Peter Newman speculates in The Conversation:
In fact, for many people, cars have become less a desirable commodity, and more of a burden. For people who are dependent on their cars, it can become very hard to keep control of the budget when fuel prices are so unpredictable. Many of these people don’t have the option of moving closer to the city. High real estate prices and poor public transport mean the only option is outer suburbs and long, car-bound commutes.
The future for these people isn’t promising. The outer suburbs will become places where only the poor will live. Opponents of development, such as Save our Suburbs, have campaigned against inner-city densification on the grounds it will create ghettos, but the real ghettos are going to be on the urban fringes.
The wealthy are moving. They’re finding places to live where it’s easy to get to activity, where there’s plenty of public transport and where there are good walking conditions. City centres are becoming kind of eco-enclaves: you can see that in the Greens vote.
But it’s more and more desperate the further out you go. Australia’s 50-year suburban experiment isn’t delivering all the wonderful things we’d hoped for. The great Australian dream is actually a bit of a nightmare.
Governments aren’t really addressing this issue. They talk about developing polycentric cities with substantial employment and activities in the suburbs and small cities. They say there should be good public transport linking them all together.
But in most cases they haven’t worked out how to fund or implement these plans. It’s just talk. In fact, most of the planning bodies in government departments still assume further sprawl and still assume more car use.
There are always going to be journeys that are too difficult to make by foot, bike or public transport. There will always be places that are difficult to reach without a car. And for many people with disabilities, a car is vital.
But cars need to be just a part of the package, not the soul of our transport system. We’ve been planning as though we can’t live without cars. We have almost killed our cities in the process.
I take a small bit of exception to the idea that high real estate prices prevent people from moving to more transit-accessible places. Part of the truth of that statement comes from an expectation on square footage. The more transit-accessible housing = higher density = smaller units. So yes, if you’re looking to trade your 3500 sqft house for a 3500sqft condo/townhouse in a transit-friendly place, you probably won’t be able to swing that financially. But you might be able to get something smaller… question is – are people willing to make that trade or do they want to have their cake and eat it too?
But otherwise, agree wholeheartedly. I’m very concerned about all people in Canada living in places entirely dependent on driving everywhere… what will they do when gas prices make getting to work too expensive? What will we do as a country with all those people in all those suburbs turned into ghettos? How will we help them and wouldn’t it be better to help now?