Thanks for eventually getting to the bottom line after blowing so much smoke: no car free residential housing development at Village Homes, nor in Davis nor in Portland nor in Oregon, or anywhere else in the U.S. But I knew that already. And so do you; unless I credit you with more smarts than you deserve.

Perhaps you can get together with some of your so-called rational people and use a similar convincing argument to get them to invest some coin of the realm in the novel idea of a car free residential housing development. Perhaps you can use the dreamy project plans one of the other "rational people" on this list as a blueprint for this project.

Did you ever wonder why nobody else thought of such a sure fire success residential housing project except for a couple of characters on this list? Maybe you need to reevaluate your definition of the term rational.

Short answer, yes.

A city can decide to ban just about any form of transportation. It would be political suicide in the car culture centers of the world. So don't look for it in any major city in the U.S.

Or minor city, or any other place from coast to coast.

Apparently some people don't know the difference between nonexistent car free residential housing development where homeowners are banned from having motor vehicle access to their own home, and apartment houses in central city cores without dedicated parking lots or convenient street side parking.

I'm not "anti car" per se, what with having a 331 stroker V8 in my Volvo wagon, however I took the plates off it a couple of years ago, not just because of the cost, but for the fact that I realized how much more I enjoyed cycling.

If there were some kind of car free nirvana that I could move to, I'd be all for it; even here on the "wet coast" of BC, most people just use their cars as glorified wheelchairs. Sometimes, of course, cars are very useful, so I think just having a separate network might work better, but not a greenway that intersects every driveway and cross street.

The residential areas where I live feel a lot safer than the main roads, due to lower speeds, and the labyrinth layouts. The layout of the streets make cycling any distance difficult too, however.

Rino, welcome to LCF!! I wish we could hear more stories like yours.

My advice is not to look for a car-free nirvana. Instead, work to make your home city a great place for car-free cycling. It can be done.

Thanks gerv!

At least there is a network of cycling lanes along the major routes here (Surrey, BC), but the population has being increasing by about 1,000 people per month (which was the total population of the town where I was born :D) for quite a while now, and I'm just trying to convince my wife to move to a smaller community in the interior when we retire.

The shift from car-ubiquity to car-free as a universally accessible choice is seeming more and more like a development akin to the shift from slavery to slave-freedom. The ante-bellum history tells a similar story globally and in US states and territories where slave labor was gradually being reduced and replaced while those who favored slavery were relocating to areas where slavery was popular and therefore facilitated by law.

What I find ironic is that although warmer climates are more conducive to year-round cycling than colder ones, it would not surprise me if a similar level of polarization would occur between north and south eventually as occurred during the time of Lincoln's election and the onset of civil war. I expect this because moneyed northerners tend to migrate to southern cities where they can drive in air-conditioned vehicles between air-conditioned indoor destinations and limit their exposure to outdoor climate.

As such, I can imagine that eventually the Federal government will pursue legislation to mandate the ability for people to freely travel and migrate without the necessity of owning and driving cars, since most cities will simply no longer be able to accommodate everyone driving. At that point, southern states might attempt succession again and create a constitution that specifically protects the right to drive a personal automobile.

I know this scenario sounds overly dramatic but it really isn't unthinkable given the fact that we are already in a global state of rising consciousness regarding the unsustainability of continuing automobile-growth as well as a global economic crisis having to do with the fact that so many economies depend on revenues from automobile and fuel sales, particularly to US markets but also elsewhere. It is little different from the situation of the 19th century where the global economy had become so dependent on slavery and slave trading while at the same time becoming conscious of the unsustainability of the slave economy from a political-economic development standpoint.

There is a corollary to Godwin's Law somewhere in that soliloquy.

I'm sure there must be a pony buried in that "stuff" somewhere.

A Nazi pony?

