Your Car Is Your Castle

The War on Cars

The War on Cars, LLC

Cars, Society & Culture, Culture, Bicycling, Politics, Urbanism, Walking, Transportation, Cities, Transit, News Commentary, News

4.9 • 937 Ratings

🗓️ 14 June 2019

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

How can we fight a War on Cars when cars might be turning into the last bastion of affordable housing in many cities and suburbs? In this episode, we talk about how the crises in transportation, housing and climate are converging in California parking lots — some of which are becoming de facto communities. Stepping in to help us understand what’s going on in the Golden State is Alissa Walker, who writes for Curbed LA and cohosts LA Podcast.

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Show Notes:

Alissa Walker drills down on SB50 and other (so-far failed) legislation to address California’s twin crises of transportation and housing. Follow her on Twitter for all the latest on LA’s streets.

Mark Horvath talks to people who have become homeless on his YouTube channel, Invisible People (his interview with Conrad, a veteran living in an LA parking lot, is here). You can find out more about him and support his work on his Patreon page.

Safe Parking LA advocates for the interests of people who have become homeless and are living in their cars.

The Public Policy Institute of California has a snapshot of the state’s growing homelessness problem.

In this NPR story, you’ll hear from a California woman who is leasing a car through Uber so she can have a place to live.

99 Percent Invisible did an episode about the dream (or nightmare) of vertical trailer park living in Ready Player One.

Henry Grabar writes about the “I’ve got mine” worldview of America’s gerontocracy for Slate.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Did you guys see Ready Player 1 that that Stephen Spielberg movie like the worst Stephen
0:06.2	Spielberg movie ever? I both read the book and saw the movie. I really like the book.
0:11.5	Okay movie. Okay well it's it's kind of
0:15.2	interesting as a premise because it's about this dystopian future where climate
0:19.2	change has pretty much devastated civilization except people are all playing this virtual reality game together and that's where people find their happiness and their their intimacy and love is in this virtual reality.
0:34.1	But there's a really good dystopia details.
0:36.6	Yeah, that's what I was hooked in too.
0:37.8	I was born in 2027, after the corn syrup droughts, after the bandwidth riots, after people
0:47.1	stop trying to fix problems and just try to outlive them.
0:51.8	Distopia plus Van Halen, what's the problem?
0:55.0	Yeah.
0:57.0	My parents, they didn't make it through those times.
1:00.0	So I live here in Columbus, Ohio with my in Alice.
1:03.9	In 2045, Columbus is the fastest growing city on Earth.
1:09.9	OK, so, so like maybe you guys could describe what we're seeing.
1:14.4	So that's the main character, the protagonist, and he's basically walking through his trailer park, but...
1:19.8	It's a vertical trailer park.
1:21.3	They live in what are called the stacks, which are mobile homes stacked on
1:24.7	top of each other like apartment buildings and you just climb up and down ladders and you live in your
1:30.2	mobile home with 10, 12 other people, your family, and that's your life.
1:34.0	Right. And so it seems like kind of a crazy future that is implausible or impossible,
1:41.0	except that we are seeing it actually kind of happening here in the
	...

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