Car-Free Me

I am not car-free, but I want to be. If you’re ever in a conversation with me for more than five minutes, chances are I’m going to ruin the vibe by accidentally turning the subject into car dependency in America. I try to avoid purely venting as much as possible. It’s also true, however, that I’m genuinely not good at processing this emotion yet and it’s also a lonely emotion at times, and I often can’t resist an opportunity to dump a few of my burdens onto whatever poor souls happen to be in my radius. Car dependency is a crisis that haunts me more than my inevitable death does, and my stress about it often comes out in embarrassing ways:

• “Oh yeah, I saw La-La-Land! Speaking of, I can’t believe Los Angeles used to have a complex network of trolleys that were all scrapped to make room for personal vehicles and nothing has changed since then!”
• “This is such a great song! It’s too bad no new genres of music have ever come out of car-dependent suburbs.”
• “Oh, you got a parking ticket? Did you know that all automobile deaths are basically by design?????”

Anyway, I’m here now to be a big girl and let out my frustrations on my keyboard rather than a human. More importantly, I hope to get some relief from the act of writing itself.

It’s not just that I dislike cars in isolation (I do, they’re dirty and poisonous machines, but that’s not my point), or that the big dogs of the auto industry and Big Oil are probably besties (I mean, wouldn’t they be?). It’s that I hate our utter dependency on cars to survive, and seeing cars is just a constant reminder of it. Car dependency is also an issue that’s within my ability to change for myself. I am one of the countless Americans who live in a suburb (albeit a relatively dense one), and drive to work every day.

The frustration with needing to drive everywhere has been a lifelong feeling, but it wasn’t until recently that I gained the means to express it. While at college, I took an elective course called “Architecture, Sustainability, and the City,” and guys, I will never be the same. Despite being a class in the School of Architecture, this class (ARCH346) was a humanities course, a code word for lethal amounts of reading. I spent eons reading the densest, bluntest, and most all-encompassing textbook about the concept of New Urbanism–that is, the movement promoting livable and walkable cities. I learned about complex order, prospect and refuge, enticement, and other elements of good urban design. I learned what causes civilizations to rise and fall, how to build a net-zero-emissions house, the understated importance of trees, and everything Jane Jacobs fought for. The professor was a man in his seventies who was also the Dean of the School of Architecture. The man practically pioneered New Urbanism, and understandably seemed to hate everything and everyone. He biked to class every day and had built his own passive solar house. I honestly think it was fair that we had to buy his book.

The professor taught us a million different ideas translating to: car dependency is indeed a crisis and it has to be stopped if we are to live full and healthy lives. And I think he’s right.

That is to say, when I pull onto the freeway on my way to work, I see cars commuting, which spirals into the problem about car accidents, which spirals into the problem about car dependency, which spirals into a problem about city planning, which spirals into a problem about zoning, which spirals into a problem about suburbs, which spirals into a problem about racism, which spirals into a problem about the inequity of the climate crisis and Ronald Reagan and consumerism and Coca-Cola and atomic bombs and billionaires and oil and guns and war and premature death. It’s hard.

For the record, if you’re looking to study sustainability, college is the most depressing place to do it. It is also, unfortunately, maybe the best place to do it (It is college after all). Although I will say, it was very not fun to hear experts in the field casually dish out the bleakest information about America you’ve ever heard in your life over their morning coffee. Which I suppose was the point of it all. I can’t say it was all easy to stomach what he had to say. Car dependency makes us sick. Car dependency makes us lonely, which also makes us sick. Car dependency makes communities unsafe (there are no “eyes on the street,” so to speak). Car dependency keeps families apart. Car dependency has a history of redlining and racism. Car dependency destroys neighborhoods and community (banning mixed use development and a lack of “third places” where people can exist without buying something). Car dependency is the enemy of culture and progress. . . . .you get it.

The difficulty of absorbing this reality meant I didn’t let myself think about the class for a while after I finished it. I was too focused on grades to let feelings get in the way. But after some time, I realized had internalized the following takeaways from lecture without even noticing:

1. Cities are meant to be lived in, not simply commuted to.
2. People living in dense, walkable cities tend to be happier, healthier, and have smaller carbon footprints than those who are not.
3. Americans worship cars and oh my frog it is so out of control.

Do these ideas sound obvious? I feel like they sound obvious written out like that. But the notion of car dependency as being a choice was novel to me at the time, and I’m still unpacking it to this day.

