UNCHS Photo/Steve Jackson

On the first Tuesday of every month, a group of bicyclists take to the traffic-clogged streets of Santiago de Chile to advocate changes in the city's structure. This unlikely band of revolutionaries, the Ciclistas Furiosos, includes lawyers, doctors, labourers and students who want the Government to add bicycle lanes to existing roads, create new bike paths and install racks for bicycle parking.

More bicycles and fewer cars, argue the activists, would benefit Santiago. For nearly nine months of the year, the region is mired in a heavy, brown smog. Motor vehicles emit nearly three quarters of the nitrogen oxides in Santiago's air and over half of the volatile organic compounds; these pollutants interact in sunlight to form ozone, which exceeds health standards on more than 150 days per year. Traffic accidents, pollution and congestion cost residents almost $800 million annually. And as motorized travel in Santiago has more than doubled in the last two decades, housing projects and new businesses have sprouted on the city's outskirts, encroaching on farms and forests. With fewer trees and vegetation to soak up rain, the region is at greater risk of harm from floods, such as a major one in 1993 that claimed many lives.

People in many other cities share the concerns of Santiago's cyclists, that motor vehicle-centred urban development brings benefits to individual drivers at a huge cost to society. Car users enjoy door-to-door service, protection from weather and pride of ownership. But as cities grow to accommodate motor vehicles, they push built-up areas over forests and farmland, pave over watersheds, and invite accidents and pollution from ever-greater vehicle traffic. Various reports suggest that car-reliant cities not only damage the environment but also worsen social inequities and impede economic growth. As the world becomes more urban, a major challenge for societies will be to reorient current patterns of urban development away from car-dependent sprawl and towards walkable neighbourhoods connected by networks of bicycle paths, bus routes and railways.

UNCHS Photo/Steve Jackson

Vehicle emissions are worst in urban centres of the developing world. Highly polluting two- and three-wheeled vehicles are prevalent in many of these cities. Most of these are powered by simple but dirty "two-stroke" engines, in which much of the fuel goes unburned and is released with the exhaust.

These vehicles emit more than 10 times the amount of fine particulate matter per vehicle-kilometer as a modern car and only slightly less than a diesel truck.

Studies in Europe show that pollution from motor vehicles can actually kill more people than do vehicle accidents. In Austria, France and Switzerland, the number of premature deaths brought about by particulate emissions from vehicles is about twice that from traffic accidents, according to a report in the Lancet medical journal. The death toll from vehicle accidents alone is not insignificant. Researchers estimate that nearly a million people are killed on the world's roads each year, and most of them are pedestrians.

Better technologies are needed, but they are not the entire solution. In much of the developing world, pollution-cutting catalytic converters and unleaded fuel could help clean the air, and better road design could help reduce fatalities. But, as wealthy countries have discovered, emissions reductions can be swallowed by greater vehicle use, and better roads can actually induce more traffic. Moreover, most vehicles continue to emit carbon dioxide which warms the planet's atmosphere. Spurred by greater road traffic, the transport sector has become the fastest growing source of carbon released from human activities. Motor vehicles accounted for 73 per cent of carbon emissions from transportation in 1997, up from 58 per cent in 1990.

Aside from degrading the environment, car-centric cities worsen disparities between rich and poor. The problem is most stark in the world's poorest cities. For instance, in Nairobi, more than half the population lives in makeshift slums on the city's edge, which are hard to reach by public bus; in any case, more than 40 per cent of the city's population cannot afford the bus fare.

Although most people travel by foot, road improvements consist of widening roads for motor vehicles, without marking separate lanes or paths for pedestrians. Even in the wealthiest cities, a lack of transportation options limits opportunities for poor families. In Boston, for example, the majority of people living below the poverty line live within walking distance of public transit, but only a third of potential employers are that close to a transit station.

Spread-out cities without effective public transit or cycling networks trap people in traffic and sap their productivity. Motor vehicles impede other forms of traffic and cause delays. Cities in the developing world may have fewer motor vehicles than wealthier cities, but suffer worse traffic delays, because they have inadequate facilities for bicyclists, pedestrians and public transit. Every day, Atlanta loses more than $6 million to traffic delays and Bangkok more than $4 million. But such estimates only value hours that could have been spent working; it's harder to measure the loss to society of time that could have been used to care for one's children or build friendships in a community.

