Hey there, i’m new here! i feel…atracted? by this topic/movement but im a completly newbie, so where are some sources or webs to read about this hate to cars (lol)? or if you want to tell more about of this, let me know in the comments Thanks for reading!
My hatred for cars developed in 3 stages. The first involved a casual observation that well, they seem to cause a lot of death don’t they? Both directly through traffic fatalities and indirectly through urban pollution, global warming, sedentary lifestyle issues, etc.
The 2nd stage occurred when I visited Phoenix AZ for the first time. It’s a major city built from the ground up to serve the automobile. You basically can’t do anything without a car. You can’t walk to the corner store. It’s miles away. There is no sense of community anywhere. You can be in perfect health and yet feel handicapped because walking won’t get you anywhere. And last but not least, even with a car city like this, Phoenix is still plagued by traffic jams! It’s just so depressing.
The 3rd stage set in when I bought my first e-bike. It didn’t outright replace the car, but it did replace around 90% of the trips I had been making by car. It cost a tiny fraction to buy it and maintain it, and it made me angry to think of how much of my personal wealth had been sunk into automobiles and fuel over the years.
Regarding stage 2, the first documentary I watched that really drove it home for me was The Human Scale. It’s a little dated at this point, but still relevant in the central points it makes about urban sprawl.
Ugh, I thought Phoenix was the worst. Then I went to Houston.
Impossible to do anything without driving. I saw my hotel was a half mile from my destination. I did not rent a car. I was a fool to just assume there would be pedestrian infrastructure. Couldn’t even step out and get lunch without getting in a car.
Ended up costing the company more in stupid short rideshares…
Wow, I’ve never had the “pleasure” of spending any time in Houston outside of an airport. The only place in Texas I’ve ever been is Midland. Let me tell you about Midland.
It’s Permian Basin oil country. The landscape is barren desert with endless oil derricks and methane fires stretching out to the horizon. Methane is natural gas. While the rest of the world worries about global warming and is trying to use it as a transitional fuel until renewables catch up with demand, in the PB it’s just burned off because it’s a nuisance gas.
There’s also a sting of sulfur in the air. So it’s a literal Hell in the fire and brimstone sense. I did rent a car on that trip. A tiny little Kia Soul. Everything else on the road was a pickup truck or some kind of industrial vehicle. Halfway through my stay there, a flash flood came out of nowhere and I had to move the Kia to higher ground before it got carried away. I have no desire to see that place ever again in my life, and am still traumatized at the thought it actually exists.
Whew, sounds like some kind of post apocalyptic hellscape.
I do have to feel bad for the people who grow up there, and think that’s just normal.