consumers, cars and communities: the challenge of sustainability

228 | International Journal of Consumer Studies, 25, 3, 2001, pp228–237 © 2001 Blackwell Science Ltd

Consumers, cars and communities: the challenge ofsustainability

John W. Auld

Department of Consumer Studies, College of Social and Applied Human Sciences and Faculty of Management, University of Guelph, Guelph,Ontario, Canada N1G 2W1

The private automobile is a technology that ideallyprovides independence, mobility and convenience.Private automobile use also kills, maims, injures, pol-lutes and distorts our relations with each other and withthe earth. Few question the inherent worth of this formof human mobility. We have located our houses, work-places, friends, families, shopping and hobbies based onprivate ownership of automobiles powered by fossilfuels. We have paved more than 30% of the area of ourhuman settlements and spend billions of public dollarsannually to maintain these public places.

The solution to these negative aspects of private auto-mobile use is not the elimination of the automobile; wehave gone too far now for that now. A solution willrequire rethinking private automobile use and reshap-ing our human settlements to render them safe, healthyand sustainable. To do this we must move away fromgovernance by consumers-in the-market-place to gov-ernance by citizens-in-the-community.

Commuting

The present design and use of human settlementsembodies a critical connection between time and space.Originally the suburbs were created to provide thespace and affordability consumers wanted. The exten-sive growth of the suburbs during the latter half of the20th century in North America, which vastly increasedthe space occupied by human settlements, resulted inthe creation of increased time demands. People neededto move from place to place – specifically from theirplace of residence, which attempted to capture thefreedom, peace and independence of rural life, to theworkplace, usually located in or near the city core – andthe daily commute was born. Commuting robbedpeople of the very commodity which suburban livingclaimed to offer – tranquil enjoyment of a home in anatural setting. Commuters have less time for suchenjoyment. Ivan Illich observed over 25 years ago, ‘The

Abstract

The huge subsidization of sprawling development and the

unbridled use of the private automobile needs to be brought

to the forefront of public policy debate, not left to the

excesses of the market-place. To do this we need citizens-

in-the-community, not consumers-in-the-market. The pre-

sent costly and unsustainable situation of our human

settlements is a result of a profound failure in public policy;

a failure that resulted when we left the fate of our human set-

tlements to the vagaries of the market-place. We can no

longer rely on the present subsidized, distorted, market-

place system approach to designing, building and operating

our human settlements. The consequences have been dis-

astrous for human welfare, health and safety, and the natural

environment upon which all life depends.

Keywords Consumers, transportation, communities,

sustainability.

Introduction

Private automobile use has significantly influencedurban form and how we experience urban life. Westernsociety is now in the third auto-dependent generation.We are immersed in automobile-based settlements, andlike fish in water, we have a diminishing awareness ofour medium, and a decreasing ability to evaluate theconsequences of accepting this medium. We see theautomobile as a necessary part of our ‘modern’ way oflife and a central fixture in the lives of most westernhousehold and families. In fact, we have designed ourhuman settlements based on the assumption of privateautomobile ownership.

CorrespondenceJohn W. Auld, Department of Consumer Studies, College of Social andApplied Human Sciences and Faculty of Management, University ofGuelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada N1G 2W1. E-mail: [email protected]

J.W. Auld • Consumers, cars and communities

© 2001 Blackwell Science Ltd International Journal of Consumer Studies, 25, 3, 2001, pp228–237 | 229

time reserved for commuting displaces both work andleisure time’.1 A daily 1-h commute to work over a 35-year working life, results in the commuter spendingalmost 3 years of 8-h days in a car.

Commuting time has increased as more and morepeople ‘escape’ to the suburbs and areas beyond, creat-ing congestion. Changes in the structure of the workforce contribute to this increased competition forlimited ‘road space’. The traditional one-earner house-hold ceased to be the norm in the last quarter of the20th century, and now accounts for only 14% of youngCanadian families.2 The dual-earner family is now thenorm, with the resultant increases in commuting androad congestion.

