Cities: A Smart Alternative to Cars

Creating compact communities—and eliminating the need to drive everywhere—may be the best way to slash greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles

by Alex Steffen

The answer to the problem of the American car is not under its hood.

Today's cars are costly, dangerous, and an ecological nightmare. Transportation generates more than a quarter of U.S. greenhouse gases, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. A portion of that comes from moving freight around but more than 20% is personal transportation. Our vehicle emissions are a major climate change contributor, but what comes out of the tailpipe is only a fraction of the total climate impact of driving a car, and the climate impact is in turn only a part of the environmental and social damage cars cause. Improving mileage will not fix these problems.

The best car-related innovation we have is not to improve the car but to eliminate the need to drive it everywhere we go. In the U.S,, we need to stop sprawl and build well-designed compact communities. The land-use patterns in our communities dictate not only how much we drive, but how sustainable we can be on all sorts of fronts. And sprawled-out land uses generate enormous amounts of automotive greenhouse gases. A recent major study, Growing Cooler, published by Smart Growth America, a coalition of national, state, and local organizations that addresses urban planning, makes the point clearly: If 60% of new developments were even modestly more compact, we'd emit 85 million fewer metric tons of tailpipe [car emissions] CO2 each year by 2030—as much as would be saved by raising the national mileage standards to 32 mpg.

So we know that density reduces driving. We know we're capable of building really dense new neighborhoods with plenty of open space, welcoming public places, thriving neighborhood retail, and a tangible sense of place. Just look at Vancouver, which has redeveloped its downtown core into a dense mix of retail, jobs, and housing. Not only is the result one of the most liveable cities in North America, but 40% of all downtown Vancouver households are car-free.

Overhauling the American City

We're also capable of using good design, infill development (new, denser development in vacant or underused lots), and infrastructure investments to transform existing medium-low density neighborhoods into walkable compact communities. Creating communities dense enough to save those 85 million metric tons of tailpipe emissions is (politics aside) easy. It is within our power to go much farther: to build whole metropolitan regions where the vast majority of residents live in communities that eliminate the need for daily driving, and make it possible for many people to live without private cars altogether.

Generally, we think of cars as things which are quickly replaced and buildings as things which rarely change. That will not be the case over the next few decades. Because of population growth, the ongoing development churn in cities with buildings being remodeled or replaced, citywide infrastructure projects and changing tastes, half of the American-built environment will be rebuilt between now and 2030. Done right, that new construction could enable a complete overhaul of the American city.

This is especially true since we don't need to change every home to transform a neighborhood. Many cities prevent denser development through bad building codes. But many inner-ring suburban neighborhoods, for instance, could become terrific places simply by allowing infill development. Strip-mall arterials could be converted to walkable mixed-use streets. This transition can happen in a few years.

We Can't Wait For Changing Auto Design

In comparison, it takes at least 16 years to replace 90% of our automotive fleet, and since it takes years to move a car design from prototype to production, it looks likely that the cars most people in the U.S. have available to drive in 2030 will not be all that different from the more efficient cars today. I'm optimistic that at least some radically engineered, nontoxic, fully recyclable electric cars will be on the road by then, but it's extremely unlikely that (barring massive government intervention) they'll be anything like the norm. We should not wait for automobile design to fix this problem.