Urban planning for car-free housing and ideas of future desired states

Abstract

Planning for car-free housing has emerged as a solution for accomplishing sustainable urban development. There has been a tendency among researchers and policy makers to understand car-free housing in terms of “lifestyle politics”, where change is advanced by fostering morally or socially inspired lifestyle choices. The aim of this article is to situate lifestyle politics in a context of broader urban development by analysing ideas of future desired states that underpin planning for car-free housing, so as to allow for a critical discussion around what long-term urban futures urban planning wants to accomplish through such housing. By drawing from Mukhtar-Landgren’s conceptual pair of planning object and subject, and examining documents and formal correspondence relating to four examples of planning car-free housing in Sweden, the study shows three different ideas of the future that underpin the planning which includes different assumptions of sustainable mobility, individuals and urban planning: Planning for (1) “an optimized system”, which includes assumptions of rational objects which travel efficiently; (2) “individual freedom”, which includes assumptions of independent consumers which travel rightly; and (3) “community and togetherness”, which includes assumptions of individuals being part of a community which travels less. Keywords car-free housing sustainability future urban planning

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