FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT EMAIL
Jaime Jennings, 202-232-7933 x44 jjennings@islandpress.org
PRESS RELEASE
THE END OF AUTOMOBILE DEPENDENCE How Cities Are Moving Beyond Car-Based Planning By Peter Newman and Jeffrey Kenworthy Washington, DC (August 11, 2015) — Cars have been at the heart of American life for decades, and sometimes it’s hard to remember it hasn’t always been that way. Cities will continue to accommodate the automobile, but residents and policymakers alike are realizing that when cities are built around cars, the quality of human and natural life declines. As urban rail is thriving, central cities are revitalizing, suburban sprawl is reversing, and walking and cycling are growing in many cities, numerous global cities are now experiencing peak car use. For more than 25 years, global transportation experts Peter Newman and Jeffrey Kenworthy have been predicting that the era of automobile dependence would end as people realized the strengths of communities not built around the car. In their new book, The End of Automobile Dependence: How Cities are Moving Beyond Car-Based Planning, Newman and Kenworthy explain how the end of automobile dependence has arrived, and sooner than even they predicted. This is the final volume in a trilogy by Newman and Kenworthy on automobile dependence. Like all good trilogies this one shows the rise of an empire, in this case that of the automobile, the peak of its power, and its decline. Newman and Kenworthy look at how we can accelerate a planning approach to designing urban environments that can function reliably and conveniently on alternative modes, with a refined and more civilized automobile playing a very much reduced and manageable role in urban transportation. They also explain how to better guide cities to the most productive and sustainable outcomes during this time of fundamental change. Grounding their analysis in the theory of urban fabrics and an extensive data set tracing 44 global cities, Newman and Kenworthy explain why the decline of the automobile is a hopeful development,