According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, approximately one-third of the nation’s residents don’t have driver’s licenses. In her 2024 book “When Driving is Not an Option: Steering Away from Car Dependency,” disability advocate Anna Zivarts argues that not only is America’s car-centric infrastructure harmful to the climate, it also fails to meet the everyday needs of many Americans.
One of the tests that Strong Towns offers to determine whether your town is a strong one is this: If there was some emergency (say, a fascist takeover) that required the community to gather together, would people know instinctively where to meet? In lots of low-density, car-oriented landscapes, there’s no there there, no community/symbolic spaces where people would go.
Obviously, this is an analytical tool, not guide as to what would happen in any real-world scenario. It does highlight the decline of community, and the fraying of the weak social ties that hold a community together. How do we as Americans organize ourselves to resist when so many of us don’t know even our close neighbors? How do we work to reduce political polarization, which is done by daily, face-to-face interaction with people who are not like us, when we have so little community interaction that’s not through a windshield?
It’s a chicken-and-egg problem as to whether the destruction of community is a cause or effect of car-dependency, but what’s clear is that the fascists are here and taking advantage of the fact that we’ve fucked ourselves over with a car-dependent landscape for too many decades.
@SwingingTheLamp @orbituary So many of the protests taking place now (especially the Tesla ones) are on 5+ lane stroads where most of the passersby seeing the protest are in cars. It’s a dangerous and inefficient way to fight fascism, but what else do people know how to do in Americar? So many suburbanites don’t even know how to get into city centers for a protest unless the city has been gutted to provide endless free parking.
Geography is extremely pertinent. I want for us to ensure our Democratic freedoms before our conveniences.
In the fuckcars community?