I know I probably sound like a huge elitist when I talk about car dependency being a choice, since many people move to car-dependent suburbs for their affordability or schools. I myself live in, frankly, a fancy suburb that is walkable and full of wealthy elites, diverse architecture, and well-maintained sidewalks, so I want to be careful when I speak negatively about car dependency from a position most Americans can’t afford. Of course, suburbs can be very pleasant and peaceful in their own way–there’s a range of suburban styles, and when I refer to suburbia, I am usually talking about sprawling, winding subdivisions and ignoring ordinary, gridded suburbs. Suburbs of any kind, though, offer breathing room, refreshing green space, and sometimes healthy privacy and a sense of oasis from a busy world. I appreciate those qualities. I am distraught, though, by how universal it is for American suburbanites to literally hide from their neighbors. Let’s be real, we’ve all done that shit! Recently, I once walked down the street to ask and the people living on the corner of my street–who, of course, I’ve never seen outdoors in my basically 20 years of living near them–if I could put I garage sale sign near the end of their massive yard. A fully grown adult woman opened the door about three inches, looked at me, standing in pajamas and holding a cardboard sign I made myself with Crayola markers, hid most of her body behind the door, and squeaked, “Okay,” as though my five-foot-nothing ass was going to kick in the door and seize her estate. Then she slammed the door in my face. Bananas. In a country without a livable minimum wage, required paid maternal leave, and astronomical daycare costs, I am sad especially for parents who have to sacrifice their village to give their children a home. A lack of everyday human interactions–at least here in the Metro Detroit suburbs–seems to be a bigger threat to the health and safety of our children than any of the petty crimes and inconveniences that come with a bit of density. Also driveways. Driveways kill a lot of people.

While I can appreciate the freedom, greenery, and privacy a suburb offers (my professor noted their appeal as “a little country in the city”), humans willingly choosing to live somewhere where they must drive like, a half hour or more to fulfill basic needs is more frightening than freeing to me. A car is no novelty, no symbol of freedom like it used to be, unless you have the ability to live humanely without one. How I see it: if you need a car to buy food, your life is 100% dependent on that car! Likewise–if I’m being perfectly honest–it feels like I’ve meet more people than not who can easily afford to live somewhere pleasant, walkable, and with fine schools, and simply choose not to because anything resembling urbanity is “unsafe” or “dirty” or “loud.” With that attitude, dear friends, it really won’t matter what school your kid attends. Anti-urbanism is a sentiment steeped in anti-Blackness and extreme American individualism. That is to say, nothing fuels my ego like having fun outside in front of the new generation of NIMBYs who don’t have the balls to yell at me in the way old people used to, because it’s obvious they secretly like it. I see you! I know you want to come out and play cornhole!

A silent neighborhood is only peaceful to me on some days. If you decide to take a walk in most suburbs, you are completely exposed–you have little sense of pedestrian protection or privacy. (Legend says, streets used to be full of kids running around.) A soccer mom, nowadays, is just the average mom. Children are regularly growing up in cars. Even worse, without everyday opportunities to engage with people with different skin colors and different incomes, white kids in suburbs regularly fail to cultivate basic self-awareness, empathy, and racial/cultural awareness–even those with the best intentions. Kids of color growing up in white-dominated suburbs know this all too well; their experiences are horrifying. It’s more than just about rich, white kids being “sheltered”; to be sheltered is often a good thing. It’s about white parents refusing to acknowledge the history that benefits them. And the cycle goes on and on.

Plus, people in suburbs have bigger carbon footprints are bigger than those in dense cities (the population paradox). I would argue, coexisting in close quarters might just be what humans . . . . . .do better than anything? Governmental bodies notwithstanding. Why else is college “the best years of our lives,” if not for living within walking distance to our friends? And why shouldn’t living near our friends be a lifelong priority? Isn’t social connection and close proximity the point of being a human at all. . . . ? I want to bang my head against my window when I listen to people argue they need to stay in some cookie-cutter hell because urban life apparently only means “little shoebox apartments with rats everywhere”–don’t threaten me with a good time! When did we start feeling safer on empty sidewalks than full ones?

I guess anger only gets me so far. I think having hope is an act of rebellion, so I’m going to make myself look on the bright side, whether I like it or not. I’ve gained a refreshing sense of confidence about being educated on car dependency at a young age. It’s empowering to have words to what were previously inexpressable feelings; to have my childhood discomfort around cars validated. I mean, how fucking insane is pumping gas, anyway. It’s cool to finally see the issue as fightable. Oh, the sweet relief of a professor explaining the science behind why Midwest teens always hang out in Target parking lots!

Honestly, after taking that class, I feel more connected to my lived experiences, and I’m more ready to defend them against people who want to deny them. I feel more confident going off the beaten path of life in general. I’ve learned a critical fact about the way I want to live life: to not be 100% reliant on a car. Finally, I’ve learned access to education is truly the biggest blessing of all, because just this one class gives me tools for discussions about the future of our country. I’ve earned my spot at that table.