Good News from America

- Why Young Americans Are Driving So Much Less Than Their Parents

"“Unfortunately for car companies,” Jordan Weissmann noted at TheAtlantic.com a couple weeks back, “today's teens and twenty-somethings don't seem all that interested in buying a set of wheels. They're not even particularly keen on driving.”

The shift away from the car is part and parcel of a new way of life being embraced by young Americans, which places less emphasis on big cars or big houses as status symbols or life's essentials. In my book The Great Reset, I called it the New Normal. “Whether it’s because they don’t want them, can’t afford them, or see them as a symbol of waste and environmental abuse,” I wrote, “more and more people are ditching their cars and taking public transit or moving to more walkable neighborhoods where they can get by without them or by occasionally using a rental car or Zipcar.”

A survey by the National Association of Realtors conducted in March 2011 revealed that 62 percent of people ages 18-29 said they would prefer to live in a communities with a mix of single family homes, condos and apartments, nearby retail shops, restaurants, cafes and bars, as well as workplaces, libraries, and schools served by public transportation.  A separate 2011 Urban Land Institute survey found that nearly two-thirds of 18 to 32-year-olds polled preferred to live in walkable communities.

For generations of Americans, car ownership was an almost mandatory rite of passage—a symbol of freedom and independence. For more and more young people today, a car is a burden they no longer wish to carry."

Watercolor by Hy Sandham, aquarelle print by L. Prang & Co., ca. 1887.