Deceptive Distance

I recently went to a coffeeshop I think is "close" to home, then on to work, which is also "close" to home, and then home, and realized I had put 15 miles on my car. So today I want to talk about the deceptive distance of car-centric design: the way we normalize going a long way and using a lot of gas/electricity/whatever to power vehicles without even realizing it.

1. Unintegrated space

Car-centric design tends to come with single-use zoning that creates huge swathes of space in a city where you can only live, or only do industrial work, or only buy and sell things, or what have you. This can be good! I don't really want to live next to an industrial park. But it also means that you always have to travel a long distance to do anything, because if you're at home your home won't be near anything but other homes, and same for work, shopping, etc. We sometimes block that out mentally (if there is no closer coffeeshop, this is a close coffeeshop!) but it's still true.

2. Flattened space 

This is a similar issue, but it's less about zoning and more about how we travel in cars. Our streets are fast (and often faster than they should be). Because of how this is designed, it often takes longer to get to nearby places than to further ones, or at least similar times. My partner and I have a joke that everywhere in town is fifteen minutes away. This isn't quite true, but it feels true, and it's a function of the flattening of differences in space. Nothing is too far but nothing is too close; a neighborhood coffeeshop still requires getting into the car, parking (even if it's easy to do), and walking into the shop. Cars are fast, but while they make far distances feel close sometimes, they also flatten space so that we end up experiencing longer trips because they seem equally easy.

3. As the crow doesn't fly

Finally, road networks also can warp space by making something "close" actually surprisingly hard to get to. Here in Davenport Duck Creek bisects the city. There are only a few roads that cross it. Likewise I-74 divides Bettendorf and Davenport, and the Mississippi divides Iowa and Illinois with very few crossings (this last one of course is not the fault of any urban planning other than putting the cities here at all).

Well sometimes we do make choices, like tearing down a bridge. But anyway...

Places that may seem very close as a crow flies can be surprisingly far as the car drives. The one-ways in Davenport can make this even worse. Walking is bidirectional, and can cross uneven terrain; a car can do that, but for obvious safety reasons we don't usually let them do it in crowded areas. No offroading in the city! But when we design around car safety (as we have to with cars as our dominant transportation method), we end up with a distinct difference between actual distance, perceived distance, and travel time.

All of these contribute to make it so that a city designed around cars creates longer and less-differentiated trips, and deceptive distances.