Urban Planning, Cars, and the Good Life

The point of political theory and frankly most of the field of philosophy in general is to pursue conditions most likely to achieve the good life. We have arrived at concepts like justice, equality, and liberty for this purpose – to construct our institutions and design our societies around concepts most likely to allow us all access to the good life.

To me, the presence of cars is not conducive to my conception of the good life. At least, the way our urban planners have designed our society around the use of cars, buses, and trucks lends itself to a life that is not as good for people as it could be.

Sure, these industrial, monstrous, killing machines that have come to have some sorts of moral and legal rights on our streets do help to get people where they want to be. But their existence creates irreversible environmental and societal impacts, inadvertently creates societies of looming fear, limits the freedom of pedestrians in their own towns and cities, and are used as bandaid solutions to bad urban planning projects.

Here is my train of thought that has led me to support such a heinous and antisocial belief. I just lived at university for four years. The campus is a sizeable campus and all the students are able to rent apartments and townhouses in the area immediately surrounding the school. There are roads within this student neighbourhood but they are seldom used. With a 7 minute walk and a 3 minute skateboard to campus from my house, I never felt the need for a car. The city’s downtown is located equally far in the opposite direction and students often walk that way for dinner and fun times. No cars are needed and life is undeniably better for it.

Now consider this. Each of the buildings on a university campus are actually each individual businesses, agencies, and organizations on a business campus. All of the employees live in the surrounding area and are able to walk to work and downtown within 10 minutes. There is no need for the use of a car in day-to-day operations and you are walking more than ever. It definitely would not be a struggle to hit that 10,000 steps on your Fitbit.

With regards to political theory, my time in this type of planned community without the car was the closest I ever felt to real liberty, freedom, justice, and equality. There is no hesitation to cross the street (by fear of death), full liberty to see my friends late at night and get home safe, and no unequal power relationship between human beings and heavy machinery.

The less cars there are in your life, the closer you are to having a good one.