Commuting times for many in large urban centreshave doubled in the past 15 years.3 In Toronto, with itscurrent population of 4.8 million expected to grow to6.4 million in 20 years, the problem seems almost insur-mountable. The Greater Toronto Area TransportationPlan predicts that by 2021, automobile trips will increaseby 64% and will thus triple the number of congestedroads even if 16 highways are built or widened.4

For over 50 years, the response in North America towhat was perceived as the ‘congestion’ of population incities, has been the dispersal of people into what wasconsidered unlimited space. Many acted as though thiswas an effective substitute for a well-organized andwell-designed community.5 Rather than making cities‘work’ by providing high-quality, high-density livingspaces, the same paradigm which structured waste dis-posal policy was used to structure urban and suburbanplanning. That the ‘solution-to-pollution-is-dilution’proved to be a destructive approach to waste manage-ment is now only too apparent. The realization that thesame approach to human settlement is equally destruc-tive seems to be more of a hurdle for planners whothought we could dilute or ‘decongest’ our human set-tlements in a similar fashion. Suburbanization was thesolution to overcrowded cities and the technology – thetool – was the automobile.

It is tempting, but wrong headed, to blame the auto-mobile totally for the problem. Jane Jacobs has pointedout that ‘we cannot blame the automobile for the prob-lems of the cities. The destructive effects of automobilesare much less a cause than a symptom of our incompe-tence at city-building’.6 However, as Todd suggests,

‘changes in transportation and changes in the structureof cities are coevolutionary’.7 Dependency on the auto-mobile has led to a ‘vicious cycle effect’, starting withmore demand for roadways and low parking rates,and expectations for the development of low-densityhousing away from city cores. This all leads to furtherdependency on the automobile and low-density areasfar from the city centre are expensive to service withpublic transport. The resulting lack of growth in publictransit service availability speeds already declining sub-urban transit use. Urban demand for public transit usehas changed little, whereas the relative use of the auto-mobile in urban areas has increased substantially in thepast decade.8

Automobile dependency

Ownership of the car spell(ed) freedom and mobilitybut freedom and mobility proved to be hollow promises.Once a people have become used to having cars, it isalmost impossible to give them up.9 Consumers whohave become addicted to the ownership of a car, sug-gested Illich, are not unlike heroin addicts where theaddiction distorts basic judgments. ‘Addicts of any kindare willing to pay increasing amounts for declining sat-isfaction’.10 We have become tolerant of escalating mar-ginal disutility and ‘as a response to traffic congestion,commuters turn inward and encapsulate themselves intheir cars. They surround themselves with stereos ordrugs to block out the special pain of not getting some-where fast.’11 Commuting leaves people psychologicallyexhausted. The commuter has to be both pilot and pas-senger, and after a day’s work, this takes considerableconcentration12 and of course, when the commuter gets‘home’ they have to chauffeur the children everywhere.As Gratz comments, ‘car dependency robs family life inmore ways than suburbanites anticipated.’13

The original benefits of automobiles were thought to be convenience, freedom of mobility and comfort.‘The first two things vanished entirely under the regimeof compulsory commuting. What is left of comfortamounts to little more than air conditioned imprison-ment’14 and air conditioning has become more than acomfort. The consequences of mass commuting byprivate automobile has rendered the quality of outsideair a health hazard.

Consumers, cars and communities • J.W. Auld


The road economy

There is an emerging trend in North America towardsthe decentralization of commerce from the central busi-ness district resulting in what Fernandez calls ‘the roadeconomy’. Paul Ferral, marketing director for SafetyFirst, an Englewood New Jersey firm in the US thatmonitors the practices of on-the-job drivers, stated ‘evenwith e-commerce, you need to deliver goods to thedoorstep . . . either moving goods to people’s homes, orremoving ourselves to a place where we can provideservice’.15 Truck drivers have always been concernedwith the delivery of goods over distances, and theirnumbers have been increasing almost exponentiallywith increasing demand. In addition, there is a shift ofemphasis in the economy from manufacturing-basedoccupations to service-based occupations. Even thoseservice providers formally associated with static work-places are now participants in the ‘road economy’.Health care workers, sales personnel and the self-employed, to name only a few, are increasingly involvedin the delivery of goods or services over distances.

