There is always going to be a generation gap. The term “generation gap” was coined in the 60s when it became evident that Baby Boomers had developed a whole new set of rules for themselves that put a significant chasm between them and their parents in terms of interests and values. Generation gaps will always define new generations and every generation will march to the beat of their own drum. For me, the gap got Grand Canyon wide when I read the LA Times piece by Martin Zimmerman that cited a J D Power study which indicated that Generation Y has less interest in cars. As a lifelong car guy who built an entire social world around cars I would have to ask; “Generation why?”
J D Power monitored Internet traffic conversations on Autoblog, Twitter and Facebook for several months earlier this year and came to the conclusion that teens and early 20-something “careerists” had less interest in our four-wheeled friends than previous generations. I understand the social websites but why would anybody get on a car website to talk about something in which they apparently have no interest?
The malady has even gotten a new name based upon the drop in car ownership in Japan. Social scientists in desperate need of a new buzzword fix call it “demotorization”. So young “careerists” have decided to “demotorize”. I have “demotorized” in the past under a different plan. My plan was to drive the hell out of a badly neglected car until a piston tried to bust its way out of its cylinder jail. Most of that decision to “demotorize” was in the hands of my car. Gen Y has changed the definition to include a conscious and apparently rational decision not to own a car.
I should be happy that a new generation has decided not to become the newest members of the gridlock gang, but mostly I am puzzled by the news. The study indicated that Gen Y was a comfortable member of a new cyber society that “perceive less of a need to physically congregate, and less of a need for a mode of transportation”. Personally the need to physically congregate was one of the driving forces behind my first car.
What has changed the game for Gen Y? I realize that the Internet has a very generous supply of porn and that would definitely have kept me hunkered down in my parents’ basement for a sizeable chunk of my high school years. But eventually I would have ventured into a real flesh and blood world filled with real women and real possibilities. None of that would have happened in my parents’ house stranded without any wheels.
There were always a couple of great reasons to own a car from day one for any guy ever since the first horseless carriage- to see the world and meet women in no particular order. The spirit of adventure has always been the major reason for a set of car keys until marriage, parenthood and soccer suck the fun out of cars and replace fun with practicality. Then that beautiful symbiotic threesome relationship between cars, freedom and youth gets vaporized by parental responsibility and minivan ownership.
A car is the first real taste of independence in a kid’s life. Take away a car and the emotional umbilical cord survives longer than it should and the danger of a forty seven year old basement dweller living with his aging parents becomes a real possibility. This is the ugly reality of a generation with no plan to cross an important threshold which includes interaction with the real world.
Don’t get me wrong, the Internet highway is a great place to spend some time. So is a real highway, especially if it gets some kid behind a real steering wheel on a real road to physically congregate with eligible young females in the real world. That should not be the road less traveled when you’re 19 years old with a raging case of hormones and no amount of free porn will change that reality even if you can type real fast with one hand.
Sure a kid can google earth and visit nearly every square inch of the planet through his Apple or I-pod but that is hardly a multi-dimensional experience filled with any tactile sensation beyond the touch of a keypad.
I still believe Dinah Shore when she suggested that we see the USA in our Chevrolet even if a lot of people choose other car brands in 2009. The important thing is that cars are part of a real world experience and the call of the road is also still the call of the wild, complete with flat tires and other road side adventures.
Most of us need a car for very practical reasons in our lives. When we were younger we needed a car for less practical reasons but for a no less important reason: We needed to take a ride into life’s experiences and a steering wheel got us there quicker than a keyboard. We still need that kind of lesson.
[Read more Jim Sutherland at mystarcollector.com]
You need to take into account the increasing importance of academic achievement in being able to lead a middle-class life.
We all knew people who worked practically full time after school to pay for gas, insurance and repairs on some beater. In many cases all this work took a toll on their academic performance. Thirty years ago there were more lucrative career options for those who didn’t do well in high school and decided not to go to college. These days, if you don’t go on to college, the chance of you being able to live a middle class life are greatly reduced.
Today, many savvy parents and their children are making the rational choice to forgo a car and after school job and instead focus on academics and resume building sports and other extracurricular activities.
Perhaps another data point for the theory that men are becoming feminized.
Once I got my car after getting my license when I graduated high school, I definitely felt more free. First tank of gas put in the car was used driving down PCH from Long Beach to Dana Point. It was great, getting the hell away from my parents and hanging out with my friends in a gazebo miles and miles away from home, overlooking the ocean and feeling the ocean breeze. Then just cruising (really fast) up and down hills that overlook the ocean, winding through quiet neighborhoods with music SUPER loud! It definitely made my friendships stronger!
That’s way better than being at home alone, taking 034903 profile pictures of yourself, photoshopping them just to post it on Myspace/Facebook to get comments and “socialize.” And totally better than twitters spending hours in front of a monitor trying to get more followers/subscribers.
I’m very lucky to have parents to pay for my car/gas/insurance and to live in California where there’s so much fun stuff just a short car drive away. I think many kids these days live in urban areas where they take public transportation, or dorm so they don’t need a car.
Besides, with all the hip kids blowing all their money away on Apple iPhones and MacBooks… they probably don’t have any money left for a car anyways!
