To be modern is to be mobile. Our economy depends on the free and rapid circulation of people and goods, and we have invented transportation technologies to suit our needs. First the railroads moved people and goods at previously unimaginable speeds, while steamships circled the globe. Then, in the twentieth century, airplanes moved us even faster. For most people, though, mobility means automobiles. Cars freed rural people from their isolation, and they gave city dwellers access to the countryside. The middle classes take their cars for granted, while the world's poor aspire to car ownership as a token and a tool of advancement. But is our modern mobility sustainable? We are facing an energy crisis, a climate crisis, and an economic crisis - and perhaps a mobility crisis as well. Sometime during the past two years, according to United Nations estimates, the world's population became mostly urban.
For the first time, a majority of us now live in cities, and that majority will grow rapidly. But urban life poses a challenge to our automotive mobility. In cities, cars offer easy mobility - but only when traffic isn't too bad. They also free drivers from the delays and tribulations of buses, trains, and sidewalks. In other words, a car furnishes a steel cocoon that shields motorists from their fellow citizens. That protection comes at a price: if not a loss of civility, then certainly of urban mobility, as cars clog the roads.
