What is carfree?
Carfree – it’s a word that is not part of the American lexicon. Even breaking the word apart – car free – won’t much help the average automobile-dependent U.S. resident intuit its meaning. If the concept seems foreign, that’s because it is.
The World Carfree Network started in Europe more than 10 years ago to, according to its mission statement, “bring together organizations and individuals dedicated to promoting alternatives to car dependence and automobile-based planning at the international level and working to reduce the human impact on the natural environment while improving the quality of life for all.”
But just as Americans begin to seriously grapple with global warming, high gasoline prices, and hopelessly congested roadways, the carfree concept and its adherents are establishing a beachhead here. The group’s eighth annual conference, Towards Carfree Cities, begins Monday in Portland, Oregon, the first time it’s been in the U.S.
And San Francisco activists are hoping to use the occasion to firmly plant the “carfree” word and concept in the minds of local planners and politicians, a cause the Guardian will help promote with daily coverage from the week-long conference.
“This conference is the one time each year when the international sustainable transportation movement gets together, compares notes, and does a survey of what is working and not working around the world,” says Brian Smith, international press secretary for the Oakland-based Earthjustice, who has attended the conference three times before, in Budapest, Bogota and Berlin.
Participating in this year’s conference will be a large contingent of Bay Area alternative transportation activists and thinkers, including a panel (which I’ll be moderating as I attend and cover the conference with daily posts to this blog) that Smith helped organize: “The Battle for San Francisco (1992-2008): From Critical Mass to Congestion Pricing.” It features Chris Carlsson, author of Critical Mass: Bicycling’s Defiant Celebration; Leah Shahum, executive director of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition; Dave Snyder, transportation policy director for the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association; and Jason Henderson, geography professor at San Francisco State University.
“With gas at $4 a gallon, what once seemed like a fairly Utopian vision of livable cities where people walk, bike, or ride transit to everything they need, is now just common sense. Will we continue to build sprawling car-dependent cities and wait for the gas riots, or will we fix our built environment while there is still time?” Smith said. “Rather than complain about all the problems, the World Carfree Network is starting the hard work of planning and building smarter cities.”
Smarter cities doesn’t mean there will be no cars. But the carfree concept does promote allowing people to get around without them by improving public transit opportunities, creating more bicycle lanes, building walkable neighborhoods, and generally removing the automobile from its position of primacy in transportation and urban planning.
As the Guardian recently reported, cities like Portland have pulled ahead of San Francisco in terms of integrating the carfree concept into its planning processes. As Smith said, “Portland is light years ahead of any other city in this country in building for sustainability. It will be a pleasure to show our overseas colleagues what has been achieved there.”
Many of the local attendees say they are going learn so they can return and teach. “I want to get inspired by other cities and learn what they’re doing,” was why Shahum said she’s attending. Henderson told me, “I’m interested in the social movement and how it’s evolving to affect change.”
That concept of organic social movements inspiring political reform has been central to the ethos and work of Carlsson, whose latest book is entitled Nowtopia: How Pirate Programmers, Outlaw Bicyclists, and Vacant-Lot Gardeners Are Inventing the Future Today. “We need to learn to live differently in cities,” Carlsson told me, arguing that the change has already begun on the grassroots level, “but it doesn’t have a political voice.”
Part of the aim of the conference is to give these visionaries a political voice. And now could be the moment for that kind of transformation. As green becomes the favorite color of progressive-minded politicians, they’ve begun to push carfree concepts such as ensuring roads are designed with all modes of transportation in mind. Assemblyman Mark Leno and Mayor Gavin Newsom have each recently championed such “complete streets” concepts.
Newsom has also recently gotten behind the idea of creating a carfree Ciclovia in San Francisco, borrowing a concept from Bogota, Columbia, whose former parks director, Gil Penalosa, will be the keynote speaker at the conference.
digg •
del.icio.us •
sphere •
google
•
Comments (3)
Hi Steven,
Please explain "...carfree concepts such as ensuring roads are designed with all modes of transportation in mind...". If everything is taken into account, how can a street be carfree? Streets were complete long before cars were around.
Have fun at the conference, it looks like it will be great.
Posted by Todd Edelman | June 13, 2008 10:55 AM
Cars will always be a part of the urban mix.
For handicapped people.
Able-bodied folks will have better options. Eventually diabetes and heart disease will reduce as we improve transit, walking, and cycling options.
Walkable cities will help us catch up with the rest of the modern world.
Posted by bob | June 14, 2008 10:04 AM
Sorry, Bob, but there are many other options for disabled people than private automobiles.
Other similarly situated urban centers are able to provide transportation options for the disabled that are not centered around automobiles.
And car free means people living car free, not creating a car-less society. But the more people who live car free, the fewer cars on the streets and the closer we get to a car free society.
The impediments San Francisco faces towards achieving these goals are neither technical nor political, they are social, in that the people who get paid to do this for a living are not producing identifiable results.
A junket to Portland on a diesel burning train is emblematic how social cliques have created the circumstances where loyalty trumps accountability.
-marc
Posted by marc salomon | June 16, 2008 10:13 AM