Maybe “less interest” does not translate to living without a car but with not caring about what kind of car they are living with as long as it gets them from A to B. Maybe generation Y doesn’t apply the same social status to the ownership of a fast car that my generation did. Good for them – the enjoyment of cars is, after all, optional.
I blame both parents out of the house at work in the late afternoon plus the hook-up culture replacing dating. Young guys used to think they need to have a car to have a chance at sex. Had to impress a girl enough to get several sequential dates plus a car provided a private place to fool around.
Another factor may be traffic congestion taking away much of the fun of driving. Harder to have an attraction to the open road when your daily reality is roads filled with other cars.
Or maybe its that most cars within the reach of a teenager or 20 something are boring appliances and there’s really nothing to fall in love with. I’d agree with the other poster that hooking up is so easy you really don’t need a car to do so. Many kids have had sex before they’re old enough to apply for a permit.
“As there are no precise dates for when Generation Y starts and ends, most commentators use birth dates ranging somewhere from 1976 to late 1990s”
-Wikipedia
A few opinions / perspectives
-People that play World of Warcraft 24/7 generally do not care about cars or the real world at all.
-Generation Y is a latch key generation that was trained by their paranoid overprotective aging Baby Boomer parents to play video games and watch movies in the house alone instead of interacting with the “scary world outside”
-The few times I drove downtown while sober I noticed Cops lurking like ferocious predators around every bar literally pulling people out of their cars once they had a few drinks. One particular time I think at night during “Hoopfest” it was like a DUI assembly line. Makes a person VARY WARY of trying to pick up chicks at bars.
-In a hideously overcrowded city where the cars sit in stand still traffic jams it can be hard to feel the passion and spirit of driving.
-Gen X and the Baby Boomers got the PHAT jobs. And cars cost money.
-Perhaps Gen Y is much, MUCH more wary of the family thing. So less inspired to try and flaunt a car to get a woman. Having a baby around the house would really interfere with those World of Warcraft marathon sessions.
I’ll tell you at least one of the main reasons.
Colleges and universities have strongly discouraged having cars on campus. Freshmen are often not even allowed to have one period. Upper classmen have to pay several hundreds of dollars just to have the right to park them in a space.
You also have the issue of schools offering far better transportation services to college students. Most offer shuttles all over the place and cars aren’t even allowed to be on certain sections of the campus. Both my alma maters have large areas covering several square miles of the main campus where cars are verboten.
Students can also conveniently take a shuttle, get drunk, and take the easy ride home courtesy of the school at 2:00 AM. I’ve also found that most colleges (not all) are taking a more laissez-faire attitude towards campus drinking and focusing more on the heavy drugs. Back in the 1990’s several schools had ‘Student Life’ departments that were effectively run by puritanical Nazis. Today’s versions are staffed by those who have BTDT and the alcohol policies are far more realistic.
Finally, I would say that most products and services can now be found on campus. You have a choice in foods and often times it isn’t overpriced crap. Supermarkets are either nearby or shuttles send the students there.
It’s mostly a university driven phenomena.
I’ve been unusually lucky in that over the last 45 years or so, I’ve owned something over 250 cars in several different countries. The ones that left the greatest impression were the old sports racing and grand touring cars of the 1950’s and sixties which could (more or less legally) be driven on the road as well as later used in historic and classic races. Of course they broke down, usually not very seriously, but there was real passion behind their creation and a challenge to their use that made every drive a stimulating, joyous event. Today, I use an Audi as my everyday car. It’s competent, well made and not very different from its competitors, none of which I’d mind driving in its stead. I understand why my children don’t care particularly about cars or within reason what they drive, since with the vigorous enforcement of traffic laws, justifiably or not, by revenue desperate cities and states, the whole process isn’t much fun anymore. I hate to think that the golden age of motoring has ended but just as I don’t think about our fridge or clothes washer, I fear that the day will soon dawn when we feel like that about our cars too.
I wish I was not so obsessed with cars. I’m glad I found so many profound things through cars, but sometimes I feel emotionally outer-dependent on cars. Which is not so fun.
The moment you started comparing gen y to yourself the article became about how gen y should have the same priorities as you. You call cars a kids first freedom but that’s the car guy in you. The world is small now, and its only getting smaller. Cars are an expensive habit, they could spend that money traveling the world and meeting the opposite sex that way(since you used the hormone example). They’d see a whole lot more of the world than that car is going to take them to.
I still believe Dinah Shore when she suggested …
How old are you? :)
When I was a kid, having a car was a sufficiently big deal that “going for a drive” was a form of recreation. Although it still is for (mainly) some young men, I think it’s rare now for families to use their car unless there is a destination with some other activity. The roads are so clogged that driving for most families is mostly a hassle, and all but a stubborn minority are aware of the downsides to car usage.
So there’s a generation for whom a car is like a utility, not proxy for their person, not a end unto itself, and not a form of recreation. I know a teenager who’s an apprentice car mechanic, yet has zero interest in owning a car himself. Indeed, he’s fixated on classic/vintage 10-speed bicycles. But I also know another whose parents gave him a BMW convertible before he was old enough to drive it.
