Transportation planner Jarrett Walker looks at the top 50 cities of over 100k people and the percentage of people who don't own a car. Do the cities that made the list shed some light on how planners can discourage car use?
Walker proposes that there are three main factors shared between the successful ones: age of the city (older cities have a higher percentage of carless), and dominant universities.
Walker writes, "Most cities on this list display two or more of these factors, but a few are models for just one of them. San Francisco on the list because of age -- a rare western city largely laid out before the car-dominated era, and thus by far the densest big city in the west. Berkeley is there because it's small city dominated by a big university. And many cities are there because of relative poverty, including most of the cities that would be on everyone's list of America's toughest urban reinvention challenges."
Read the full story: three paths to a low-car city
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