Flutterby™! : Silver on car culture

Silver on car culture

2012-11-26 16:32:59.868496+00 by Dan Lyke 7 comments

Nate Silver in Esquire: The End of Car Culture. Not the first person to observe that the love affair with cars may be changing.

[ related topics: Sociology California Culture Automobiles ]

comments in descending chronological order (reverse):

#Comment Re: made: 2012-11-28 21:01:00.780752+00 by: Larry Burton

I thought this might be appropriate to this thread.

#Comment Re: made: 2012-11-28 20:33:17.577613+00 by: Dan Lyke

So I had this vague feeling that maybe I had linked it before, but the best I find is June 2010 link to Ad Age: Is Digital Revolution Driving Decline in U.S. Car Culture?.

Which may have been spurred by Silver's article to begin with.

#Comment Re: made: 2012-11-28 19:15:24.139978+00 by: dexev

The byline on this article says it was written in 2009. So he may actually have been one of the first to pick up on this.

#Comment Re: made: 2012-11-28 03:33:42.562406+00 by: other_todd

Oh wow, a friend of mine was looking for a bike like that a while back and we couldn't come up with good sources. I hadn't realized the magic words were "cargo bike."

#Comment Re: made: 2012-11-28 02:12:25.220893+00 by: Larry Burton

Other_todd, you can bring a flat packed dresser back from IKEA on your bike if it's the right bike. But I agree with you, until we rethink towns and cities and stop creating and growing suburbs we are going to be tied to cars.

#Comment Re: made: 2012-11-27 09:38:59.204402+00 by: stevesh [edit history]

When they pry my cold, dead hands from the steering wheel ... (Edit : that should be 'hand' I almost always have a cup of coffee in the other.)

#Comment Re: made: 2012-11-27 02:48:45.889666+00 by: other_todd

This is why Silver should stick to stats and not try character extrapolation. His stats mean nothing if people CAN'T abandon their cars because there is no alternative, especially in the face of no political will for mass transit in the Rest Of The Country(tm). (They barely have will for it here.) Also, no one has yet solved the Carrying Big Things problem. U-Haul is extortionate, ZipCar depends far too much on an assumption of rational actors, and you can't bring a dresser back from IKEA on your bicycle, not even flat-packed.

Sorry about the tone, I'm not in the best mood tonight. Let me mitigate: I would love to see us past Peak Car, and maybe we are past it. But it's a long way from Peak Car to Post-Car, unless you postulate REALLY radical change of one kind or another to most of the middle of the country.