I can see why motorheads would be perplexed, even frightened by this change. An entire belief system dumped, just like that. One can be a car enthusiast in terms of enjoying cars as useful tools, without seeing any need whatsoever for expensive cars that have the useless capbility of going 200 mph, or accelerating like a rocket, or having cooled cupholders. Anyone who equates car ownership with freedom is not considering a lot of important factors, and is dismissing the lifestyles of most of the planet’s residents for most of history.
There was a time that bicycles, for instance, were credited with allowing western females to escape male confinement. Now, women are just as able to buy cars as men, and are perhaps more aware of the downsides of car ownership, so as Shania Twain said: “So you’ve got a car. It don’t impress me much.”
This is the best TTAC discussion I’ve seen in quite awhile. Kudos, Jim, for raising the issue.
The answers have some real substance to them, but there certainly isn’t any one thing.
In a way, Jim answers his own question. You say eventually you would have “ventured into a real flesh and blood world filled with real women and real possibilities. None of that would have happened in my parents’ house stranded without any wheels.”
For some of today’s kids, that’s precisely the point. They don’t want to leave!
ConejoKing may nail part of it when he says, “Generation Y is a latch key generation that was trained by their paranoid overprotective aging Baby Boomer parents to play video games and watch movies in the house alone instead of interacting with the “scary world outside.”
They’re scared of the outside world. It’s a dangerous place compared to online, or a teenage extension of organized playdates — aka “hooking up.”
Ronnie Schreiber says we should consider that men have become feminized. I’d agree with aspects of that. Celebrity male role models today aren’t Steve McQueen or Paul Newman. I’m sure that either Justin Timberlake or Shia LeBeuf is capable of knocking a girl up, and probably have. But none of the young bucks strike me as the sort of guy who could handle a 1,000-hp Bugatti Veyron on a track, much less a Miata. The closest we have to a calm, assured and mature masculine presence is President Obama. As much as I admire him, I don’t see him doing any smoky burnouts in the next 3-8 years.
Also, don’t discount the collective impact of global warming, green marketing, “An Inconvenient Truth, and other aspects of the environmental movement on young people.
Finally, though, car enthusiasm is not dead. Look at the box office for the last “Fast and the Furious” movie. Those gearheads were in their twenties, nor their fifties.
Jmo’s point about education and focus makes sense. Cars just have to be your inclination. If they’re not, forget about it. Technology and the Internet may be cooler right now.
We also may be in a transition period. 20 years from now the modern ’57 Chevy, ’65 Mustang or ’97 Acura Integra may take the form of a used 2018 Tesla “hot hatch” powered by a hybrid hydrogen/electric power train. Cars may just have to settle for a smaller piece of the pie, that’s all.
brandloyalty,
Excellent point. California and Florida were the only places I’ve met women who were really impressed by what a guy drove. And none of them did it for me.
The Beach Boys may have sung about getting laid because of their cars, but they were the Beach Boys. Most of the time that I see a guy in a ‘Vette, Porsche or M-series BMW, he’s alone. There’s a reason for that too.
It’s possible that environmentalism has something to do with it as well, though I agree that it’s mostly an economic thing.
I’m afraid it is just possible that America’s love affair with the automobile has ended. As a consumer product, the automobile has matured so much over the past century and the freedom that it enables us to enjoy is taken so for granted that we do not appreciate it any more. For most Americans, it no longer is regarded as a technological marvel, but rather as an appliance, no more exciting than a refrigerator.
The public no longer waits breathlessly for a glimpse of the latest, flashy new models. “Planned obsolescence”, Detroit’s business model for many years, is a thing of the past. For the most part, automobiles do not stir passions as they once did. Consider that most of the best selling passenger cars are prosaic, soulless sedans such as the Toyota Camry and that the two top selling vehicles are pickup trucks.
But just as I begin to sink into despair over our culture’s loss of automotive passion, some 20 year old blasts by me in a Mustang GT or customized ricer and I realize there may hope for us gear heads after all.
@Ronnie Schreiber:
Perhaps another data point for the theory that men are becoming feminized.
Eh? How’s that?
@DearS:
I wish I was not so obsessed with cars. I’m glad I found so many profound things through cars, but sometimes I feel emotionally outer-dependent on cars. Which is not so fun.
Yeah, to say nothing of the moneypit aspect. I often wish I didn’t give a damn and could happily drive a Corolla or whatever Consumer Reports told me to buy every six or eight years. Instead I have five (more or less) mobile moneypits. Blort.
Driving is expensive and it’s hazardous to your health. I fantasize about living within walking distance of my job. I think among younger people it doesn’t make you cool anymore to have a car, although I couldn’t tell you why. I’m 24 but I’m not hooked into the culture. The only people who will have cars are the ones that actually need them, which is probably how it should be. The less people on the road to collide with the better, I say.
I think it is a mix of a lot of the reasons previously posted. By the time I got my license in the mid 90s the whole ‘makeout point’ idea of hooking up in the back seat after a date was pretty much dead – the two times I tried my date and I’s interlude was cut short by a knock on the window from a policeman (thankfully both times the officer was kind enough to just tell us to go home and leave it at that, these days, who knows what would happen).
