Moving more lightly

by Henning Thomsen, Gehl Architects

The world consumes a third of all its energy on transportation alone. In addition the impact of transportation on the environment accounts for 25 % of the total carbon emmissions. And yet our need for moving about freely in energy consuming and CO2 emmitting vehicles has been unquestioned for decades. But this will no longer be acceptable.

In any local setting the impact from cars is felt as is that of the massive amount of infrastructure needed for cars to be able to move freely about. The long lines of cars stuck on the highway on their way to and from the city every morning is a familiar sight to most. The pollution and the psychological stress, inflicted upon us on a daily basis, is evident. All in all we must admit, that all is not well in the kingdom of cars.

Existing settlements, whether they be major urban conurbations or smaller local communities, in the future will have to come up with more sustainable answers to our needs for mobility. Cities like Curitiba, Freiburg and Stockholm have each in their own way introduced models for more sustainable mobility.

Innovative village settlements must take into account that the private car cannot and should not be banned. But it should be recognised that the communal nature of the village setting can lay the foundation for new models of sharing that could be built into the construction and identity of a sustainable village from the very beginning. Car sharing systems are found in many places throughout the world, but why not make it part of the sustainable village from the beginning?

Also, strong planning principles should be set from the very beginning that will control the amount of space given to private cars. Transportation in private cars requires a tremendous amount of space, whereas many more people can be moved about in the same amount of space, if they were moved by bus or bicycle or even on foot.

More space for cars results in more cars. This has become evident through research over the last couple of decades. In the sustainable village the balance should be struck from the beginning: less space for cars, more space for communal modes of transportation. The sustainable village could even become a testing ground for a new balance that could feed back into the thinking in the larger cities of the world.