The math doesn't math when the city grows around car-centric design. All the extra space taken up to separate people from unpleasant high-speed roadways, all the huge parking lots, the extremely-wide roads, it pushes travel times up so much that between the extra distance between everything, and the time spent earning money to pay hundreds a month to have a car (insurance, depreciation, maintenance, gas) ends up significantly exceeding the benefits of car ownership.
They're wildly nice if only a few people have them. The more do, and the more parts of a city cater to cars, the worse they get, even as they also become totally necessary (so, not having them also gets far, far worse, even untenable).
I was introduced to this notion reading an analysis from some French social-philosopher and was initially like "that... can't be right, surely?" so ran conservative numbers on my own situation, with an average-or-better commute distance for my city, a cheap paid-off car, and nearly double median individual income for my city, and... yep, dude was right, living in a city designed around cars was costing me time, not saving it. It'd be a ton worse for people with worse commutes and lower-earning jobs. They were getting totally screwed on the deal.
was it Jacques Ellul? He made a real impact on me, his analysis that people adapt to the machine rather than the other way around, even will internalize its value system. In modern society, "efficiency" remains the sole aspiration, which is a technological value, not a human one. fwiw - don't recall if he wrote a lot about cars though.
They're wildly nice if only a few people have them. The more do, and the more parts of a city cater to cars, the worse they get, even as they also become totally necessary (so, not having them also gets far, far worse, even untenable).
I was introduced to this notion reading an analysis from some French social-philosopher and was initially like "that... can't be right, surely?" so ran conservative numbers on my own situation, with an average-or-better commute distance for my city, a cheap paid-off car, and nearly double median individual income for my city, and... yep, dude was right, living in a city designed around cars was costing me time, not saving it. It'd be a ton worse for people with worse commutes and lower-earning jobs. They were getting totally screwed on the deal.