Via Pandagon:
A quiet revolution that gets almost no mainstream attention is happening under our noses: Americans are getting out of their cars and biking, walking, or taking public transportation to their destinations in greater numbers. Phineas Baxandall of U.S. Public Interest Research Group crunches the numbers and finds that Americans overall are driving 6% less per capita, and that most of the shift comes from younger people not driving as much or at all. I know 6% sounds small on paper, but it adds up to billions of miles not driven a year. The largest dips come from men reducing their miles driven, because they had more to give up, as men drive more generally. Interestingly, in the youngest group, even fewer men than women have driver’s licenses.
I have witnessed this phenomenon first hand. When my brother and I turned 16 we couldn’t wait to drive – and drive we did. When my son got his license… shrug. He didn’t want to drive. Worse, he only drives if I make him. My nephew is staying with us for the summer. He’s sixteen, and guess what? He has no interest in driving.
Two days ago they went to the boardwalk. I offered them the car. They declined, and took the bus. As an urbanite I applaud this. As a former teenager… What the hell?
But the biggest decline is in young people, which again is in large part due to their shrinking job opportunities, but also seems to be part of a larger rejection by the Millennial generation of the notion that car ownership is a critical part of adulthood. In an era of laptop computers and smartphones, the sense that you need a car to have access to the larger world is shrinking. They’re also well-known for having more communal values than the generations before them, which reduces the impact of the traditional hostility to public transportation, i.e. the collective American fear of having to be in a collective.
I think the technology thing is a biggie, and my kids are too young for the job market and owning/renting a home, so… we’ll have to wait and see on that point. I will tell you this: When choosing a university for my son it was important to him that the location be totally accessible without a car.
But there’s definitely something changing besides less driving. Cities are growing faster than suburbs.
Since at least World War II, suburbs have represented the quintessential American mode of living. That may be changing.
More than half of the country’s 51 largest metropolitan areas saw greater growth within city limits than in their suburbs between July 2010 and July 2011, according to an analysis of new census data by Brookings Institution demographer William Frey and others. As the Wall Street Journal points out, that’s a reversal of a broad trend that has held since the 1920s, when the rise of the automobile prompted Americans to flee dirty, crowded cities for greener pastures.
Mr. Pandora and I are city residents, but we bought a large city house which is expensive to heat and cool – not to mention clean! Our plan once the kids ship out is to remain in a city but to downsize to a small townhouse or condo located in the very heart of an urban area. We want to ditch the cars. Hey… maybe we aren’t so different from our son and nephew!