That "many cities...require car ownership" is messed up. By definition, we're talking about dense places. But I don't think we should resolve car ownership (or at least the extent of daily use) as unavoidable, even in America. In liberal governed cities (so cities), how really radical is it to build metros, or at least broaden and support reliable bus services? I'm reminded of this (now a bit old) article on urban living as paradoxically green (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2004/10/18/green-manhattan). In particular, an average Manhattanite (consumer of consumers!) "consumes gasoline at a rate that the country as a whole hasn’t matched since the mid 1920s."
From the article you must have read when you were 6 or 7: "Nearly everything we do away from our house requires a car trip. Renting a movie and later returning it, for example, consumes almost two gallons of gasoline, since the nearest Blockbuster is ten miles away and each transaction involves two round trips."
I for one don't see how driving is still an issue when Netflix has solved the key issue here.
I listened to that freakonomics podcast yesterday while... driving to Stanford when I could have taken the cal-train (in double the time, mind you!).
Really interesting to hear about the popularity of electric cars in the 1890's, how the ICE was an environmental solution for too many horses, and the ways we frame the shift:
"DUBNER: Name for me a year or an era when you see the global auto fleet being converted primarily to electric. Or maybe it’s not electric, maybe it’s something beyond electric.
STANDAGE: It’s interesting that you framed the question in that way because this is exactly how people thought in the 1890s. They were looking at the horse-drawn vehicles and they’re assuming that’s it’s just a one-to-one substitution. Every combination of a horse and a wagon gets replaced by an automobile and that nothing else changes. Of course, everything else changed. I think we risk falling into the same historical trap today, which is, “We could all just go on the way things are. All we have to do is switch over to electric cars. So, when are we going to do that? And then we can all just breathe a sigh of relief.” That’s not how it works. Electric cars are fundamentally different things, and you could do different things with them. You could use them for grid storage. You maybe don’t need to own them because they’re much, much smarter. Maybe you could call one to come to you, or maybe you could share them because you can unlock them with smartphones because they’re basically computers on wheels. I think this whole framing, which is that we just assume the world is the same, except that our internal combustion engines are electric motors, is just the wrong way of looking at it, and the history of the 20th century tells us we should not be falling into that trap."
That "many cities...require car ownership" is messed up. By definition, we're talking about dense places. But I don't think we should resolve car ownership (or at least the extent of daily use) as unavoidable, even in America. In liberal governed cities (so cities), how really radical is it to build metros, or at least broaden and support reliable bus services? I'm reminded of this (now a bit old) article on urban living as paradoxically green (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2004/10/18/green-manhattan). In particular, an average Manhattanite (consumer of consumers!) "consumes gasoline at a rate that the country as a whole hasn’t matched since the mid 1920s."
From the article you must have read when you were 6 or 7: "Nearly everything we do away from our house requires a car trip. Renting a movie and later returning it, for example, consumes almost two gallons of gasoline, since the nearest Blockbuster is ten miles away and each transaction involves two round trips."
I for one don't see how driving is still an issue when Netflix has solved the key issue here.
Good point! Though I prefer Nutflix
nvm that's a porn site
I listened to that freakonomics podcast yesterday while... driving to Stanford when I could have taken the cal-train (in double the time, mind you!).
Really interesting to hear about the popularity of electric cars in the 1890's, how the ICE was an environmental solution for too many horses, and the ways we frame the shift:
"DUBNER: Name for me a year or an era when you see the global auto fleet being converted primarily to electric. Or maybe it’s not electric, maybe it’s something beyond electric.
STANDAGE: It’s interesting that you framed the question in that way because this is exactly how people thought in the 1890s. They were looking at the horse-drawn vehicles and they’re assuming that’s it’s just a one-to-one substitution. Every combination of a horse and a wagon gets replaced by an automobile and that nothing else changes. Of course, everything else changed. I think we risk falling into the same historical trap today, which is, “We could all just go on the way things are. All we have to do is switch over to electric cars. So, when are we going to do that? And then we can all just breathe a sigh of relief.” That’s not how it works. Electric cars are fundamentally different things, and you could do different things with them. You could use them for grid storage. You maybe don’t need to own them because they’re much, much smarter. Maybe you could call one to come to you, or maybe you could share them because you can unlock them with smartphones because they’re basically computers on wheels. I think this whole framing, which is that we just assume the world is the same, except that our internal combustion engines are electric motors, is just the wrong way of looking at it, and the history of the 20th century tells us we should not be falling into that trap."