Beyond the car. Car-free housing as a laboratory to overcome the “system of automobility”

ABSTRACT

The car is being called more and more into question in cities due to its impact on, for example, congestion, air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. However, since the “system of automobility” appears to be very resilient, it is important to understand how it can be overcome. Car-free housing projects, where residents commit to living without a private car in the long term, represent laboratories for a post-car system. A mixed-method study of nine developments in Germany and Switzerland shows that residents adopt four types of strategies. They take full advantage of cycling and public transport and use mobility and transport services. They favour proximity and transit accessibility in their everyday life, and rely on their community. Moreover, a favourable social (legal and social norms) and spatial context (infrastructures and built environment) are necessary to enable people to live without a private car.

KEYWORDS:

• System of automobility
• car-free mobility
• car-free housing
• sustainable urban development
• mobility transition

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the respondents of the survey questionnaire and the interviewees in the car-free housing developments as well as the reviewers of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. For details on the nine case studies as well as the methods, see Baehler (2019).

2. For further details on motivations and profiles, see Baehler and Rérat (2020).

3. All quotes from the interviews were translated from German by the authors.

4. This relates to “classical”, station-based carsharing. While in Germany there are many different providers, in Switzerland, there is basically only one (“Mobility Car Sharing”), providing over 3,300 cars at more than 1,400 stations, not only in urban regions, but also at railway stations all over the country.

5. The Swiss municipalities are the centres of bigger urban regions (except Ostermundigen, a suburban municipality). Bern, for example, is at the core of an urban region with about 410,000 inhabitants and Biel/Bienne of one with about 100,000 residents.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the institution to which the authors are affiliated.