In a world where climate demands are always changing and global warming is an increasingly important issue, the discussion about car-centric cities is often a key talking point in major political debate. With so many of the world’s biggest cities reverting to more eco-friendly methods of transport slowly but surely (London, Tokyo and Shanghai, to name a few), it seems ridiculous that over a century after the creation of automobiles, we still have so many first-world countries more reliant than ever on their usage. In everyday life, it’s become staple to drive to work in the morning, rather than to take a train. It’s become staple to drive to the airport when going on holiday, rather than to take a bus. It’s become staple to drive to the shops down the road, rather than to just walk. But why are we so reliant on cars when climate change has reached a point of ‘no-return’, whereby pollution simply must fall before it’s too late?
If you look at the best examples around the world, you can start to see the overwhelming similarity between North American cities where it’s almost a necessity to have a car just to live a normal life. In a video made by YouTube channel ‘Not Just Bikes’ named ‘Why City Design is Important (and Why I Hate Houston)’, the car-centric nature of Houston in particular is focused on. The creator digresses into the car-dependent nature of the city, with a simple walk to the grocery store being a treacherous and perilous task due to the lack of pedestrian sidewalks. Miles of land in Houston go unnoticed for pedestrians, with the whole city being covered by one thing: roads. Their remains little to no zoning in Houston now as a city, so whilst it remains a place with flood zones, airport zones and a central business district, Houston has a lot of work to do.
The USA has always been like this, though, and Houston is no exception, but merely the rule. In a survey taken by the US Federal Highway Administration for National Household Travel, it was discovered that roughly 45% of all car trips made by Americans are for trips 3 miles or less in distance. Another 30% of trips are just 4-10 mile trips, with under 25% of all American car journeys being more than 10 miles. All this is to say that the evidence is staggering. Car-centric cities dominate the North-West.
Perhaps Phoenix is a more promising example of a North American city taking lessons from the past and finally reforming to more modern ways of transport and infrastructure. With an ever-growing population in Phoenix, who entered the top 10 most populated US cities this century, old buildings are finally being ditched and a modern skyscraper filled approach is being applied. Grace Oldham, interviewing Phoenix’ deputy director of planning, claimed that ‘With infrastructure and technology allowing increased accessibility to the entire Valley, residential and business patterns never created pressure to develop work and living space in the city's core’. Zoning changes in 2010 and 2015 look to encourage height in the downtown core, and Phoenix seems to be advancing into the new world.
Regardless, the slow but inevitable movement toward less car-dependence must be a positive one. With COP26 talks held in November of 2021, all steps on the right direction – away from polluting transport – are positive ones. Whilst Houston and Phoenix might both be huge cities behind their time, both look to make significant improvements to their current systems, only an encouraging sign for the next decades of life in the United States of America.
