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A recent book outlines how a society can become ‘prosperous’ in a meaningful way without economic growth (which is inherently unsustainable). This article suggests that this book – acclaimed by people as different as Mary Robinson, the former chief scientist of BP and the Financial Times reviewer – has great relevance to us in the carfree movement.
Sustainable travel campaigners tend to be serious, rational, moral. But 'the other side' the people who sell cars, have a very different approach to persuading people.
So let's borrow a page or two from their book
This article will appear in A2B Magazine in a few weeks time
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Steve Melia is Senior Lecturer in Planning and Transport at the University of the West of England and Coordinator of Carfree UK (www.carfree.org.uk)
This article was written by Simon Poole for the transport group of Transition Town Brixton. The aim was to help us ‘think big’ about promoting both carfree lifestyles and carfree neighbourhoods. Since then the London Traffic-free Neigbourhood Project has been set up (email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it for details), inspired by examples from European cities such as Freiberg, Copenhagen and Hamburg where there are sizeable carfree developments. Carfree Uk (http://www.carfree.org.uk/) is also promoting such developments in other UK cities.
Meanwhile the more of us who live carfree lifestyles the more ‘street cred’ we have in putting pressure on the authorities for such developments. http://www.thefourwheeldetox.com/ provides a number of inspiring examples of people living without a car, by choice, throughout the Uk.