What if cities were made for people? What if cities helped us to live longer? What if we saw a drop in respiratory disease because we stopped driving as much and we lived longer? Imagine cities without millions of cars on the roadways.
Build Cities for Bikes, Buses, and Feet—Not Cars, posted on Wired, really caught my attention. This year I have been hyper-focused on helping the environment by my purchases and daily life changes: Two of these changes include Plant-Based Eating and the other involves the use of Electric Vehicles (as an exampled my Tesla and my electric Skateboard).
Jeff Tumlin in the article stands out a front-runner of innovative thought to change San Fransisco into a car-free city…and it is possible. I can wholeheartedly get behind a cause that is good for people and good for the environment.
- Emissions are hurting us globally.
- Ways that can large cities make the switch: Close streets to private cars, ban cars from its city center, build bike lanes and divide into zones that transits can cross freely but cars can’t.
Whether you are looking to reduce CO2 emissions, advance social equity, foster small business success, increase land value, increase public health, reduce fatalities and injuries, transportation is what needs to shift. Cities only take up 2% of all land on earth but are responsible for 70% of global emissions, let that sink in. Transportation accounts for nearly a third of total greenhouse gas emissions in the United States and more than half of that number are from vehicles.
In highly populated cities with transit, people drive less, and transit serves more people more efficiently, therefore reducing emissions. Creating more public transit networks and being open to change is going to be what we need to move forward.
The solution is complex and will take time to implement, it will not be an overnight fix. People want to live in places that are easy to get around, even without a car. Our streets are a resource but often poorly managed. It is time to change.
