Founding editor, Joel Crawford, announces final issue of Carfree Times
I have decided to suspend my online creative efforts indefinitely. This will probably be the last Carfree Times. I don’t plan to shoot stills or video except incidentally, and there will probably be few or no new videos.
In a sense, what I’m doing is giving up virtual presence in favor of actual presence. I am looking at screens far too much. I enjoy face-to-face interaction, particularly with an audience. I am available for these kinds of events within railing distance of Amsterdam.
We are going to have carfree cities, one way or another, I’m pretty sure. Money, ecology, and happiness all optimize at one and the same point: carfree cities. There is no cheaper way to build decent cities. No other urban form has smaller environmental impacts. Urban quality of life is always improved by removing cars.
Unless it comes to planning one of those carfree cities, I’ll be mostly out of the loop. I’m usually available by email if you need me for something. When the books eventually go out of print, I’ll try to upload PDFs.
I will attempt to keep Carfree.com on line indefinitely, but technical, regulatory, or economic issues might force me to take it down. For now, however, the 35,000 files will remain accessible, most of them through the Design Library section. There are dozens of videos at YouTube and Vimeo. Nearly all the content is now public domain, but I have no model releases – these are journalistic uses, not commercial. You are invited to download the entire site.
I don’t think the declining traffic at Carfree.com represents a loss of interest in the idea. Quite the contrary, in fact. At one time, Carfree.com was nearly the only source of information and news about carfree cities. Now, of course, there are many, starting with the Wikipedia entry.
In the past 20 years, the carfree idea has been taken up by many planners, and carfree and car-lite projects are springing up all over Europe, with a few in North America. Adoption in other parts of the world has been slow, but leaders are facing the familiar traffic congestion crisis. Europe, with its old cities and their narrow streets, was first to confront the intrinsic limitations of auto-centric cities and hence first to reduce car use.
It goes without saying that I wish the new Carfree Cities Alliance every success in building support for carfree cities.
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About the author:
J.H. Crawford was born and raised in North America. As a youth, he traveled by train and bicycle through a Europe still relatively free of cars. He later traveled and lived in Europe and Asia. His university education was in the liberal arts followed by a masters in social work. He has published two books on carfree cities.
His first exploration of the carfree cities concept came while he consulted with real estate developers in coastal South Carolina, where carfree areas had become the most valuable locations. It was then that he discovered Christopher Alexander’s _A Pattern Language_, a work that provided the theoretical basis for understanding the popularity of carfree areas.
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About the editor (World Streets):
Eric Britton
13, rue Pasteur. Courbevoie 92400 France
Bio: Founding editor of World Streets (1988), Eric Britton is an American political scientist, teacher, occasional consultant, and sustainability activist who has observed, learned, taught and worked on missions and advisory assignments on all continents. In the autumn of 2019, he committed his remaining life work to the challenges of aggressively countering climate change and specifically greenhouse gas emissions emanating from the mobility sector. He is not worried about running out of work. Further background and updates: @ericbritton | http://bit.ly/2Ti8LsX | #fekbritton | https://twitter.com/ericbritton | and | https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericbritton/ Contact: climate@newmobility.org) | +336 508 80787 (Also WhatApp) | Skype: newmobility.)
WORLD STREETS __ A New Mobility Action Plan for 2022 