Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Choices

The point in the post below about automobile cost/ownership was not that everyone, no matter what your neighborhood is like, can live without a car. The point is that many people see one car per adult member of housing as an inevitable expense, when in fact in many (not all) places, even pretty automobile-centric ones, you can make choices which can reduce your car dependency. Reducing car dependency is not the same thing as living without a car, it means living in places where a car is less necessary and therefore it's reasonable to consider reducing the number of cars/household. And if you factor in the savings from reducing the number of cars you have your potential location options might expand as you can therefore afford to pay a bit more for rent/mortgage.

For those who perpetually misunderstand, I don't care if you reduce the number of cars you have! I'm for policies (and undoing existing ones) which in various ways reduce car dependency in more places, but live your life however you want!