Many Americans Are Open to Car-Free Living — Human Transit
humantransit.org
Is Americans a “car culture” or are they “car dependent”?  Do they drive because they love driving, or are they in an unhealthy relationship with a substance it would be happy to do without?  Obviously there are plenty of Americans who do love their cars, but here’s more evidence that there are fewer of them […]

cross-posted from: https://kbin.melroy.org/m/[email protected]/t/1372827

We find that nearly one fifth of urban and suburban US car owners express a definite interest in living car-free (18 %), and an additional 40 % are open to the idea. This is in addition to the small share (10 %) of urban and suburban US residents currently living without a car.

  • JoshuaFalken@lemmy.worldEnglish
    13·
    3 days ago

    If that fifth of people would attend local council meetings and petition their municipality to remove parking minimums, maybe we’d get housing developments that encourage a car free lifestyle.

    A property nearby is being developed into a midrise apartment building with fifteen units. The building itself takes up about a third of the land, and the rest will be asphalt, no outdoor space at all. It could have easily been a 30-40 unit building with a common green space, but oh no where would the cars go.

    • apprehensively_human@lemmy.caEnglish
      6·
      3 days ago

      One of our recent council meetings had a developer wanting to rezone a lot to medium density but needed a variance to allow for less parking given the size of the parcel.

      Council unanimously approved the rezoning citing the need for more medium density projects, but were completely divided on the vote for the parking variance. They could not fathom that a developer would know best how many parking spaces would be needed to still be functional and profitable. All they wanted was to reduce the requirement from 1.5 spaces per unit down to 1.25 spaces per unit. A decrease of like 9 spaces total.

      Luckily the variance was eventually approved but not before a lot of debate and grandstanding about what people are supposed to do with their cars.

      • JoshuaFalken@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        2 days ago

        That’s good to hear a reduction was able to be approved. Nine spaces is even enough square footage for an additional apartment per level, if that’s what they were building. It would nice to see more developers push for less parking in favour of more living space.

        Surely it’s in their interest, with revenue coming from the housing not the car park. Of course, this is a difficult status quo to challenge. It’s almost as if a building would need constructing on half a parcel, follow the parking minimum, then the units only be rented to people without cars simply to prove it can be done. Then put up a second building.

        It would be a bit silly to build a literal proof of concept, though sometimes an example people can lay eyes on is a necessity.

  • turdburglar@piefed.socialEnglish
    4·
    2 days ago

    yeah it super fuken sucks that instead of nationwide high speed passenger rail, we’re letting bezos, musk, gates, branson, buffett, pritzker, zuckerberg, and rest of the greedy fucks stack giant piles of gold in their caves.

    we need to raid that shit and build a better country for the rest of us that got them all that money in the first place.