The tyranny of automobility and sprawl
While the Bellingen /Gleniffer area is transitioning from an ‘idyllic tourist town’ into a ‘normal Aussie suburb’ (of Coffs Harbour), road congestion gets everyone stuck in traffic.
Car dependent motorists in their SUVs and bloated oversized trucks demand more and wider roads, larger car parking and a right to pothole-free roads for their 'sports utility vehicles’.
Extreme commuting for the necessaries of life are conducted in big private vehicles powered by fossil fuel. An aggregate of ugly big-box stores (large format retail, Coffs) with hostile giant car parks deliver what consumers desire. These consumption hubs are mostly inaccessible to pedestrians and can be dangerous ‘non-places’ (Marc Augé).
The mobility design of old school traffic engineers responds to the sprawling expansion with more of the same: more roads, wider roads and bypassing the last bypass. They call it ‘upgrades’.
As the latest $2.2 billion highway or forest road ‘upgrade/s’ are blasting their way through the landscape, they are silent about the ‘public bads’: the destroyed biodiversity habitat, the downgraded neighbourhoods, the violence and the polluted biosphere.
The ‘normality’ of automobility, or the 'car in the head' in petromodernity together with regulatory inertia make a transition to alternative land uses, energy systems, mobilities and ways of being a challenge.
#sprawl #suburbia #mobility #cars #roads #JevonsParadox #externalities #automobility #pollution #biodiversity #ClimateExtremes #FossilFuels #Petromodernity #GlenifferRoad #CoffsHarbour #Bellingen #SettlerSociety #liveability
