Working on a post for our Minus Oil series, looking at the relationship of oil, cars and urban design, I keep circling around a post Alex Steffen of Worldchanging wrote two and a half years ago: My Other Car Is A Bright Green City." Alex describes how he was presenting to a group of Tesla engineers and designers and noted that “I thought the Roadster, though undoubtedly cool, went nowhere near far enough to be called sustainable.”

Just because they are Priuses does not make it sustainable. Image: Kristian Widjaja

Alex writes:

Alex writes that the collateral effects of automobiles are so significant that it really doesn’t matter much what is under the hood. These include roadbuilding and maintenance, the heat island effect of all those parking lots, the water and ecosystem effects and more. But he finally gets around to the biggest problem:

Here he gets it wrong for the only time in the post, titling the section “What We Build Dictates How We Get Around”, which gets it exactly backwards. How we get around dictates what we build. Nonetheless, he is right about the answer:

Two and a half years after Alex wrote this article, the super pluggies promised in the article still have not arrived. The Tesla is rolling in limited quantities for a few rich people. The American suburban real estate market has crashed and our low density suburban communities are unable to pay to police or maintain them. Alex says that “There’s no need to wait on building bright green cities,” except there is no money to do it.

But much still rings true. Alex concludes:

Read it all in Worldchanging: My Other Car is a Bright Green City

My My Other Car is a Bright Green City">first take on the article in January, 2008More in our Minus Oil Series Want to Kick Our Oil Addiction? Let’s Get Our Priorities Straight FirstMinus Oil: Forget Hybrids And Solar Panels, We Need Active, Exciting and Vibrant CitiesPrioritizing Plastics Key to Kicking Oil Addiction - Plus Reducing Waste & PollutionMoving Beyond Oil: Restoring Meaning to the Word “Necessity"Setting a Price on Carbon Will Help US End Oil Addiction - Not Just Combat Climate Change