Car-Free Cities (JH Crawford)

Car-Free Cities (J H Crawford)

Unlike Soleri, Crawford does not advocate the total abolishment of the automobile but says life would be a whole lot better if cars were totally segregated from city centres.   His ideal is the charmingly historic Southern European city with its cafes and street-life and pedestrian-friendly zones.   He argues that creating a more densely populated carfree city will restore community, reduce pollution, regain quiet in homes and offices, encourage children to play in the streets, and restore health and well-being. “The required density increases are by no means extreme; densities that are still common in European city centers are entirely sufficient,” he explains.   .

“Car-Free Cities” is something of a misnomer because Crawford’s master plan – as described in some detail on his website (www.carfree.com) – includes a vast parking site on the periphery, rather like Venice which he calls “the best advertisement for carfree cities that I have ever seen” and “an oasis of peace despite being one of the densest urban areas on earth.”    However, the rapidly shrinking number of residents seem to think otherwise.  Even in winter you can’t avoid the crowds and it is very cold and dank in those narrow sunless lanes.   Many of its problems could be solved by charging a daily admission fee just as a museum would, because that is what it is.   Crawford mentions Arcologies, which virtually nobody else does, but he far too quickly dismisses them with this sentence…

[stextbox id=”info”]“Cost and engineering difficulties may never permit their construction, and I wonder about the healthiness of living so far removed from the ground”  JH Crawford

By saying “the unhealthiness of living so far removed from the ground” Crawford is obviously fixated on the mistaken idea that, by definition, an Arcology must always be an impossibly huge hyper-structure inhabited by at least 100,000 people, or even a million.   This misleading idea was re-inforced in the publics imagination by all the publicity given to the “Shimuzu Mega-City Pyramid” on the Discovery Channel.   Thus “costs and engineering difficulties may never permit their construction”.  IMO, both statements show Crawford has not given the idea the thought it deserves because he has so fallen in love with old walkable European cities he cannot see their many disadvantages and inconveniences.    Yes, I love those cities too (although I totally disagree with his enthusiasm for Venice, which must be an awful place to live in) but it is futile and backward-looking to attempt to replicate them – modern versions might have the same architecture but they would be sterile and would NOT have the same street life (e.g., Club Mykonos below)