On Jul 19 2007, Udhay Shankar N wrote:
B. L. Krieger wrote: [ on 07:51 PM 7/19/2007 ]
it has all just to do with really easy political decisions to make
cities car free. after all (european) cities were not designed for
cars in the first place.
It's not European, does it count?
sure. my point was that cities normally are not planned for a technology
that did not exist at the time. mainly thaths' 'hinduness' argument. your
examples are about living space being planed considering (and trying to
avoid) a certain type of technology.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dongtan
http://spectrum.ieee.org/jun07/5128
i am really looking forward to seeing places like these develop.
BTW - how did you arrive at the opinion that making any urban space
car-free is a "really easy political decision"?
because in this field decisions can still be taken by politicians.
political action does not involve too much financial effort and there are
enough (and will even be more) incentives - financially as well as
otherwise. the main point, however, is that the vast majority of cities
(and again i know most about european cities) is inhabited by people that
don't own a car and thereby have an interest in not having cars around.
delanoe knows that only 25% of parisians own a car. the majority of cars in
paris come from outside paris and are driven by people who don't vote for
or against him as a major of paris. this makes political decision much
easier for him (or others such as such as red ken in london).
sorry for the eurocentric perspective.
by car-free i think of not having pollution emitting, car-sized vehicles
for individual transport.
-b