These problems will only intensify as the world becomes more urban. Half of the global population of 6 billion people now resides in "urban agglomerations", nearly four times as many as in 1950. Demographers estimate that the population increase in cities and towns of Africa, Asia and Latin America will account for nearly 90 per cent of the 2.7 billion people they expect will be added to the world population between 1995 and 2030. How these cities meet the transportation needs of their citizens will affect not only billions of lives, but also world energy demand for years to come.

Point of Fact

Half the world's urban dwellers reside in Asia.

Promoting People-Friendly Cities

As urbanists, environmentalists and local groups, such as Santiago's Ciclistas Furiosos, have highlighted the drawbacks of car-centred cities, they have also helped create a vision of an urban form that prioritizes people rather than cars. Perhaps the greatest opportunity for pursuing this vision exists in developing countries, where much newer urban infrastructure will be built. But even in countries that are already highly urbanized, new construction could occur at locations easily reached by a variety of transportation means, while green space could be preserved for nature, agriculture and recreation. Car-reliant communities could be retrofitted with bicycle paths, bus lanes and new forms of para-transit. Places designed for a single use, such as shopping malls, could be rebuilt as town centres where people could both live and work. UN Photo Yet, even as this vision is taking shape, powerful incentives remain for people to build and maintain places that cater to cars. Government institutions and policies often support car-reliant development. In Santiago, for example, important investments in bus and rail systems have not been accompanied by complementary land use policies. In 1979, the Government added 60,000 hectares to the amount of developable land in the metropolitan area; since then, it has supported the construction of public housing projects far from the city's rail system. An imbalance in the power of government agencies dedicated to different modes of transportation also skews policy. In the 1990s, legislation in the United States has attempted to bridge the traditional divisions between road building, rail and transit that have worked in favour of greater highway development. The landmark Intermodal Surface Transportation Equity Act (ISTEA) allowed money to be diverted from highways to other transportation projects. But state governments have been slow to adjust to this change, as the availability of federal funds for highway projects has for so long set the priorities of States and cities. A different sort of problem related to government structure affects transportation and land use at the level of the metropolitan region. When new roads, rail stations, stores, industrial facilities, businesses or houses are built in one town, transportation is affected throughout the region. A metropolitan region typically shares jobs, people and traffic, but rarely shares a public entity for land-use planning. By competing with each other for development, local governments tend to promote sprawl. To address this problem, national governments and development banks could provide incentives for metropolitan cooperation. One of the most important measures that Governments could take in re-shaping cities would be to engage citizens in devising regional transportation and land-use plans. To enforce regional plans for walkable neighbourhoods connected by transit, local authorities could develop regulations or incentives to push developers to build on vacant land within built-up urban areas rather than on outlying green areas, and change building codes and zoning laws to allow narrower streets, fewer parking lots and more varied use of land. Citizens' groups, such as the bicycle advocacy movement in Santiago, have a key role to play in pressuring Governments. Already, non-governmental organizations have played a key role in pushing transportation policy reform. For instance, a citizens' group in the United States, the Surface Transportation Policy Project, was instrumental in drafting the ISTEA legislation in the 1990s that opened new funding options for alternatives to highway building. And in response to advice from groups such as the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy, the World Bank has rethought its approach to transportation lending. Citizen-led campaigns are needed to counter the political power of car companies, road builders and real estate developers. Car companies spend roughly $24 billion each year on advertising, more than any other industry, in an effort to sell the idea of a car-reliant life. In the United States, the Ford Motor Company has moved beyond traditional advertisements into entertainment, collaborating with a television network on a show that will feature Ford vehicles. Real estate developers often use their money to sell the idea of their projects to local governments. And elected officials who receive donations or bribes from developers may allow them to flout regulations to protect open space. In promoting a fewer car dependent urban future, citizens' groups can employ visual images. Most people can understand aerial and ground-level photographs of their own community and help create images of what their neighbourhood and region might look like in the future, even if they are baffled by the jargon of building codes and zoning regulations. Such campaigns could not only promote a vision of people-centred development, but also demand greater transparency and accountability in government decisions about transportation spending and land development. —Molly O'Meara Sheehan