There is a famous joke about a child who wakes up on Christmas morning and is surprised to find a heap of horse manure under the tree instead of a collection of presents. Yet, the child is not discouraged because he has an extraordinarily optimistic outlook on life. His parents discover him enthusiastically shoveling the manure as he exclaims, “With all this manure, there must be a pony somewhere!”

More at:There Must Be a Pony Somewhere | Quote Investigator

I am aware of the pony/manure legend. Godwin's law is as follows (to plagiarize Wikipedia) Godwin's law (or Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies) is an internet adage asserting that "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1" —​ that is, if an online discussion (regardless of topic or scope) goes on long enough, sooner or later someone will compare someone or something to Hitler or Nazism.

So the corollary I am proposing would be a similarly ridiculous comparison to slavery.

Hamburg is a canal city, like Venice or Amsterdam, although for some reason it isn't touted as such. My sister lives there.

In my opinion, the change in mode of transport would seriously affect any type of business inside and around the city. People would try to reside near there working places so as to avoid waste of time. I think the city management would be facing tough time, in maintaining the green areas.

When I was in Houston for a meeting, we drove in the limo along a "parkway" lined with beautiful, well manicured and landscaped green space, 100 m wide on each side. Totally devoid of people. Nobody wants to enjoy a tranquil walk along the verge of busy road.

I don't know that this is true. After all, you can move pretty quickly on bicycle, often faster than cars. I think this is one reason we are seeing so much bicycle activity in large cities.

First of all, Godwin's rule of nazi analogies has the effect of uncritically dismissing such an analogy without seriously considering how accurate it may or may not be. It's like the rule of always dismissing anything that could be labelled 'conspiracy theory' simply because people are paranoid of being labelled paranoid conspiracy theorists.

Second, if you would have actually thought critically about what I wrote, the point wasn't so much to compare automobilism to slavery as it was to compare the political evolution of abolitionism and the eventual polarization between north and south to what could in all likelihood happen in the US. Let me spell out the reasons:

1) In the ante-bellum period, slavery was losing popularity and legality globally so logically people were migrating to the US as a potential stronghold against abolishing slavery. Slavery had been protected as a sovereign state's right by the Kansas-Nebraska act so that a popular majority of a state or new territory could maintain slavery in that region.

2) Now think about the status of the US globally with regards to automobilism: Even while many cities globally are recognizing the need to replace driving for most if not all people, there is a strong opposition in US politics against recognizing the need to reduce CO2 emissions or even just to reduce the unsustainability of sprawl growth in urban planning. Probably like those people who migrated to the US out of optimism for maintaining slavery as a means of attaining economic prosperity, there are people either migrating or wishing to migrate to the US because they believe in automobilism and sprawl-growth as a superior form of transit and economic engine.

Also, like with slavery, global capitalism gets a huge boon from the widespread dependency on personal automobiles in the US. Think about how much international diversity there is in auto manufacturing and how most global auto makers market their vehicles as premium brands worthy of higher pricing than American brands. Have you ever considered what would have happened to those other brands if Cash4Clunkers and the auto-maker bailouts wouldn't have saved the US auto industry? Who would provide the price-floor from which other global auto makers could differentiate their products if there was no US oligopoly? The auto-bailouts and cash4clunkers weren't just economic interventions to save US automakers; they were to protect the international auto industry against revenue-diminishing price competition.

3) Now consider the north-south polarization prospect: Basically you already have more northern cities doing more to facilitate and promote alternatives to driving than southern cities. As this trend continues, driving is going to grow increasingly less popular in cities where large traffic flows can get around without driving. As this trend continues, people who prefer driving are going to seek out smaller cities and rural areas where they can drive with less traffic. Many northerners already migrate to southern cities for the climate, and since affluence helps with such migration, they tend to sort of 'collude' with affluent southerners to promote a dominate lifestyle of driving around in air conditioned vehicles between air conditioned indoor spaces. Even poor people in the south tend to look at driving and air-conditioning as more of an entitlement than the luxury it is, so it is very possible the south will unify against any larger trend, whether national or global, toward more public transit use and cycling, since both require more exposure to outdoor air when it's hot.

