Automobile city


An automobile city is a type of city planned for the usage of cars and trucks. It has a much wider horizontal extent than the walking city, spread out across many miles. There is a vast increase in the amount of land devoted to parking, and a much lower density in population and jobs compared to older and more compact cities.

History

The advent of the automobile brought about enormous change to the designs of cities. The automobile city became the dominant form in the United States and Australia, and to a lesser extent, Canada, from the 1940s onward, as cars began to displace public transport and non-motorized modes of transportation. Land uses became split into zones, and the time to travel from place to place increased dramatically. Now, the majority of United States and Australian cities are part of the automobile-city tradition.

Features

The automobile city is a modern type of city that includes locations such as Houston, Phoenix, Perth, and Brisbane. Since people can commute from the suburbs to the inner city, the central city high-rise office block is a trait mainly specific to the automobile city.
The city design has been criticized for leading to urban sprawl, decreased use of public transportation, increased air pollution due to the vast amounts of cars, and a decreased sense of place due to the ease of long-distance car travel. In cities with little planning to control the use of cars, such as Bangkok and Kuala Lampur in Asia, formerly high-density walking cities have been transformed into automobile cities due to lack of facilities, causing high numbers of transport deaths, especially amongst non-motorized mode users and motorcyclists.