It is estimated by the US Federal Highway Adminis-tration, that between 1990 and 1995, the distances trav-elled on the job had increased by 50%. Consequently,the injury and death rates, although down in other workareas, have risen sharply in the road economy. ‘It is amatter of more people exposed’, says Guy Toscano,program manager for the occupational fatalities at theUS Bureau of Labour Statistics.16 Compounding theincreased risk due to frequency of exposure, are addi-tional workplace concerns such as distraction due toextensive use of cell phones, fatigue and rushing tomake appointments. Doing all this at the office is stress-ful enough, but doing it in a moving, multi-ton automo-bile is certainly not in the interest of the workers or theothers with whom they share the public roads.

Accidents and safety

Forty years ago, Lewis Mumford in The City in History,lamented that ‘for the sake of private locomotion in theUnited States, some 40000 people are killed and hun-dreds of thousands are maimed annually’.17 The WorldHealth Organization reported that in 1988, there were142799 motor vehicle traffic deaths in 40 countries

reporting.18 Vehicular crashes are the leading killer ofAmericans aged 5–43. ‘Due to this fact, they are theleading cause of lost years of life expectancy.’19

Now there is no doubt that automobile safety hasimproved over the past 50 years based on both deathrate and vehicle kilometres travelled. But is in excess of40000 deaths per year in the US and some 55000 deathsper year in Europe, acceptable? Hertsgaard suggeststhat humans are unlikely to turn against the automobile,and seem to accept the risk of death and injury behindthe wheel. The number of traffic deaths in the US andEurope are equivalent to two airbuses crashing andkilling 270 each day, but because automobile deaths areoccurring on a daily basis, it is not treated as ‘news’ ‘andthe fatalities pass all but unremarked as (they are) anacceptable fact of life’.20 Auto accidents are spread outand are only remarked in the press on a local level. Wehave become inured to the risk inherent in automobileuse. They no longer make news. The United States leadsthe world in total traffic deaths because of the larger dis-tances driven and the higher number of automobiles.If population and number of kilometres driven are standardized, it becomes one of the safest countries inwhich to drive.21 But in absolute numbers the millionsof casualties have not declined and statistics reportingfatality and injuries as a result of automobile collisionsdo not include the thousands of pedestrians and cyclistskilled or injured each year. Traffic accidents account fornearly one-half of all accidental deaths in Canada eachyear.22 There is another ominous cloud behind these statistics of pain and suffering. Hundreds of thousandsof hospital days are incurred at huge public cost andmillions of activity days lost, resulting in enormousprivate and public expense.

Health

The ominous cloud behind this already frighteningpicture of private auto use in human settlements is both metaphorical and real. Urban air quality is a publichealth issue, and automobile use is the major contribu-tor to declining air quality. Canada may face an addi-tional health care cost of 11 billion to 38 billion dollarsbetween 1997 and 2020 due to transportation-relatedemissions.23 In the province of Ontario alone, theprovincial government reported that smog aggravates a



wide variety of health ailments and causes 1800 prema-ture deaths and 1400 cardiac and respiratory hospitaladmissions each year.24 It is also reported that pollutantsexact a severe toll on the environment by harming vegetation, materials and crops.25 Despite the increasein vehicle emission control efficiency and marginallycleaner fuels, toxic emissions are on the increase inCanada, particularly in urban regions where vehicle sizeand the rate of vehicle ownership is increasing. Toxicemissions also increase as a result of congestion, whichincreases time on the road and minimizes fuel efficiency.For example, in Vancouver, British Columbia, theaverage travel time has increased 20% over the past10 years. Congestion increases acceleration, decelera-tion and idling time, all of which increase emissions.26

Environment Canada has reported that ‘the numberof days on which ozone exceeded the national ambientair quality objective (82 parts per billion, 1h) hasdecreased by 50% since 1980 despite a 37% increase inaverage year round ozone levels’. 27 However, the samedocument reports that recent statistics have shown anincrease in hospital admissions with increasing air pol-lution, even at pollution levels regularly experienced by Canadians. These studies further suggest that theremay be no safe level of exposure to certain air pollu-tants including inhaleable air-borne particles andground level ozone.28 In the United States, a 1995Harvard University study reported ‘that 30000 Ameri-cans die each year from respiratory illness related to carexhaust, while another 120000 persons die prematurelybecause of such exhaust.29

