Dutch people cycle an average of 2.6 kilometres each per day. If this pattern was replicated worldwide, the study suggests, annual global carbon emissions would drop by 686 million tonnes.
This mammoth figure exceeds the entire carbon footprint of most countries, including the UK, Canada, Saudi Arabia and Australia.
So given the cities are have now, what can we do? Can’t simply build a new one or tear the old one down.
Stop voting for politicians who want to get rid of existing bike lanes (Doug Ford - Ontario, Canada), stop voting for politicians who oppose high density residential zones (gestures at most of the developed world), and vote for politicians who have the best public transportation plans. Get involved with city politics a la the annoying people in parks and rec. It works. Donate to and get involved with your local progressive organizations (shout out to https://www.progresstoronto.ca/).
Just narrowing the space for cars and adding continuous walking paths plus protected bike lanes will get you pretty far. The goal isn’t that every single person should travel by foot or car every time, it’s to make it more common to use those travel modes in general.
And build passenger trains.
We can just change the design of existing cities.
Heck the Netherlands was designing for cars until massive protest (violent and non violent). It then started to change existing infrastructure for a more people focused design.
A oil crisis helped of course
But it wasn’t. Your telling me an old city was designed for cars?
No I’m telling you they were designing for the car after the second world war. Just like in north America(North America cities started a bit earlier). Most north America cities were also not build for cars, but bulldozed for the car.
Amsterdam for example also had plans to build a highway into the city (lucky the lack of money and opposition stoped it) and bulldozed some streets already for heavy car design. The rest of the city streets where full of cars and parking.
Here is what the Damrak looked like
But after the stop de kindermoorden (child murder) protest(and many more) it slowly started changing. Now everytime a street is renewed it is to today’s standards including people focused design.
Also keep in mind the old city of most European cities is pretty small. The argument “BuT tHe cIty Is olD” only works for maybe 20% of a city the rest is build after the 1900 or for sure not medieval.
And this is also not just a big city thing. Every city, Town or Village(and also outside it) has the same rules for street design. Amsterdam for example really sucks te ride a bike I think. There are many better cities in the Netherlands.
But you can also look like a city like Rotterdam, a city designed for the car in the Netherlands. It’s not great but it still has room for bikes and public transport. And some projects to make the city more people friendly.
You did that already once, when decided to move to car-centrism. No reason not to do it again