The US Initiative
The Connectivity Challenge
Imagine a community where you never have to step foot in a car again. A place free of rush hour woes, where every convenience is within a short walk, bike ride or transit trip. Now imagine that we could realize that future here and now.
We are beginning to see that while sprawling suburbanization made sense for a time, Americans have a growing appetite for urban living. The places that thrive today are those with the highest velocity of ideas and the highest density of talented people. We know that 25-34 year-olds have shown an increasing propensity to live with a 3-mile radius of central business districts and by 2000 were 33% more likely than other Americans to live in close-in neighborhoods that are compact, multi-functional (thanks to a mix of uses) and offer alternatives to the car as a way to get around.
Planners now project that 86% of the growth in new households will be single people or couples without children at home – and neither group wants to live in remote suburbs or in houses surrounded by big lawns. Four cars in every garage may have once been the dream of Americans, but it’s now clear that not only is that time-consuming and isolating; not only does it undermine the natural advantages of cities, but it is also expensive.
A key advantage of cities is their intrinsic sustainability: they require less car travel, use less energy and generate fewer emissions per capita than more sprawling areas. Alternative forms of transportation (transit, walking and cycling) enable city-dwellers to recapture income otherwise spent on cars and gasoline – money that quickly leaves the local economy – and redistribute it in their local economies.
CEOs for Cities has calculated that by reducing vehicle miles traveled by one mile per person per day in just the nation’s top 51 metro areas, the U.S. could realize a $29 billion “Green Dividend.” Therefore, a critical strategy for promoting true sustainability—environmental and economic—is to reduce vehicle miles traveled. And the best way to reduce vehicle miles traveled is through genuine urbanism.
Chicago: A Model of Urban Accessibility
CEOs for Cities and the Chicago Architecture Foundation hosted the Connectivity Challenge in Chicago on December 8-10, 2010. With one of the country’s oldest and most robust public transportation systems, Chicago is a model of urban accessibility. Together with the Chicago Transit Authority, the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning and Chicago Metropolis 2020, CEOs for Cities and our partners generated big ideas for how Chicagoans may meet their daily needs without owning a car.
For a recap of highlights, search our US Initiative Twitter feed at #USInitiative.
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The Connectivity Challenge Report |
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Chicago Lookbook |