{"id":98438912,"date":"2008-02-14T08:08:32","date_gmt":"2008-02-14T08:08:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/?p=98438912"},"modified":"2008-02-14T08:08:32","modified_gmt":"2008-02-14T08:08:32","slug":"my-other-car-is-a-bright-green-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/?p=98438912","title":{"rendered":"My Other Car is a Bright Green City"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8230;<br \/>\nThis is a rough draft of a long essay about why I believe building compact communities should be one of America&#8217;s highest environmental priorities, and why, in fact, our obsession with building greener cars may be obscuring some fundamental aspects of the problem and some of the benefits of using land-use change as a primary sustainability solution.<br \/>\n<br \/>&#8230;<br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.worldchanging.com\/images\/2006\/05\/city-dwellers-emit-less-co2-for-transport.gif\" \/><br \/>\n<br \/>&#8230;<br \/>\nThis is what economists call &#8220;the commuting paradox.&#8221; Most people travel long distances with the idea that they&#8217;ll accept the burden for something better, be it a house, salary, or school. They presume the trade-off is worth the agony. But studies show that commuters are on average much less satisfied with their lives than noncommuters. A commuter who travels one hour, one way, would have to make 40% more than his current salary to be as fully satisfied with his life as a noncommuter, say economists Bruno S. Frey and Alois Stutzer of the University of Zurich&#8217;s Institute for Empirical Research in Economics. People usually overestimate the value of the things they&#8217;ll obtain by commuting &#8212; more money, more material goods, more prestige &#8212; and underestimate the benefit of what they are losing: social connections, hobbies, and health. &#8220;Commuting is a stress that doesn&#8217;t pay off,&#8221; says Stutzer.<br \/>\n<br \/>&#8230;<br \/>\nIn other words, there is a direct relationship between the kinds of places we live, the transportation choices we have, and how much we drive. <b>The best car-related innovation we have is not to improve the car, but eliminate the need to drive it everywhere we go.<\/b><br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.worldchanging.com\/archives\/007800.html\">https:\/\/www.worldchanging.com\/archives\/007800.html<\/a>oldId.20080214080832746<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8230; This is a rough draft of a long essay about why I believe building compact communities should be one of America&#8217;s highest environmental priorities, and why, in fact, our obsession with building greener cars may be obscuring some fundamental aspects of the problem and some of the benefits of using land-use change as a &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/?p=98438912\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;My Other Car is a Bright Green City&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-98438912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health-environment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98438912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=98438912"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98438912\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=98438912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=98438912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=98438912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}