By Dom Nozzi
Americans are trapped in an enormous dilemma. Much of our world is designed so that it is impossible to travel without a car. Yet convenient, easy, low-cost car travel is not conducive to creating safe, lovable, human-oriented, sustainable, enjoyable places that induce civic pride (indeed, car dependency is utterly destructive of a 
better place to live).
Those of us who have discovered this are stuck with the gargantuan task of trying to point out that the path to a better community – to a better future – lies in doing something that at least initially, seems supremely harmful to our happiness: inconveniencing car travel and car parking (and making car use more costly).
How do we make the following message resonate?…
“You have one way to travel, and we propose to improve your community by making that form of travel more difficult and expensive.”
This is, of course, not what we actually say, but what we say is generally translated by many to amount to this.
Perhaps we are the modern-day equivalent of those who pointed out that blood-letting was HARMFUL to a person’s life…
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My latest book, The Car is the Enemy of the City (WalkableStreets, 2010), can be 
purchased here: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/the-car-is-the-enemy-of-the-city/10905607
Visit my urban design website read more about what I have to say on those topics. You can also schedule me to give a speech in your community about transportation and congestion, land use development and sprawl, and improving quality of life.
Visit: www.walkablestreets.wordpress.com
Or email me at: dom@walkablestreets.com