Gas was still under a dollar then, and while the internet was beginning to become mainstream, ‘social networking’ was still a long ways off. For my friends and I cars were definitely a necessary means towards the end of freedom. I remember nights when we would all pile into my friend’s black on black ’89 Maxima, pump some appropriate hard rock or metal on the sound system, and just pick a direction to drive – north, south, east or west, until we found something interesting to occupy our time. Our discoveries, such as the porn store in rural Maryland which inexplicably always had postal service trucks parked in front of it, or what we all still think was a dead guy laying in the middle of I-295 near Wilmington, or strip club in Baltimore, a couple blocks from the police station, that didn’t card us at the door, are all great memories that served to make for great friendships. The late night flat tires or breakdowns due to failing alternators and coolant leaks taught us a good bit of self reliance and damage control, and we learned a bit about how electrical and mechanical things work through adding performance upgrades like cold air intakes, or through epic kludges such as wiring a household lightswitch to control the horn in a mid 80s Tercel so that it could pass state inspection (apparently it didn’t matter how the horn was activated, as long as it could be done on request).
Once we were older and some of us went to college and others into the workforce the cars were still needed, both to get us to our jobs, whether they were full time or weekend, and to visit those that had gone to school out of state or across the border in Canada. We learned how to read roadmaps, a skill that is increasingly lost due to cheap nav systems, and learned a lot about various cars due to seeing cool stuff on the road and then trying to find pictures of it on the internet later to find out what it was (the ‘Japanese Ferrari’ (later discovered to be an Acura NSX) that we saw on a road trip to NYC had us stumped for quite a while).
I can’t imagine not wanting to have a license or a car, but then again I don’t get the Jonas Brothers or Myley Cyrus either. My own little sister, who is only six years younger than myself, still doesn’t have a car or license at the age of 22, even though she lives on her own away from home and works, through some combination of bumming rides and public transportation. Personally, I like to be able to go anywhere anytime and not have to rely on bus schedules or favors to do so, but I guess the tide is changing.
Let’s not overthink this.
Most of us on this site came of (driving) age at a time when insurance was cheap, traffic was light, and public transit availability was at an all-time low — or were children of parents who did. There were also some beastly, beautiful cars out there, and the sounds and smells still resonate.
As one of those children, I bought into the obsession with cars equaling freedom, and in many ways it did; but in acting on that obsession, I found myself working jobs that required a car, spending all my wages on keeping that car alive and insured, and wondering what the point of it was.
So the children of people like me, they’re not as obsessed with cars? Who can blame them? They grew up watching us slowly lose our passion as high insurance rates, choked motorways and bland “products” became the norm. We moved to more livable cities (ie cities with public transit and/or walking distance to our daily affairs) and found ways to minimize our time spent in traffic.
Then add on the internet and cable television, and suddenly social isolation is a thing of the past, which is one of the real drivers of “freedom” that kids used to want; they wanted to be free to socialize. So that’s another pressure gone. Oh, and what of games like Forza and Gran Turismo? Real driving is expensive and boring compared to those.
At the end of the day, though, I still firmly believe that if cars were compelling and reasonably priced, insurance inexpensive and roads relatively empty, there would be just as much car lust as there used to be. I’m also sure there’s still plenty of it out there, even with everything I’ve just talked about; “less” interest doesn’t mean “no” interest.
I call B.S. Maybe there is less overall interest but just look at SEMA. Are you going to try to tell me that stuff is aimed at 30 somethings? Or visit any enthusiast forum. You will see teenagers writing passionately about complex auto engineering theory. They are dead wrong in almost every case, but you can not dispute that they are passionate. I see young people eschewing women and freedom, just to be able to put that $10 turbo system on their E36 M3. Fear not, auto enthusiasm is alive and well in the younger generations.
I think it’s more simple, at least from observation in Australia.
Generation Y seem to spend every dollar they have, and often have massive credit card or phone debts to go with. They’re not in a position to purchase a car outright or qualify (certainly recently) for an auto loan.
They also seem to aim a LOT higher than I ever did. They’re not prepared to drive around in a beater as a first car. They have to have THE BEST immediately otherwise don’t bother.
On the plus side, they seem happy to take public transport or walk or bike-it (or bum a ride with a car-owning friend).
This article depresses me. Here is another huge piece of my young adulthood which apparently is of no value to the current generation. Yes the car was a symbol of freedom, freedom from our middle class mores, our parents. that how we got out and about in the world.
And yes I realize that I am responding on line but given the choice of foregoing the internet or the car I’ll stick with the car. In comparison the internet is just a little bit of entertainment because there’s nothing worth watching on TV.
And the writer is correct the whole point was that the car gave you the opportunity to get laid. Remember Meat Loaf’s “Paradise by the Dashboard Light”. That summed it up pretty neatly.
So education is getting in the way. We all thought education was a chance to make more money so we could spend it on cars and getting laid. And a good stereo system.
Cars are appliances, “rock stars” actually dance to the music someone else wrote for them and some other hired guy is playing for them. It’s a boring world.
And I’m still p.o.ed at Iran for the oil crisis in 79-80!
