The restaurant smoking analogy

In my unceasing attempts to appear thoughtful, I started scrambling for an analogy of trying to calm cars on city streets. The easiest analogy to materialize was that of indoor smoking, since indoor smoking has so recently been reduced from omnipresent to non-existent. I will present the stages of elimination of smoking in restaurants with the present and future steps to eliminate cars in cities.

In the beginning...

Smoking in restaurants was something that a lot of people did. Those that didn't just had to deal:

Lots of people drove cars in cities on every street according to traffic laws designed for cars. Those that didn't drive were marginalized. Everyone was endangered and old urban spaces were ruined while new ones were built wrong from the start.

The minority, or majority in some places, started making a stink...

Non-smokers and concerned health policy-makers questioned the wisdom of exposing non-smokers to cigarette smoke in a confined place while they were trying to taste food.

Pedestrians and concerned urban policy-makers exposed the disadvantages of building urban spaces for cars, especially the danger to pedestrians and destruction of communities.

Token gestures were made...

Restaurants separated their tables into smoking and non-smoking sections. Smokers still got to smoke without restriction and non-smokers were still exposed to smoke in a confined place while trying to eat, put at least restaurants could make a show of concern.

Traffic engineers began making token gestures to pedestrians by emphasizing crosswalks, pushing out curbs, and retiming traffic signals. Drivers continued driving the same, the danger levels remained unacceptably high, and communities remained in ruins, but traffic engineers could claim concern for someone other than drivers.

[This is the present reality of car calming in North America and in many countries]

Stronger, but inadequate measures were taken...

Restaurants installed strong ventilator systems over the smoking areas and sometimes even separated it into a separate room. Some of the health dangers to non-smokers were eliminated, but problems with low smoke levels remained as did the stench of stray third-hand smoke odor while people tried to eat. Restaurant workers continued to inhale all of the smoke.

Transportation engineers, city planners, and landscape architects began to calm streets of cars by radically altering the form of the street. They narrowed streets, resurfaced, removed traffic signs, and made key streets carfree. Light car use remained in "pedestrian areas" of the city while heavy traffic continued to circulate on major boulevards and other arterials as before.

[This is the present car calming reality of many European urban spaces and some other places]

The offending activity was found to be completely incompatible and was eliminated...

Many countries or states of countries have banned smoking completely in restaurants. Some even define respectable buffers from buildings that separate smokers from indoor places. Restaurants are smoke-free and lovely for eating food, which was the primary purpose of the restaurant to begin with. Workers and patrons are healthier and smokers can still smoke outside.

Citizens and decision-makers will realize that despite the perceived need to drive a car in an urban area, the destruction of doing so is simply too great to allow it in any urban area, even on streets that are supposedly not for pedestrians. They will realize that cars ruin any urban area where they are not exceptional, that if urban places permit car circulation then they endanger people and suppress the life of the community. Cars will continue being useful in rural places and for exceptional use in urban areas. Freight traffic will be restricted to certain delivery times in urban areas or replaced by more sophisticated delivery mechanisms.

Conclusion

We pulled off the full restaurant smoking ban in many places in as little as twenty years. Most cities will never ban cars before they evolve into something not identifiable as car. This is unfortunate, there are good reasons to disallow the car of the present as well as the future one that is electric and fully automated. The exercise and community arguments are the strongest for doing so, since we can't make space for communities or guarantee adequate exercise if cars remain in urban areas. Death and destruction that will continue for many years as well. We might as well define the car as an incompatible use now and find out how nice urban space can be without it.