Noise pollution

One of the attractions of suburbs was the peace andquiet not found in the city. As traffic volume grows, sodoes the resultant noise pollution, adversely affectingmotorists, residents near arterial roads, and those whoreside in the suburbs. ‘The major impacts of traffic noisereported in the literature are sleep disturbance, inter-ference with speech, property value reduction, andsome psycho-physiological/health impacts, such asstress’.30 Traffic noise has increased significantly over thepast 25 years and in some cities, heavy traffic alreadygenerates noise above the levels which damage hearingcapacity after prolonged exposure. Although no data

are presently available in Canada, the European Commission reported that in Germany in 1997, the esti-mated ‘annual cost of noise (on) public health is in theorder of 500–1900 million ECU’s per annum for roadnoise’.31 In the city of Toronto, Canada, the medicalofficer of health, Dr Sheela Basrur, reported that thecity is getting noisier, and that exposure to excessivenoise, including vehicle noise, can ‘induce or aggravatestress-related health outcomes, including those on thecardiovascular system, immune system, sleep, task per-formance, behaviour and mental health’.32

Road noise not only incurs economic costs byadversely affecting health, but can result in decreasingproperty values as well. Studies in Canada, the US andEurope, have placed property value losses in the hun-dreds of millions of dollars. Traffic noise, along withother outside sources of noise in residential areas, suchas lawn mowers, leaf blowers and stereos (in cars andout), all contribute to a decrease in the potential of thequiet enjoyment of residential environments. Noise pol-lution incurs economic and human health and safetycosts, which must be weighed against the benefits ofprivate vehicle mobility.

Household costs

The Canadian Automobile Association has put theannual average cost of owning and running a car at$7000.33 These costs must be met in ‘after tax’ dollars.A two-career household may pay considerably more inorder to live in an auto-centred environment. Duanyhas argued that the most significant contribution to pro-viding affordable housing must be reducing the need formultiple (or any) automobile ownership. The averagecost of owning and operating a car in the United Statesis about $4500 dollars a year, an amount which wouldcover a $40000 mortgage. ‘Nothing you can do in termsof spacing studs, or using cheaper materials will do asmuch to make housing affordable as permitting peopleto own one car instead of forcing them to own two orthree’.34

On the other hand, Poulton has argued ‘that the posi-tion of the automobile is unassailable and neither theenergy cost nor the environmental pollution cost of cartravel has increased and neither is a foreseeable threatto automobile use’.35 This argument is based on stable



and low oil prices, and a substantially reduced pollutionoutput of each car. As oil prices rise, as millions morecars in North America are driven billions more kilome-tres, and as premature deaths increase in many citiesacross North America due to air pollution, the inherentweakness of Poulton’s argument becomes clear.

Support of private auto use is based on the argumentthat public transit services can only exist as a result of‘a huge cost in direct subsidies’.36 Public transit subsi-dies are meagre in comparison to the huge hidden subsidies for private automobile use. In addition, publictransit, by reducing congestion, improves the lot of theauto user. According to Hertsgaard, ‘the subsidy todrivers in the United States including police, trafficmanagement, street maintenance, and health costs of airpollution and accidents, is commonly estimated at 300billion a year’.37

Use of public space

According to the Federal Highway Traffic SafetyAdministration in the United States, 20–25% of thosewho die in automobile-related accidents are pedestri-ans.38 In many areas, streets which for centuries werededicated to all forms of human activity including trans-portation, are now reserved almost exclusively for theuse of the automobile. The priority of transportationplanners has been to ensure the smooth and speedy flowof vehicles. Pedestrians, bicyclists and playing childrenwere considered an obstacle and a nuisance. It is indeeda paradox when we know that a brisk 30–60min walkeach day can reduce heart attacks by 50–60%,39 thatautomobiles have rendered streets unsafe for suchactivity. Many people drive their cars to safe places(health clubs) or stay home with their exercisemachines, because of real or perceived safety or healthissues, or simply because streets which do not encour-age pedestrian use quickly become unpleasant waste-lands for anyone outside a vehicle.