It’s always depressing when people don’t share our point of view. I don’t take it personally. The world is changing and longing for the old days is a sign of creeping old age of the worst sort. I do love cars, but it’s getting harder and harder every day. I only use my car on weekends and, for me, that makes it work. If I had to commute, I think I’d grow to hate the notion of driving anywhere.
How often is actual driving like what we see on TV commercials? If I were 20-something, I’m not sure that I’d want anything to do with the whole car thing. As with so many other things, it over-promises and under-delivers.
Gen-Y are, on the whole, still relatively young. If you don’t have a lot of money and you don’t need a car, then few people buy one. This was true of my generation (“gen-X”) and the one before me, with the obvious exception of those few individuals who truly embraced / identified with the automobile.
Rest assured, once Gen-Y gets to the point where they need to commute to work, they will acquire an interest in cars. Obvious exceptions for cities with good mass transit (e.g. NYC) where no one in their right mind owns a car.
//dan.
I was born on the X/Y cusp in 1981. I probably had a more car-oriented childhood than many here on TTAC. Was born in Detroit and had at least 30 family members who were either directly or indirectly involved with the Big 3 in some capacity or another. Their duties ranged from racing to engineering to being management losers. I was on the front line of the action…cruised Gratiot and Woodward, entered my car into shows. However, now that I am in DC, I have absolutely no need for a car.
As a matter of fact, I’d venture to guess that the passion for cars in the X/Y generation is about a quarter of what the Baby Boomers had. In the 50s cars meant freedom and style. Today, they are an appliance that is for travelling from A to B.
I still enjoy life behind the wheel even if I tend to seek out less people and more untravelled roads these days.That is when cars become a form of relaxation therapy for me. It is a vastly different direction from my youthful journeys in search of crowds,but they both involve time behind the wheel in the sincere pursuit of adventure. These days the open road is the adventure.
I don’t go much for generational profiling, but I’ll play along. Let’s pretend that GenY really doesn’t care as much about cars.
No mystery to me why they should think of cars as anything but appliances. The mystery is why did so many of us boomers care (and still care) about cars?
By the 30s, most American families had cars. Cars were not new and novel to our parents, much less to us. We grew up in cars.
Sure, we needed them for transport, but was there any real doubt about getting one? During the post war period, up to about the first oil crisis, real purchasing power was generally rising. Many families went from one car to two. We couldn’t avoid getting a car if we tried.
We should have been the first generation to be blase about cars. They’d already become the standard ubiquitous transport mode. They should have thrilled us about as much as electric refrigerators or talking movies.
It’s not as if most cars had been in any way interesting. I know, someones going to say GTO, or 442, or Pony Car, blah, blah, blah. Most of the cars we saw in our neighborhoods were Biscayne wagons or Fairlane sedans, or something equally “interesting”.
To get interested in cars because of a few hot models is a lot like developing an intense interest in kitchen appliances because you saw a sub-zero.
It’s one hell of a testament to marketing men of the era that they got us interested in what had already been long established as a pedestrian (pun intended) mode of transport.
@PeteMoran:
I think you’ve hit on something important here. Disposable income is perhaps more limited than ever for those in the 18-25 crowd, and teenage “social networking” 20 years ago was your own wired phone line and a driver’s license.
If today your only portal extant to the freedom of the open road was an eight year-old used Saturn shod with Wal-Mart tires, you’d be taking the train home to play Gran Turismo 5, too.
I’ve got a quick summary for you as to how I think the data falls. Bimodal, actually.
low end: can’t afford cars/don’t enjoy driving
high end: live in an urbanized area/driving in traffic sucks and-or can’t afford to garage it/insure it/don’t need to drive it
You’ve got the richer/more educated Gen-Y that doesn’t like driving and/or doesn’t need a car (moving to major metro areas where driving sucks, i.e. inside the Crapital Beltway).
You’ve got the Gen-Y behind the curve (lack of education and work experience) that is never going to afford the nicer cars (who gets much driving enjoyment out of a Corolla or Malibu?).
As the Midwestern concept of a middle class that developed Detroit dies, so will a Detroit style of cruising cars all weekend die off. Rich vs. poor, etc etc you’ve heard this one before – probably because it’s not true.
Disclaimer: I’m a Gen-Y (hate the term!) in the Midwest with a social science background looking to, uh, leave the Midwest (and take the car with me … yes, I know it makes no sense to park it in Boston or DC).
I think the explanation can be found in demographics. If you look at the most popular places for educated young people to move to after college, all of these places have public transportation. Portland, Seattle, Boston, Chicago, New York, DC. Not too many decide to move to Kentucky after graduating from MIT. Many graduates decide to live in urban areas before they marry and have children. The suburbs don’t have that much appeal to most energetic young people. Also, remember that young people self-identify as Democrats by a large margin. Democrats in general are more comfortable with urban life.
These urban areas may be bicycle friendly or have decent mass transit. If you need a car on the weekend to go on a ski trip, you rent one with some friends.
Going without a car can be liberating. There is a sense of freedom in walking, being one of the crowd on a train, or riding a bike on a bike path; that you just don’t experience with red-light cameras, drunk-driving checkpoints, or by having Smokey up your ass on a lonely highway. It is rare to hear about breath checks for riders on the subway.
