchucks, a few chipmunks, and deer. While 200,000 acres may provide sufficient buffer for predation by various forms of "should be exterminated" wildlife, what happens if you have a crop failure? What happens if you lose 50% of your farmland to viruses, fungus or just plain bad weather? Is there any margin?
As I mentioned with their garden, we eat well for a month and a half and freeze the rest. We don't can because it's too much like work and way too error-prone for food poisoning as I experienced firsthand with my parents early attempts at canning. What ever you grow, you will need to preserve it for use throughout the rest of the year and not letting food go to waste. But this raises the bigger question of are people willing to settle for fresh food 30 to 60 days out of every year? A very good indicator of what an annual food budget would look like comes from pioneer diaries. In June and July, you start harvesting berries and some greens like early planted lettuce and peas. Late July you start getting corn, broccoli, cauliflower and some early peaches. August more peaches and other stone fruit with apples making an early appearance. At the end of August, cabbages is ready, second season lettuce is finishing up as is broccoli. In September, you have apples and the last of the peaches. In October cabbages finishing up as is apples. Potato start coming in and then you get frost.
November, December, January are all winter store apples, potatoes, turnips, squash. If you had any luck, you preserved beans, tomatoes, cucumbers etc.. But usually somewhere about March, the preserved food turns bad, if you are lucky you have some apples left over probably dried and in April or May when dandelions come up you can have the first greens you have eaten in almost 9 months.
Now the modern logical society, one can have acres of green houses (and I mean hundreds of acres) growing fresh produce like lettuce, tomatoes, herbs etc. but do you have any idea how much energy take to heat greenhouse when it's subzero (Fahrenheit) temperatures outside? Who's going at the energy available? People or food?
Math problem 2: Energy is another fun problem. How many acres of land will it take to produce energy for 100,000 people? Windmills are nice because they can cohabit the same land as plants or animals. Like many people like to point out, the wind doesn't blow all the time. One of the times when it doesn't blow is in the middle of a high-pressure area at night in the wintertime. Because of my experience with astronomy, I have been out on nights which are minus four or five Fahrenheit, dead calm which means an even tougher choice of who gets what energy is available, people or food? If you go for a mixture of energy sources, you should have sufficient energy from all but one source to supply your needs. That way, if an energy source fails, you can still function. It might be tight but nobody needs to starve or die. Related is the question of tolerating power generation sources in your backyard. If you want to eliminate sprawl, you can't go pushing your power generating plants into some of the community. Personally, I think nuclear and wind is a good mixture for electricity but the nuclear power plants must be in your own backyard (i.e. within a kilometer or two) if you want something else, add to the community landmass however much space you need for generation and storage (assume three days outage)
Math problem 3: Landscape for living? How many square feet per person? How many housing units per acre? How high are you willing to go in housing units? Related questions are what kind of acoustic isolation will you provide? Personally, I don't want to hear my neighbors under any circumstances. They could be going at each other with 9 mm pistols and I don't want to hear a sound. I lived too many years in a classical urban neighborhood, walking distance to stores etc.) and I had to live every fucking summer with the windows shut because I got tired of hearing people screaming at the kids, screaming at each other, domestic abuse situations, people having sex. I just don't want to know! I quickly came to miss the smell of diesel smoke from a train outside my previous apartment that used to wake me every morning to. Not to mention the cockroaches. God I hate cockroaches to this day. took me months to spraying and three apartments to get rid of them.
Math problem 4: jobs. How many companies can supply jobs in your chosen field in a given community and how many of those companies will hire you? There's no reason to expect people will change employment patterns in the urban future. People change jobs on average about 2 1/2 to three years and as result will quickly exhaust the employment opportunities in any one community. Since there is no energy for commuting unless you want to sacrifice hours per day on a train, people change communities more often. By changing communities more often, there will be no community connection because it's just a place to live and buy food. Pseudo-intimacy will become the rule of interactions between people. Pseudo-intimacy is pretending to be close and caring about in reality, you don't give a flying fu**. I think a secondary effect of this will be further decline in the formation of couples. If one partner or the other may move away in a couple of years either by physical move or through absence by spending too many hours on the train, why get emotionally involved? related to this is children. Both the lack of connection and the expensive real estate will discourage reproduction especially if the living space is below 400 ft.² per person.
Math problem 5: real estate. Moving to an urban environment implies a higher rate of rental versus ownership. Rental make sense in the context of the job model above but also makes good economic sense. The difference in price between suburban and urban real estate is approximately 2-4 to 1. That is to say urban real estate is two to four times more expensive than suburban real estate. When you talking about properties and the $200,000 range (suburban), you have a huge economic barrier to ownership in the urban space without some form of 0% down financing scheme. This differential also explains why suburban property is so much more popular. Given a $200,000 budget, how many years could you drive to work before you exhaust that budget? A simple model using the IRS numbers for cost per mile is extremely enlightening and a more comprehensive model doesn't change the numbers whole lot. I wouldn't be surprised if you end up in the 10 year range. And the beauty is, plug-in hybrids make it even more viable for living in suburbia.