Although pedestrians have been ‘the lowly pawnstransportation in North America for 75 years . . . theyare beginning to organize, to reassert their right to walkaround cities without the constant threat and aggrava-tion of roaring traffic’.40 An approach to transportationmanagement emerged in North America in the 1990s,the priority of which embodied a shift in focus away

from auto dependency and towards walking, bicyclingand increased safety. ‘Traffic calming’, as this newapproach came to be called, involved redesigning streetsto incorporate self-enforcing traffic volume and speedreducing techniques, reflecting efforts made in Dutchcities over 30 years ago. Street shape, speed bumps,raised crossing areas, and obstacles to through traffic,allowed automobiles to use streets, but more as guests,not as the primary user. Traffic calming is not a techni-cal solution that can be left to traffic planners and engi-neers because the successful approach is a function ofthe uniqueness of each neighbourhood requiring carefulplanning and evaluation at each community level.41

In the United States, pedestrians are making effortsto educate the public about the health and communitybuilding qualities of walking. Organizations such as‘America Walks’, a coalition of pedestrian advocacygroups, have representative bodies in 15 US cities.Walking advocacy groups want to educate and informthe public about the benefits of walking for both indi-viduals and for their communities. These pedestrianadvocacy groups also provide advice on how to dealwith public officials and engineering and design pro-fessionals in the pursuit of encouraging safe walkingenvironments.

Supporting pedestrian accessibility can have a stronginfluence on household automobile use. A recent Cana-dian study demonstrated that ‘by reducing walkingtimes by 10% by making activities closer together,vehicle kilometres travelled can be reduced by 3.3%’.42

The study concludes that as it becomes easier andcheaper to travel by car because of home and work loca-tion, households tend to own more automobiles andmake much greater use of automobiles overall.43 AsGordon has pointed out, ‘when streets are dangerous,people stay off them, they don’t let their kids play inthem, they avoid cycling, and use their cars. Studies donein the United States claim that speeding cars and hightraffic volume break down community spirit and neigh-bourliness’.44 The form of our human settlements andhow we move about in them are inextricably linked.

Discussion

The discussion above briefly and selectively reviewedsome of the issues relating to urban form and human



mobility. We do indeed live in a world of ‘acceptablelevels and permissible doses’ and the economics ofpublic policy making require that we ask how manydeaths, injuries, or illnesses per thousand people isacceptable or permissible before we need to regulate or legislate regarding some aspects of human activity.There are direct and indirect consequences of privateautomobile use. There are also present and future con-sequences. We need to look at whose costs and whosebenefits. These are fundamental questions of publicpolicy. Where is the public debate?

‘For most of this century traffic has been seen as aninevitable by-product of progress . . . we seemedthrilled at the possibility of going more and more placesin less and less time’.45 But have we really experienced‘progress’ or just a costly and unexamined change inhow we live? Change is not necessarily progress. AsBetrand Russell said, ‘Change is inevitable, while pro-gress is problematic, change is scientific, while progressis ethical’.46 Change is inevitable while progress requiresthat we make decisions (private and public) compatiblewith the values we hold individually and collectively.47

And herein lies the first fundamental question. Havepeople really been given a choice and/or have they been provided with the knowledge upon which to makedecisions about where and how they want to live?Second, have people really been given alternativesabout how they get around in urban environments? And the third fundamental question is, should it be left to the individual as a consumer to make these decisions?

In North America we have the technical and regula-tory tools to improve the quality of our human settle-ments by reducing pollution and improving humanhealth and safety. In a market economy, the first stepmust entail efforts to improve consumer knowledge,and to change attitudes and behaviour. Efforts tochange attitudes have been more successful than effortsto change behaviour.48 People are ready to believe, forinstance, that overall, automobiles cause pollution,but appear not to be ready or able to drive less. Con-sumers either fail to realize or are unable to act in amanner which demonstrates their understanding of the connection between their individual activities andthe resulting decrease in the quality of their shared environment.

