The Next Big Idea Daily How to Break Up With Your Car
11 snips
Dec 4, 2025 
Doug Gordon and Sarah Goodyear, co-hosts of the War on Cars podcast and advocates for urban reform, join journalist Henry Grabar to discuss the unseen impacts of car culture. They reveal how cars shape urban spaces, erode community connections, and affect childhood independence. Grabar emphasizes the staggering amount of land dedicated to parking and the financial and environmental costs tied to it. Together, they explore solutions like dynamic pricing to reclaim streets for walking and cycling, encouraging listeners to envision a future less dependent on automobiles.
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See The Invisible Effects Of Cars
- Cars shape cities, health, and social life in ways most people barely notice.
- Sarah Goodyear and Doug Gordon urge deliberate observation to see cars' hidden impacts.
Traffic Shrinks Childhood Mobility
- Children's independence collapsed as walking and biking to school fell from ~50% to ~11% since 1969.
- Doug Gordon links traffic-dominated streets to worse cognitive maps and fewer play locations for kids.
Cars Erode Neighborhood Social Life
- More cars on a street correlate with dramatically fewer neighborly interactions.
- Doug Gordon cites Appleyard's study showing light-traffic streets had triple the local friends.
