Thursday, October 20, 2005
Will changes in urban design save gasoline?
This article from two planners with the Brookings Foundation suggests that people would drive less, and thus save gasoline, if only we would redesign our cities so that more people could live near urban centers. As evidence, they point to studies showing that people who live in urban centers spend less on driving.
The problem with this evidence is the selection issue: People who don't want to drive tend to live in urban centers where they can be close to shops, services, and transit. These people are overwhelmingly young, single, or childless couples. That doesn't mean that plopping some family of five in downtown San Francisco will suddenly reduce their need to drive to Wal-Mart, soccer practice, or suburban jobs.
The fact is that our cities have already redesigned themselves, with jobs moving to the suburbs. Yet this doesn't mean that people live any closer to work. As UC Berkeley's Robert Cervero has found, cities in the San Francisco Bay Area that have a balance of jobs and housing still see long commutes because people don't bother (and may not even want to) live in the same cities in which they work.
The prescriptions offered by these planners -- concentrate housing in urban centers, offer people "choices" (meaning transit or walking, not driving) for travel -- are, of course, smart growth. These are, in fact, the policies that have been followed in European cities for the past sixty years. Due to high taxes, Europeans have also long paid much higher prices for fuel than Americans are now paying. Yet European driving is growing rapidly, their cities are suburbanizing, and transit is losing market share. If these policies don't work in Europe, why should they be expected to work in the U.S.?
The problem with this evidence is the selection issue: People who don't want to drive tend to live in urban centers where they can be close to shops, services, and transit. These people are overwhelmingly young, single, or childless couples. That doesn't mean that plopping some family of five in downtown San Francisco will suddenly reduce their need to drive to Wal-Mart, soccer practice, or suburban jobs.
The fact is that our cities have already redesigned themselves, with jobs moving to the suburbs. Yet this doesn't mean that people live any closer to work. As UC Berkeley's Robert Cervero has found, cities in the San Francisco Bay Area that have a balance of jobs and housing still see long commutes because people don't bother (and may not even want to) live in the same cities in which they work.
The prescriptions offered by these planners -- concentrate housing in urban centers, offer people "choices" (meaning transit or walking, not driving) for travel -- are, of course, smart growth. These are, in fact, the policies that have been followed in European cities for the past sixty years. Due to high taxes, Europeans have also long paid much higher prices for fuel than Americans are now paying. Yet European driving is growing rapidly, their cities are suburbanizing, and transit is losing market share. If these policies don't work in Europe, why should they be expected to work in the U.S.?
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