Human beings live in a world of their own collectivecreation but perhaps relegating them to a principle roleof a ‘sovereign consumer’ in a market-place has robbedthem of the dignity and responsibility of being human.Unlike other living creatures that live ‘directly ornakedly’ in nature, humans live in an envelope that theyhave constructed out of nature. ‘This envelope is usuallycalled culture or civilization, which insulates and sepa-rates humans from nature’.49 Our human settlementsare very much part of our physical culture, they aresocial artefacts. Much can be said of the architecturalwonders and impressive planning of these complexhuman settlements. The transformation, however, ofsome of the natural environment into human settle-ments ‘has not been wholly a creative operation; therehas been an immense amount of spoiling, wasting,destroying and plundering as well’.50 Spurr, 25 years ago, noted in his study of suburban land developmentin Canada, that ‘our activity, which is common in thewestern world must be recognized to be a horrendousdeliberate short-term exploitation of this planet’.51 BothSpurr and Fry50 give us some insight into how we under-stand or fail to understand our surroundings and howwe have used them. People in the western world are pre-dominantly urban and live out the majority of their livessequestered in the physical culture of the urban enve-lope. For these urban environments (envelopes) tonourish and sustain their inhabitants, they must be com-patible with a living planet. Although humans may notexist directly in nature, the settlements upon whichhumans depend, do.

One of the problems of using the term ‘environment’– human or natural – is that the word ‘environment’denotes ones surroundings in an objectified sense.52

‘Environment’ is always the context ‘of’ something.The word ecology, by its very inclusiveness, impliesinterconnectedness. Human settlements are not outsideof, or do they offer complete escape from, nature.Ideally, they are a mediator and act as a prosthesis to facilitate human activity. Human settlements must be designed and developed in such a manner that the processes and human activities within them do not have consequences, which could damage the health of the larger eco-system. If we fail to understandour human settlements in their larger eco-systemcontext and continue to build them as stand-alone



technical constructs, they will grow as Illich warns, ‘firstto become (our) masters and finally to become (our)executioner’.53

The use of the world ‘consumer’ also has similarimportance. The ‘consumer’ is one-half of the con-sumer/producer equation in a market system. If humanbeings are seen primarily as consumers of goods andservices, even raising them to the status of ‘consumersovereignty’ at best only changes their status within theconfines of the market-place; at worst, dupes them intoa sense of power. Perhaps what is necessary is to elimi-nate the dominance of the consumer/producer modelfrom our approach to developing policy dealing with theproblems of human settlement and mobility. We need to rid ourselves of restrictive reductionist models of‘consumer’ and ‘market-place’, and begin to think, ofthe individuals in the community.

Daly and Cobb have argued that we need to developan approach which will ‘subordinate the market to pur-poses that it is not geared to determine’.54 There is nodoubt that people are consumers in a market-place, butthat is only one aspect of being human. Regrettably, ithas become the ‘modus operandi’ of how our humansettlements are constructed and operate. Life for manyhas been reduced to a hunt for consumer goods andfreedom has become trivialized to mean the opportu-nity to freely choose which consumer product one wantsto buy. ‘Consumer bliss has the effect of divertingpeople’s energy away from community to the self’.55

This consumer culture,Vaclav Havel warns, is a spiritualdisease ‘engendered by a consumer culture – one inwhich a desperate substitute for living is represented ashuman life’.56

The market-place approach to human settlementdesign along with the private automobile transportationhegemony is one, if not the primary, underlying factorin the costly and unsustainable predicament of manyhuman settlements in the world today. As Scully pointsout ‘the automobile was and remains the agent of chaos,the breaker of the city . . . whatever other factors havebeen involved in the disintegration of community, it is still the automobile – and how much we love it –which has done the job’.57 But the answer is not elimi-nating the automobile. We have gone too far for that.We must direct the automobile away from its killing,polluting and community destroying role. Cleaner, safer,

slower and judiciously used automobiles are part of the solution.

