Cities will continue to accommodate the automobile, but when cities are built around them, the quality of human and natural life declines. Current trends show great promise for future urban mobility systems that enable freedom and connection, but not dependence. We are experiencing the phenomenon of peak car use in many global cities at the same time that urban rail is thriving, central cities are revitalizing, and suburban sprawl is reversing. Walking and cycling are growing in many cities, along with ubiquitous bike sharing schemes, which have contributed to new investment and vitality in central cities including Melbourne, Seattle, Chicago, and New York.
We are thus in a new era that has come much faster than global transportation experts Peter Newman and Jeffrey Kenworthy had predicted: the end of automobile dependence. In The End of Automobile Dependence, Newman and Kenworthy look at how we can accelerate a planning approach to designing urban environments that can function reliably and conveniently on alternative modes, with a refined and more civilized automobile playing a very much reduced and manageable role in urban transportation. The authors examine the rise and fall of automobile dependence using updated data on 44 global cities to better understand how to facilitate and guide cities to the most productive and sustainable outcomes.
This is the final volume in a trilogy by Newman and Kenworthy on automobile dependence (Cities and Automobile Dependence in 1989 and Sustainability and Cities: Overcoming Automobile Dependence in 1999). Like all good trilogies this one shows the rise of an empire, in this case that of the automobile, the peak of its power, and the decline of that empire.
"In these pages, Peter Newman and Jeffrey Kenworthy provide a definitive post-mortem for the era of car-dependence and a vision for safer, more sustainable and welcoming streets. From reinvigorated transit networks to smarter suburban development strategies to the downtown renaissance playing out in cities worldwide, Newman and Kenworthy have sketched a roadmap to an urban future powered not by internal combustion, but human ingenuity."---Janette Sadik-Khan, Bloomberg Associates; Former NYC Transportation Commissioner "Newman and Kenworthy have a track record second to none in homing in on the key issues in sustainable transport and pointing to the irrefutable conceptual and intellectual logic of 'doing the right thing.' They have now done it again and in a crisp, very clear analysis they demonstrate how the car is already loosening its grip on the mind-set of politicians and planners and we are now able to see the shape of the next phase." "A profoundly important and optimistic book on planning our cities. Newman and Kenworthy complete their trilogy on automobile dependence by demonstrating that global trends are turning towards a more sustainable future for many metropolitan regions."---David Gordon, Director, School of Urban and Regional Planning, Queen's University, Canada "The closing volume of Newman and Kenworthy's epic transportation trilogy outlines multiple paths to a post-automobile addiction world. It demonstrates how reducing automobile dependence can help us make rapid progress towards more sustainable, economically secure and healthy cities and accelerate decarbonisation to reduce climate change risk."---Aromar Revi, Director, Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS) "Logical, accessible, and at times devastatingly persuasive…[it] is a tightly packed yet readable marvel of comprehensiveness, clear interpretation of evidence, and accessible communication….The End of Automobile Dependence is a treatise rather than a primer, unlikely to be read by most of the people who need most to read it: a group roughly describable as 'everyone in a developed or developing country who'll be making transportation decisions over the coming century.' For urban planners, transportation specialists, public offic
