Trapped in Our Modules? - Cars and the Ideal City

can't drive his module
road movies
rebel without a cause
max max - with his nitro enhanced machine [/monster]
chrysler socal LA [factcheck!]
Is there not something completely out of proportion with a primate weighing perhaps 70kg choosing to travel about in vehicles weighing between 1000kg (Fiat) and 2400kg (Chev)? Per day these vehicles use an average of around 41,000 kCal from fuel, to transport people who need around only food with 2,300 kCal per day for good health.
instinct for size;power;image;loudness;freedom;agency
manipulated
remember all of the types driven/owned
- partially sex driven/ appeals to our most basic instincts
aspirations of the world popn

not only in the 'rich west': a minor leader in the revolution nicaragua (provincial Matagalpa) chose to receive a Land Cruiser as a reward of office - a great expense and a rarity in the country. Given the levels of deprivation a bus, or truck, could have served a great many more. In North Korea, as is true in virtually every other country, "[The passenger car] is the ultimate symbol of the prosperity of high officials" (Bloomberg). In developing economies car sales are booming. Sales in India and China are at record levels and, there too, cars are seen as a necessary symbol for having reached a 'good standard of living' (Gallup). Lagos is being rebuilt to suit automobile driving commuters.

In America, the relative prices of cars have not changed in the last 90 years (using Wage Rates, or GDP per capita). For example, in 1925 agricultural labourers earnt $630 per year (NBER 1929) and a Model T Ford cost just under $300 - and, in 2010, the cheapest cars were around $10,500-$14,500 and agricultural workers earnt $22,000 (18,800 median earnings; 24,400 citizens: USDA-ERS 2008).

Thus automobiles have become the icons, in the religious sense, in the modern world.

Margaret Thatcher famously commented that "A man who, beyond the age of 26, finds himself on a bus can count himself as a failure" (House of Commons, 1986).

In the USA there are around 240 million registered cars, SUVs, & pickups (Statistical Abstract of the USA) - and many more scrapped or unregistered. This is equivalent to 0.8 vehicles per capita. If all countries took up motoring at the same rate as the USA, there would be 5.4 billion passenger vehicles in use on earth - using 56 billion barrels of oil per year, compared to total consumption of 3.1 billion barrels in 2008. These might need 5 billion tonnes of steel and much energy to manufacture, with immense CO2 emissions. Road deaths would also increase, and the problems from such greatly increased CO2 emissions could be very grave.

purchase of influence [thru instinct; affinities;
networks; legitimated aspirations;
advertising; and explicit lobbying]

all these have together given aspirations to the world popn
- which would be difficult to realise in practice

'modern' cities designed around cars - need not be so. many other arrangements are possible and provide shorter, healthier, and more pleasurable, commutes - as well as a more enjoyable environment. Congestion, time pressures - for example getting children to school - are all things that could be greatly eased by better planning and incentives. There are still many habited places without vehicles - some inaccessible; some poor, or ancient, and ill-adapted for cars; and some cut off by bad roads in wet seasons. Some of the most valued cities in the world are in fact old ones in Europe where driving is impractical.