Where I grew up, we were a 30 minute drive from anywhere except a gas station and an elementary school; and even those were 6 miles from my house along a road 5 lanes wide with no sidewalks. I could not go anywhere or do anything unless my parents could drive me. Until the summer that I turned 14.
That year, I met my best friend; he’d just moved to our subdivision towards the end of 7th grade. His house was about a mile from mine, and at 14 our parents were comfortable letting us ride bikes around the subdivision on our own. This was the first real taste of the independence I’d been craving for practically my entire life. I could ride my bike up to Stephen’s house; he could ride his bike down to mine; we could go off together and ride our bikes around the subdivision, or off to the nearby reservoir. We spent our days riding and then at night we’d often end up staying at one or another’s house playing Vampire: The Masquerade late into the night and watching Adam Sandler movies.
I’ve no doubt that this is why I love bicycles so much. My bicycle liberated me at the age of 14. Even though I still couldn’t go to the movies or the mall without my parents to give me a ride, I could at least visit a friend whenever I felt like it. I imagine my parents were also pleased that they no longer had to devote so much time to my social life.
This is also why I am passionate about urbanism. Our car-centric cities and towns rob people of their independence. People who would otherwise be perfectly capable of going out on their own to meet friends, or grocery shop, or go to the library are prevented from doing so because they can’t drive. Maybe they’re too young to drive, as I was at 14; or maybe they’ve gotten old enough that it’s no longer safe for them to drive; or perhaps they have a disability that prevents them from driving. Sometimes people can’t drive simply because they can’t afford a car, because these things are really expensive.
In the episode When Driving is Not an Option with Anna Zivarts, The War on Cars interviews Anna Zivarts about her new book When Driving is Not an Option: Steering Away from Car Dependency which deals with exactly these issues. In the episode, they go into more detail about the reasons that people can’t drive and the kinds of effects that being unable to drive in a car-brained world have on the people who are trapped by our urban planning.
It may surprise you to find out that 30% of people in the United States are unable to drive. Now you may object to that statistic because I believe it includes, for example, infants and toddlers, and even in an urbanist’s paradise, infants aren’t heading off to play dates by themselves. But I can tell you from personal experience that having to bundle my kid into his car seat to take him somewhere is a hassle. I’ve postponed errands until my wife could keep an eye on our kid just because getting him in and out and in and out of his car seat turns a quick trip to the pharmacy into a much longer ordeal. It’s significantly easier to put him in his stroller for something like this, because I can just push the stroller with him in it right into the pharmacy.
So even though this isn’t about independence for children that young, it is still a mobility issue for the caregivers of those children.
I was pleasantly surprised to see that my local library had already ordered Anna Zivart’s book. I’m looking forward to reading it, especially since I think it does go into some of the ways that we can work to improve the places we live and increase mobility for everyone.
One issue they discuss in the podcast is that people who don’t drive are often absent when planning decisions are made. The people who plan our cities all drive, so they don’t even consider what life is like for people who can’t. This is, at least in part, because people who don’t drive are unable to attend planning meetings.
Well, I am able to attend these meetings, and, although I can drive, I care very much about building a world where nobody has to. I’m looking forward to finding ways to use my privilege to improve mobility for all of us, not just those of us who drive.