Life Without Cars

Just had another peak at article, it says two out of town garages where you can own a space, I guess that may be garage as in multi storey carpark.
I think your desire for a garage and vehicular access to the home to load/unloading is based on a requirement for somewhere safe and lockable not in your home to store stuff, specialist tools that aren't required for every plumbing job say. My initail interpretation of garage would cater for this but perhaps not communal garage.
As for storing bikes, gardening tools at the home, there is a picture of quite a nice yard in the article, i've just bought a shed/store thing myself that could work here. But then the article talks of 4/5 story buildings and the banishment of detached homes, so how much personal outdoor space each home is afforded is unknown.
These storage boxes/sheds I talk of could also be fitted at your garage/parking space. I think it requires a change of pattern of behaviour but is not such a impassable obstacle as you make out. Then again, the place is depicted as a happy skippy community of dogooders, so i'm imagineing a kind of utipoia with no crime where these flimsy metal sheds are secure enough, perhaps you are being a bit more realistic.

In general london has made me a grumpy(er) person. It seems very impersonnal with a fuck everyone else as long as i'm ok attitude, and I don't like it. Unfortunately my jobYour on about a completely car far society ripping up and starting again this setup is choice dictates I live here, or spend a long time travelling here. I have a desire to get out and live in or near the countryside and this makes my feelings towards this utopian idea of community and resistance to your realism strong.

Maybe one day i'll make it out mtbing and we can chat in person.

Security is an issue yes but only part of it. In my eyes the trips cars should be used for are basically,

1 Trip requiring transport of large / awkward objects, over short distances cargo bike can cover much of this but not all and you would not want to ride a cargo bike even 20 miles in general.

1. Long journeys which are not inter city.

2. Basically a combination of 1 & 2, say your going for a trip climbing so you take a load of camping / hiking gear and traveling ot the middle of nowhere, or you may be traveling inter city but be taking 2 or 3 passengers + luggage, which in many cases as long as you don't drive some gas guzzling car produces less carbon than public transport or worse case in comparable.

3. Mobility impaired.

This removes all / most of the commuting to work for most people thing, local trips to see local friends, shopping e.t.c but all bar possibly number two require you to have vehicular access to you house. Parking away doubles the local journeys to and from parking in this respect.

This adds a large chunk of unnecessary obstacles in peoples ways with no gain to the community. This would reduce the life style and type of people that would want to work live in this scheme.

I'm not on about a scrap everything and start again system this is a new development still living within the current one so it needs restrictions.

I am very passionate about this kind of thing which is why I may come across as aggressive. I see so many environmental schemes that don't seems to be full thought out in their social effect if it's a scheme like this or it's realism. Or if it's to do with energy supply the main criteria seems to be stimulate the economy rather than look at how much energy we require, what way can we produce this power what split, there seems to be no coherent plan. It also seems to follow the knee jerk reaction that all cars are bad and all car journeys are bad and more polluting than public transport which is untrue.

Environmental schemes already are gaining a bad reputation which only feeds ammunition to the global warming deniers / conspiracy theory club. Failed schemes of one sort only adds fuel to people. If A fails then something even vaguely familiar to A even if a lot better thought out will not even be attempted. There is also the problem of not thinking of all aspects of a plan, take the old GCSE geography project of why tower blocks failed in many areas, several key mistakes made. Hindsight is a wonderful I know but
doesn't mean we should stop trying to minimise the big errors. This plan seems close but I feel would only attract narrow section of society (which I believe is damaging). I also alluded to the fact that this type of development I believes pushed us down "The increased specialization of society" that I believe is bad for society, more on that for another time. Add in the barriers to someone even like myself who I believe is very conscientious about how they use a car (my journeys fall into 2 & 3 mainly) is narrowing it away from someone is potentially a key market. I suppose I'm not really an urbanite and that's why it does not appeal to me. I like you live in London because of work more than want.

I'd love to talk in person about it as I'm very passionate about it and you sound tobe too.