There are a whole cadre of city planners out there trying their hardest to force Americans to live in high-density neighborhoods where they can unshackle themselves from the automobile and its dreaded internal-combustion engine. Wishful thinking on many accounts, but, interestingly, when the data doesn’t quite line up like they’d like (or expect), they still try every which way to explain these inconvenient facts and get everyone back on the “new urbanism” narrative. Case in point. A recent article in CityLab admits that even in America’s most transit-orientated cities, car ownership is in fact on the rise. The author even goes so far as to say that increased car ownership in these most walkable & transit-oriented cities is “a deeply worrisome reversal from what came before” [when transit ridership increased while car ownership slowly grew]. Indeed, how about just letting freedom ring…
“What’s driving the rise of the car-rich city household? It likely includes economic trends that put money in people’s pockets: job growth, the influx of affluent urban professionals, and falling gas prices.”
Click here to read the full story at citylab.com.
