The District Magazine Vol. 1 Issue 2, Summer 2016 | Page 42

An Urban
Understanding
of Mobility
BY VANCE ARNETT

Getting
from Here
to There

The choice to live “downtown” rather than in the
“burbs” is a lifestyle decision. It involves security,
a sense of belonging, requirements for nurturing
yourself, family and friends and mobility. Mobility is
that lifestyle choice that relates to how you move
about in your daily life, not just to get to work or
school or to purchase goods, but what percentage
of your time and finances do you want to direct to
accomplishing these tasks. Regardless of where
you live, currently in a connected society, we are all
dynamic and in motion. National statistics show that
we spend significant amounts of our waking hours
moving ourselves, our families, and our friends
from one point to another. The question of how we
choose to do that is related to where we live, work,
and play.
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The car has dominated the landscape of public
planning and transportation design since the
post World War II era of population growth and
expansion. There is no question that the expanded
dependence upon the automobile was one of the
leading causes of the development of the growth
in suburban development and the extension of
urban sprawl. Public transit, shared conveyances
such as busses, streetcars, and other forms of rail
transit, are options but political and public support
survived for these modes of transportation only in
those cities where the style and design of the city
did not allow for the storage, passage, or cost of
a multitude of private vehicles. The rapid exodus
of residential neighborhoods from urban areas to
suburban developments was one result. Housing
was more affordable, newer, with larger lots and
garages. And connecting all of this to work, school,
recreational options, shopping and medical needs,
was a system of roads. The necessary roads are
expensive to build and thus the money and support
for bus systems, and rail alternatives was diverted
to highway construction. This all worked well until
growth outpaced road capacity. When the highways