There's probably also a bit of selection bias going on. People who prefer car usage will be less likely to go live in places where car ownership is difficult. The longer a city is "car-free" the more of that bias will accumulate.
There's really not much in the article to suggest that the same people are first against and later in favour. It shouldn't be surprising that some people prefer to live in car-free places, but that's all you can conclude without doing polling the same people before and after a change to car-freeness.
N of 1 here, but I've lived extensively in both environments. Love cars, got my licence on my birthday the first day I could apply.
That said, I'm noticeably happier and healthier whenever I don't need to own one. My quality of life is higher when living somewhere everything is accessible by walking and by efficient public transport.
I'm lucky to live in a place that gives me plenty of options. And I have a tech workers idea of tenure, in that I change jobs every few years. So I've done them all.
Cycling to work is the best. When the sun shines and birds are singing. It's a miserable experience when it's pouring rain and the headwind is strong.
Public transport is kind of nice for reading, or catching up on a bit of sleep. But it takes forever, and you're dependent on its schedule. And the walk on both ends is only fun in spring and summer. Umbrella's make it less bad than cycling when it rains, but it isn't great.
Driving is annoying when the traffic is bad, but it is by far the fastest for everything over a few kilometers. The roof and the AC protect against the worst of the weather. You have full flexibility on when to go. And while a podcast or audiobook isn't as good as a newspaper or ebook, it's not bad either.
Also, you can fart in peace.
Honestly, the whole "shops are nearby" are such an uninteresting part of the car-free discussion to me. I have to get to work more often than I have to get groceries. And nowadays, I just get them delivered, just like everything else.
Yeah, there's definitely a sparsity cutoff where it stops working so well.
Possibly a climate one too although Londoners and Parisians manage fine.
I get the impression our experiences of car free living were at different densities. Public transport is a slower, more difficult compromise at one end and car travel/ownership is a burden at the other.
People tend to gravitate to what's easy for them. I live in a Boston exurb and I decided to pass on a dinner get-together last night because I just didn't feel up for over 2 hours of driving roundtrip and parking to go into the city.
I'm sure if I lived in the city, I would still own a car but I'd probably be much more inclined to do urban activities on the weekend than getting out my car and driving it someplace. And I'd favor a job that I didn't need to drive to even if it came with trade-offs.
That's okay. Not every city needs to be equally car-free. Let people naturally gravitate toward the type of city they want, and we'll actually end up with more diversity than we currently have.
Yeah, I agree. I'm not actually against more car-free neighbourhoods, in fact we could do with more. Also more congestion charges, and other kinds of pay as you go road fees.
I just really dislike the intellectual dishonesty of headlines like this.
There's really not much in the article to suggest that the same people are first against and later in favour. It shouldn't be surprising that some people prefer to live in car-free places, but that's all you can conclude without doing polling the same people before and after a change to car-freeness.