Efforts towards urban redevelopment, mixed usedevelopment and what is today referred to as ‘smartdevelopment’, all attempt to direct development awayfrom automobile dependency. This movement neces-sarily requires the provision of real alternative trans-portation systems.58 A key approach here would be to introduce competition between alternative forms oftransportation. Amory Lovins provides one example.In the United States, one-third of all household roadmileage is incurred while commuting to work. It is esti-mated that 96% of these employees park for ‘free’, i.e.the employer pays for the parking spaces. Suppose the employer, either voluntarily or by law charged fairmarket value for parking spaces and then paid theemployees what Lovins calls a ‘commuting allowance’of equal after-tax dollars. By doing this, the employerhas fostered and monetized competition among allmodes of transportation.59 One can easily imagine thatmany would begin to take alternative forms of trans-portation to work. Walking, bicycling, car pooling andpublic transportation all become more attractive andless expensive, and the employer can eliminate or rentthe excess parking spaces. There are many otherapproaches to reducing auto-dependency. At the Uni-versity of Guelph, in Canada, undergraduate and grad-uate students have arranged for city bus passes at a fixedlow price per semester. This provides students with aninexpensive and safe mode of transportation, reducestraffic volume, eliminates the need to expand campus-parking facilities and supports the public transit system.One can imagine that someday cities will provide, aspart of being a citizen, no-fare public transit.The savingsand security to operating the system without the needfor fare boxes and cash management, the reduction ofauto congestion and air pollution would be immense. Inaddition, the well-supported public transit system couldoffer more frequent and more convenient service.

The private automobile was the tool we used to com-press time within the sprawled space of our settlements,but the human and environmental costs have renderedit a failure. There is, and will continue to be, consider-able discussion and effort towards making the automo-bile more energy efficient and less polluting, but theseefforts will not alleviate congestion, urban sprawl,



accidents and community disintegration.The problem isfundamentally that too many people have to drive toomany miles. We need now to find ways to buy back timeby changing our relationship to space. The quintessen-tial approach will be to design human settlements wherepeople are not required to travel as much, at least notin private automobiles.

The present costly and unsustainable situation of ourhuman settlements is a result of a profound failure inpublic policy; a failure which resulted when we left thefate of our human settlements to the vagaries of themarket-place. ‘Markets were never meant to achievecommunity or integrity, beauty or justice, sustainabilityor sacredness – and they don’t’.60 We can no longer relyon the present subsidized, distorted, market-placesystem approach to designing, building and operatingour human settlements. The consequences have beendisastrous for human welfare, health and safety, and thenatural environment upon which all life depends. Thehuge subsidization of sprawling development and the unbridled use of the private automobile needs to bebrought to the forefront of public policy debate, not left to the excesses of the market-place. To do this weneed citizens-in-the-community, not consumers-in-the-market.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it is critical to understand that the alter-native to the subsidized, distorted market-placeapproach to human settlements design and the privatetransportation hegemony is not antigrowth or ‘luddite’in nature. As Jane Jacobs has argued ‘that like thebiomass of the forest, the economy tends to expand naturally if governments don’t distort the process withsubsidies to failing businesses’.61 We have distorted anddiminished the vitality of our human settlements via thesubsidization of private auto transportation and sprawl-ing suburbs. By not having an accurate accounting of the‘externalities’ of the factors discussed above, the publicis being presented with an inaccurate balance sheetupon which to evaluate public policy.The citizen-in-the-community in a democratic society does have a role.Economic growth happens ‘under certain restraints –moral restraints. You can’t have an economy full ofpirates and raiders’.62 The public policy failure has been

the failure of governments to arrest the transforma-tion of citizen-in-the-community to consumer-in-the-market. Let’s hope the transformation is reversible, thatthe citizen can be rescued. What is necessary now is for democratically elected governments to becomeaccountable to citizens not apologists for the market-place. Consumers are only an object in the consumer/producer market-place equation and ‘. . . if one regardsthe human person as essentially a physical object or acomplex machine, then one cannot consider the thingsthat people produce (human settlements) as being morespiritual than that’.63

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