Give Up the Suburb? Yes. Give Up the Car? No Way
Many urban planners firmly believe that if they can just get enough control over the built environment they can produce the kind of social change they want. They think, for example, that if they can create "pedestrian friendly" neighborhoods we will all ride around on bikes like Chinese factory workers, and then urban planners will have saved the planet from the internal combustion engine. Then, along comes reality...

When urban planners first talked about the new residential boom in downtown Los Angeles, they conjured up idyllic streets where pedestrians — their cars sold to ex-neighbors in the suburbs — strolled happily to work along streets lined with cafes and bookstores. People are moving downtown, all right. But this is L.A. So they're bringing their cars with them. And now local officials, who just a few years ago stopped requiring developers to build parking spaces in most loft buildings, are scrambling to accommodate automobiles — and their owners — downtown.
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