So you see, Godwin, there are multiple similarities between the evolving conflict between automobilism and alternative transit and the conflict between pro-slavery and abolitionism in ante-bellum times. Both issues were/are about class-privilege, comfort, and economic dependency.

Finally, it may at first seem a reversal that the republican party seems to be the one favoring sprawl-growth and automobilism whereas the democrats are promoting alternative transit and multi-modal (dense) urban development; whereas the parties were reversed with regards to slavery. If you look closer, though, the reason the republican party takes the stances it does today is often because democrats who used to be for states' rights are now libertarians who attempt to achieve states' rights by reducing federal government in every way possible.

Whereas the anti-slavery republicans of the civil-war era were in favor of using federal power to override abuses of freedom at the local level, that type of republicanism is now attacked from both parties, 1) because the libertarians are for states' rights and other means of deregulating private abuses of freedom and 2) because the democrats take a diversity approach that basically involves using government spending to support freedom without doing much if anything to curtail popular abuses of freedom within a growing economy, which seems to be their primary interest, even if it means more sprawl-growth and the means to maintain automobilism as dominant transit.

If today's democratic party would have taken the same approach to slavery, they would have spent loads of money on creating programs for slaves to buy their freedom, which would have given a boon to the slave economy when the slaves paid the money to their masters, who would then have gained a controlling interest in 'free' slave plantations. This is what is happening today with federal money spent on promoting progress, which ultimately ends up funding continuing growth of the old economic paradigm they're trying to produce alternatives for.

I still think a pony must be buried in there somewhere.

TL;DR

You compared cars, or car culture, to slavery. It's hilariously inappropriate. It is comparable to overheated, farfetched Nazi analogies. As such, it would make a perfect corollary to Godwin's law.

No you don't. By your own explanation of the pony metaphor, the kid was optimistic that a pony was buried in the manure. You're not optimistic. You're just calling my thoughts manure. It's rude to do this when I put a lot of thought into explaining the political parallel. If you don't have a constructive response, why do you need to respond at all?

No, I didn't. You have misunderstood both the first post and the clarification post. You seem to have come up with the 'perfect corollary to Godwin's law,' which would be that at some point in an online discussion, a user will feel like attacking a political analysis by comparing it to a nazi analogy instead of discussing it reasonably.

Did too.

What did the wordy product of "all your thought" have to do with the subject of Can a city really ban cars from its streets?

I changed my mind, I'm gonna give you a real response. When you compare something that doesn't involve slaughter and subjugation to slavery (or Nazis), anyone who is not inside your echo chamber, immediately will discount what you say. Because it is ridiculous. If you want to be taken seriously, avoid such analogies. Also, keep it pithy and to the point.

It has to do with how the long term shift toward 'abolitionism' for personal motor vehicles, parking, and sprawl may take a path similar to the one that led from slavery to the north-south divide where southern states eventually succeeded. It is likely that with continuing population growth, resource, and land-use strain, driving restrictions will keep gaining popularity globally. US cities will be part of this trend except, as with slavery, some people will support protecting sprawl in some cities so that urban majorities can drive everywhere. Eventually this will result in pressure from growing carless populations to pull federal support from infrastructure in areas that fail to provide sufficient access to carless people. Since these areas will probably be relatively affluent, they will likely take the stance that they want to keep their cities car-friendly and take a successionist stance that they don't want to pay for transportation infrastructure that's not car-friendly. I think it will be southern states that take this stance because of the combination of affluent northern migrants and locals who view it as a entitlement/necessity to drive in air conditioned vehicles and parking close by the entrance to air conditioned indoor establishments. Whether you're cycling or taking transit, more exposure to outdoor air is required and this fact tends to cause the many people who avoid hot outside air in southern climates to rigidify against the prospect of car-free living.

I should have known better than ask for another irrelevant lecture.