Visualizing Car Centricity

A visual exploration of the dominance of cars in our cities

We’re back with another visual exploration. If you missed the consumer culture one, have a look here.

This time, I’ve gathered various visuals, graphs and a few stats to put into perspective the insane dominance of cars in our cities. One of the first things I, and many other children, have been taught, is this: “Look to the left, now to the right, again to the left. No car coming? Okay, then, and only then, you can cross the street”.

Why do kids have to fit into streets built for cars?
Why don’t cars fit into streets built for kids?

Cycling Professor 🚲 @fietsprofessor

'Alexa, please give me a visual metaphor for the status of cycling infrastructure in the United States' ~Chicago bike path next to an 8 lane road for cars during a storm.

Cycling Professor 🚲 @fietsprofessor

What have we done?

“Motorists underestimate the full private costs of car ownership, while policy makers and planners underestimate the social costs.

For the typical German travel distance of 15,000 car kilometers per year, the total lifetime cost of car ownership (50 years) ranges between €599,082 for an Opel Corsa to €956,798 for a Mercedes GLC.” - Gössling et al. 2022: ‘The lifetime cost of driving a car’

Adam Ozimek @ModeledBehavior

Spending $40,000 on a car seems like the kind of thing to me that, intuitively, you do when you have like a couple million in wealth and make $400,000 a year. But absolutely normal people do it all the time! Blows me away

Parking lot in California

“America’s 250 million cars are oversupplied with an estimated 2 billion parking spots yet spend 95% of their time going nowhere.” - Forbes

21st Century City @urbanthoughts11

Stadiums are a great study of how little space people take up and how much space their cars need

Elementary school in California for 700 kids….and its parking lot

Lior Steinberg @LiorSteinberg

One of the greatest achievements of the car industry is convincing business owners that parking spaces lead to more revenue. By @UrbisAustralia

“Cargo bikes take up space on the sidewalk…” 🤡

21st Century City @urbanthoughts11

1970: One more lane will fix it. 1980: One more lane will fix it. 1990: One more lane will fix it. 2000: One more lane will fix it. 2010: One more lane will fix it. 2020: ? via @avelezig

Paul Graham @paulg

A freeway interchange near Atlanta and the center of Florence at the same scale.

fastest hand in the west @chaotropicsalts

@bryanforall reddit info graphic that lives in my head all the time

Alex Lee 李天明 @alex_lee

EVs are the future of cars, but cars are not the future

---

We started this visual exploration with a reference to kids and civil obedience. Let’s end it with a kid and “civil disobedience”:

Cycling Professor 🚲 @fietsprofessor

Park where you want: Boss level! 💯

Thanks and see you next week! 😉

Thomas