| To better understand the millennials (no small task), it is helpful to understand New Urbanism. The New Urbanism movement was started in the early 1990’s with a desire to redesign the way cities and neighborhoods coexisted with the admirable goal of making them more livable. Its primary goals are “to reduce dependence on the car and to create livable and pedestrian friendly neighborhoods with a densely packed array of housing and commercial sites.” To the movement’s credit, millennials have embraced many of its values and many have migrated to bigger cities that feature high density, high pulse urban lifestyles. Alas, the movement’s nemesis, urban sprawl, turns out to be a good defense against COVID-19. Could this portend a new revival for the automobile? It would not be the first time it has come to the rescue of Americans. The automobile was one of the transformative and defining inventions of the 20th century. In its early iteration as the horseless carriage, its acceptance helped clean up cities by reducing horse manure, which city planners of that time considered a limiting factor on how big cities could become. It changed how we live and where we live. The car enabled the suburbs, the drive-in movie, fast food, road trips and the Interstate Highway System. Now, we drive on parkways and park on driveways. Drivers Ed became part of the high school curriculum and getting a driver’s license a rite of youth passage. Even William Faulkner wrote about its power to expand horizons in The Reivers. In short, it was and perhaps still is the great American Dream Machine. Don’t be surprised if this summer sees greatly increased travel by cars, trucks and RV’s to far flung places like national parks, the mountains and beaches. Make your reservations now. As to the prospects for highly dense cities and their mass transit systems, that is a critical question. Transit agencies received $25 billion in the CARES Act. They may need a whole lot more. The whole new experience of Zoom meetings and a locked-down country brings into question the business model of New York City and its tangled transit system. |
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