Retail environments: while this isn't really a math problem it does kind of relate. Small communities create retail monopolistic environments. If there isn't enough people to support three or more stores of the same type, and that retailer is free to set prices to whatever they want. By restricting peoples ability to drive, you encourage monopolistic environments at the retail level. A classic example of this is the old corner market and modern convenience store. I remember the small markets of my childhood which made their living off of candy, milk, and newspapers. They typically had deli counter with food that look a little too old to be healthy to eat. They might have some apples but they wouldn't have anything good. I remember when the A&P opened up in the next town, my parents started immediately doing all their shopping there even though it meant dragging all of us kids and spending an hour or two once a week. It was cheaper, food was better, it was more convenient. I know this is unfashionable but I think small stores are hazardous to your wallet which is why I frequently shop big-box or Internet.
Killing off printed media: again, another not quite a math problem but I'll argue that if my friends apartments are any example, urban living space is much smaller than suburban and people are not going to purchase books or magazines because they don't have a place to read comfortably or store the printed material for future use
math problem 6: Time is money. Literally. Everybody's time has value for them. They put a value on our time by going to work in getting paid. We put a value on our spare time that is usually higher than what you get paid for work time. So, ask yourself what is your time worth and how much is public transit stealing from you? In the Boston area, public transit usually adds a 50% to your transit time. During non-rush-hour, I could drive anywhere in Cambridge, Back Bay, Longwood, Kendall area in half the time it would take me to go by public transit (typically an hour versus two and a half to three). Personally, I don't care how I get there, I will take the fastest mode and public transport fails every time. so, do the math. How much time are you wasting out of your life? You might find its faster to go by car, Scooter, or as the Chinese have found out, electric bicycle. Almost always, you'll find that public transit (bus, subway) is the slowest and most expensive form of transport. I suspect it would be cheaper to nuke public transit systems and give everybody electric cars. Failing that, I think that riders should pay 100% of the cost of public transport in the same way that all vehicle owners should pay 100% of the costs of operating a vehicle. No cross subsidization allowed. Cars pay for cars, trucks pay for trucks, buses pay for buses. Then you'll have a fair system.
In closing, there are no real good reasons for living in cities. They're dangerous, dirty, disease filled environments. Arguments such as shopping, restaurants, museums etc. don't hold any water with me. They're just places to spend money. People complain about the gadgets that are bought but I think the experience rental economy is even more devastating to people's financial health. And urban living encourages the rental experience. there are a host of other arguments against urban fantasy solutions because they don't work when people get old or infirm. Try crippling yourself sometime (temporarily). Bind up a knee, lose an arm, wear a blindfold. Then try to do normal things like go food shopping, ride public transport, ride a bicycle. Suburbia is not much better and I know because a recent illness limited my walking ability to about a quarter mile. So walking, bicycle, getting to a bus stop were all out of the question. Literally my only viable mode of transport was a four wheeled vehicle. if I had been trapped in urban space, I would be become broke taking taxis (i.e. rental experience) or never be able to make to the doctor.
when it comes to talking about urban spaces, check your fantasies at the door. Test all ideas against the needs of the disabled, ill, and aged. Understand the fear that dependency in immobility bring. Think about the history of urban spaces with elderly people dying in overheating apartments because they were too afraid to open a window or answer knock on the door. And always ask yourself why will your proposal be different from history? People haven't changed, situations haven't changed. There will always be fear, there will always be power struggles, there will always be twentysomethings looking to get laid and a bunch of other people that don't care.
hmm. you should see what I'm like what I really get going...
How amusing it is to see the workings of the inexpereirnced as they re-invent what already exists
Nice article! Though it reminds me of a Norman Rockwell painting of a past that never did actually exist except in the minds and imaginations of those who dream.
The idea sounds absolutely great! When tested with functionality, I'm afraid that it can never be unless we eliminate about 80% of the worlds population to accomplish it. When you have one of these dream neighborhoods with 300,000 people in it you will need transportation to simply get to work, the grocery and other places, making it self defeating, IMHO.
Instead, a few thousand people could each have most of the facilities they need closeby, i.e. within walking distance from where they live. People who wanted to could have gardens and grow fruit and vegetables, to be sold at markets in the local center. Such centers could cater for a few thousand people who live around such a center, with distances short enough for everyone to be able to walk or use bicycles or scooters, without needing any roads. Indeed, the absence of raods and cars makes that people can live close together. Yet, those centers could be interconnected by road, rail, boat or plane. Visiting another center would be quite different from the daily commuting we see now happen. Many people now sit in the car for more than an hour daily, to go to work, to do shopping, for meals and entertainment. Life very much evolves around cars and roads.
The way cities and suburbs have grown isn't the result of some natural law of urban growth, James, but it's the result of some very specific planning based on principles that now look pretty much outdated in many respects. There's nothing wrong with reconsidering those principles, James, and to try out some new configurations and designs that could work much better in the light of peak oil, health and obesity, social coherence, demographic changes, etc, etc, and of course global warming with all its consequences that are yet to make their full impact.
Much of southern Europe has always been this way, with people living in compact town and cities where they can walk nearly everywhere and do not need cars at all.
During the past 40 years much has been done to reclaim urban centers on the US East Coast; we can still do more.
Bunny, in thee no-roads communities, there are still markets. There is no need to eat out!
I want to hear more about "New Urbanism" from Ethan ~ I hope that he shares more on this with the Group.