So forget those ugly, Ann Coulteresque theories about girly men. The truth is that high gas prices and too much big brother law enforcement have resulted in making driving less pleasurable and have caused people to re-evaluate the whole car-centric lifestyle.
I’m not really sure where Gen Y starts, but I think I qualify so I’d like to bring my perspective in here.
I started learning how to drive on the way home from the hospital. I remember road trips with the family where I sat in the middle seat just so I could see my dad driving and out the front window at the same time.
Now that I can drive, I do it as much as possible. I come up with excuses to go somewhere, just so I can get in the car sometimes. Other times I don’t bother and I just go find a nice two-lane road to explore. Granted, some of that comes from the fact that I’m in college and busy enough during the week that most of my driving occurs Friday-Sunday.
Freshmen at Ohio State, like many colleges, are not allowed to have cars, but, even as an out of state student, I managed to have one up here for about a third of my first year. Well worth it.
Unfortunately, most of my friends do not share my passion for cars or the industry. A few do but not to the same extent.
I think we have things like the Nintendo Wii to blame. Think about that system for a minute. It allows you to play tennis in your living room. That’s cool, whatever. But the Wii also discourages kids from going outside to play tennis and other sports (with another human being, which would require social interaction, like making a friend). I find that pathetic. Looking for ways to entertain yourself, rather than getting entertained by something, is how people develop interests, one of which could be automotive.
+1 to the notion that the american love affair with cars may simply be ending. At some point, we probably had similar lamentations about the kids just not appreciating a good buggy like we did.
-1 to the notion that a lack of car infatuation makes kids (and I’m assuming males here) sissified. Hey Jack – guess what those emo boys still chase after?
And thanks to Jim Sutherland for starting the discussion. Amazing to me that we can go from the utter bullsh*t of the last thread to this kind of reasoned tone.
Could it be they’re (I should say “we”, since I’m 26) are more apt to live in urban areas into their 20s where cars are less needed, compared to the boomers who fled the city into the suburbs as the grew up in the era of urban decay? Just throwing that out there as a possibility–if you live in the downtown of New York or Chicago or even a smaller regional city like Charlotte it is possible to be without a car (or have one and only use it to get groceries, hence, little interest).
I have several friends like this. They don’t know how to change a tire. Don’t know how to change their oil. Don’t know anything about cars (even if they have one, its some used Corolla with a slushbox). Hey, I don’t get it, either, but I can assure you they’re not 27 year old basement dwelling virigns who sit in their mom’s basement and play marathon sessions of WoW while hyped on Mountain Dew “Game Fuel” and cheetos.
POSTSCRIPT: BTW, I grew up with Atari and then Nintendo. I enjoyed them. But guess what? I still rode my bike. I still climbed up in a tree house and have several broken bones to show for it. I still got outside and played catch. The notion that you can’t do both (real life AND video games) is f***ing stupid. If you’re normal and well adjusted you can walk and chew gum. Some malajusted fat geek that never gets outside isn’t that way because of Nintendo, he’s that way cause he’s screwed up. If he was growing up in the ’60s and not today it would have been comic books or board games instead of Nintendo.
I read an article once that said today’s guys talk about and work on their computers/phones/video game systems like guys used to talk about and work on their cars.
Now, I can’t imagine some of the geekier guys working on cars back in the day, but there might be some truth to it.
I think there are a lot of good points here. The restrictions put on licenses for new drivers, the high cost of gas and insurance, and I think a lack of cheap, fun, old cars. When I grew up, lots of guys had a used, RWD, V-8 powered car that they could mess around with, e.g. a early to mid-80’s Cutlass, Camaro, etc.
Now, what’s available? An old Corolla? I guess that’s OK if you’re in the tuner culture, but we aren’t talking about that group of guys.
I wouldn’t underestimate the impact of all the global warming and environmental “education” today. Don’t want to increase your carbon footprint, you know.
I suppose once GEN Y’ers start getting real jobs, marrying, reproducing, and moving to the ‘burbs, they’ll start buying more cars.
I still got outside and played catch.
As I understand it sports are much more compatative than they used to be. With kids playing travel soccer, going to camps and clinics, playing baseball year round etc. there isn’t he time or the money to pay for a car.
Well jmo I was talking about playing catch with my Dad or with some friends when I was like seven years old, not about competitive sports (though I did swimming and track@school.) But good point. I think that trend was JUST starting when I was growing up.
On the thought about how my generation is more urbanized, maybe we “cut the emotional umbilical cord” by moving to the city instead of getting cars. After all, that’s where our parents aren’t (their generation associates the inner city with race riots and skyrocketing crime, we associate it with Seinfeld and the like).
Something has bothered me for a long time. People are born every day. People die every day. How did certain ranges of birth dates get magically dubbed “a generation”? I understand that within the context of a certain real life family there are generations, but there are not “generations” of people in the larger society.
Good thread. A lot of points have already been covered, but I can offer my perspective as a Gen-Xer, which puts me close enough to the Gen-Yers to be affected by some of the same factors, but far enough away to be objective about it:
* Environmentalism is a part of it, but I think even more it’s tying into an anti-consumerism bent that’s been gaining ground recently, which in itself is due partly to…well, environmentalism, but also the recent economic woes, as well as a good old-fashioned case of reject-your-parents’-values (in this case, rampant boomer consumerism).
* Life takes longer than even to launch now. As others have already mentioned, you need a lot of education to compete these days. This means you’re going to spend a great deal of your young adult years in school, borrowing money you don’t have instead of earning it. Gen-Yers aren’t slackers or eternal adolescents any more than previous generations–they’re forced by circumstance to delay entry into the real world. That includes not only cars, but careers and families as well. Some of you boomer gearheads may find yourselves waiting quite a while for grandchildren.
* Urban settings do reduce the need for a car. And the trend of young people living in such settings during their 20s is only likely to grow.
* Not sure of this, but the cost of a car relative to income is probably higher than in years past. I’m guessing the cost of a new car has beaten inflation over the past few decades. It’s also true that cars last longer now than they did in the 50s/60s, so you pay more but get more. Still, the initial threshold to car ownership is higher.
* Yes, to some extent, the macho cache of owning a hot car has diminished in this post-feminist world, though I’m not one to think the sky is falling on that count. In the end, guys are still guys. Sometimes I think guys compete for girls in more subtle ways now. Smoking out your tires would be seen as a knuckle-dragging move. Playing in a band while pouting and wearing your skinny black jeans…different story.
Disclosure: I’m in the Bay Area, which probably isn’t a scientific reflection of the whole country.
My son in California is almost 18 years old and has little interest in a driver’s license. About half of his senior class in high school is the same. The other half seem to have been eager to get their licenses at 16.
In some ways, I think college graduates these days are like high school graduates when I graduated from high school in 1975. Most of my friends and I were pretty well on our own when we finished high school. I paid for my own college and law school.
My son and his friends won’t be on their own until after college. If then.
I have to chime in and side with the ‘cars are boring’ argument.
Today, cars are vastly superior, no question, but with rationalization and globalization, computer technology, the huge cost of R&D, there is virtually nothing truely unique, different, or special – it’s just too expensive to make a mistake, so they play it safe. That’s probably why 80% of new cars are some shade of grey or silver.
At one time there were fundamentally different design philosophies and technologies between makes; today pretty much every car in every class is fundamentally the same – its just a matter of where a consumer prefers their iPod hook-up located.
Sorry, but 90% of new cars are not fun or characterful. Safe, well engineered, reliable, comfortable with petty luxuries – yes, but so what? There will never again be a Citroen DS, a BMW 2002, a VW Beetle, a Datsun 240, a Corvair, or an AMC Gremlin…cars with stories behind them…for better or for worse, those days are over.
John Horner:
How did certain ranges of birth dates get magically dubbed “a generation”? I understand that within the context of a certain real life family there are generations, but there are not “generations” of people in the larger society.
Most of it is just media creating stories out of thin air plus human need to pigeonhole and stereotype everything.
Oh, in the US, unless you live in a large urban area, you need a license and need a car, that’s the reality.
criminalenterprise :
October 24th, 2009 at 10:35 pm
@PeteMoran:
If today your only portal extant to the freedom of the open road was an eight year-old used Saturn shod with Wal-Mart tires, you’d be taking the train home to play Gran Turismo 5, too.
Really, my original portal was a military green 1960 Valiant slant 6, 3 speed that was rusted out so badly I had 2×4’s bolted across the floor to hold the seats in and plywood laid down so water wouldn’t soak me when I hit puddles. Couple this with retread tires and an AM radio and I was THRILLED to death I had this machine.
Now many kids don’t seem to care as much. I have a 20 y/o and a 27 y/o working for me and they both could care less what they drive or if they drive at all. Bumming rides with friends is fine with both of them. The one kid has a Dodge Dakota with over 250,000 on it for a service vehicle I bought new years ago. I’ve offered to get him a new one but he could care less. Things have changed from when I lusted after Hemi RoadRunners and SS Chevelles. Many of these kids don’t seem to have the passion we did. That being said I’ve seen a lot of really nice work on hopped up Civics and such at the track. Just not as many involved as there used to be.
Two points.
One is that there is nothing inherently masculine about owning or operating a “hot” car. This is purely culturally conditioned / aka “marketing”. It’s like showing manhood by drinking a lot of booze with or without getting drunk. What a pile of (destructive) crap.
Second is that a modern Accord etc. is inherently boring. It’s only boring if the observer or driver regards it as such. Such cars pale only in comparison to cars that may well be excessive beyond being silly. Do you really need a car to get from Point A to Point B that’s like an earthbound executive jet? What about all those people all over the globe with all sorts of put puts, or even no car at all? Are they all deprived of interesting mobility?
Isn’t the modern Accord an engineering and performance marvel compared to most anything except the most recent exotic cars?
It’s like skis. People are conditioned to think they can’t enjoy skiing without the current year’s model. As if all the other people who ever skied on earlier skis were bored. In reality, the boredom is a function of conditioning and comparison, not of the ski or car by itself. You can apply as much intelligence and be as intensely involved in operating a kayak as a luxury yacht.
I was born in 1985, which I guess makes me a Gen Y-er. My first car was a 1985 Ford LTD Crown Victoria, an old, beat-up cop car with a 351 Windsor.
I hated it. I always smelled like gas, it was hard to start on cold winter mornings, it was awful on gas, and it was rare that I could look around and see a worse-looking car than mine anywhere. And the whole experience of owning and maintaining a car sucks: when you’re young and broke to begin with, you watch your paychecks slip away insuring it (no fun being male and under the age of 25) and fueling it (I had this car back when gas was $3–4 a gallon) and hoping nothing goes wrong to take even more of your money away. Our culture is, let’s be honest, overly reliant on cars when most people would probably be better served by public transport or bicycling or some other alternative made impractical by the dominance of cars. It’s easy to come to resent the things.
Anyway, when it came time to replace the ol’ bomber, I wanted to find any bland appliance-mobile and be done with it. My parents had a Taurus at the time, so I decided to get one too. I wanted a car that made no statement about me whatsoever. I ended up getting a 1998 Ford Taurus SHO (one of the much maligned third-generation ones). I thought the idea of a sporty Ford Taurus was ridiculous, but whatever, it had leather seats and a CD changer, I could afford to buy it cash, and anything would be a step up from the LTD.
Suddenly, I had a sport-tuned suspension and could feel the road and connect with it; I started driving with the window down so I could feel the wind and hear the traffic. I had a comparatively high-revving engine with a wide powerband and could zip around and maneuver a bit. I was in a different world. For the first time, I actually enjoyed driving for the sake of it, all because of a car that most people here probably think is garbage.
And I eventually came to appreciate the LTD for, you know, building my character and teaching me some things. Probably most of us here have had a car or two that only we could drive because of all its, uh, quirks, a total junker that you’re proud of just because you kept it running for as long as you did. And you know what? Even when I hated it, I would sometimes look back at that big hunk of steel and enjoy on some level that it was mine.
Maybe the problem with Kids These Days is they don’t have cars that inspire them in any way:
SUVs and big trucks are still what’s considered desirable (here in the southwest, anyway). That’s what everyone’s parents drive, so that’s probably what you’ll start your automotive journey with. You can’t learn anything about the passion of driving from a truck (on pavement, anyway); they ride like shit, they handle like shit. They accelerate with strength but no spirit. Maneuvering through traffic is done more with dick moves than with grace. They seem to do everything possible to divorce the driver from the sensation of driving. People decided that anything that seats fewer than seven and can’t tow a boat was impractical or uncool somehow.
Or maybe they’ll get a modest econobox, a Corolla or a Cobalt or something. Hell, when you, as a car enthusiast, see one of these driving around, you probably can’t help but think about the sticker price and about the awesome used cars you could get for less than that. A lot of people have an easier time getting financed and making payments on an awful new car than saving up for a used one and buying it cash. A lot of people aren’t willing to deal with their car occasionally not starting or having to replace the alternator themselves because there’s no warranty or the moonroof never working. For people who (quite rationally) just want something practical that will do the job and not give them much trouble, their options are completely soulless because of the American car industry’s inability to make a good small car and the Japanese car industry’s inability to make an inspiring one. And they won’t certainly buy a used German car and put up with a flaky electrical system for sake of the ride quality and precise handling if they never learned to appreciate these things in the first place.
And I hate to say it, but rags like Motor Trend and Car and Driver and even, to a lesser extent, enthusiast web sites like TTAC (which, don’t get me wrong, I love) put a lot less emphasis on the cheap thrills (like my humble SHO) and a lot more emphasis on slobbering over Audi and BMW’s latest offerings, which are certainly far out of reach of the average adolescent. I mean, I read some people complaining about that Datsun being picked as a Curbside Classic. Surely we’ve all strolled through our share junk yards and checked out some cars that, objectively, are pieces of shit but for some reason—some eccentricity in them or memory you associate with them or something—stir your soul in some way and merit some kind of admiration. I mean, what we’re admitting here is that the experience of owning a car is, when looked at completely rationally, utter drudgery: but we all have or have had cars that transcended this all in some way and caused us to throw rationality out the window and embrace getting there over being there.
Anyway, what I’m getting at is, I believe most people, young or old, don’t fall in love with driving because they haven’t driven cars that are easy to fall in love with or been around cars that have caused that effect in others. Until you’ve seen that passion, experienced it yourself, and had some time to let it simmer inside you and form an appreciation for it, it’s easy to live without. You don’t even know what you’re missing.
I try to drive any car I can now, just to see how they’re all different and good and bad in their own ways. Driving is a joy. Even navigating traffic is pleasing to me in its own way: maneuvering nimbly about and keeping a good stopping distance to maintain a good flow while others are slamming on their brakes and hitting the gas and cutting each other off, enjoying the feel of my wheels rolling over asphalt, the response of my steering, the wind in my face and hustle and the bustle in my ears. I love plowing through gears; I love throwing it in D and cruising. I love letting a well engineered, high-horsepower car whisk me away; I love getting a clunker going and feeling every inelegant vibration, 35 MPH feeling like 70. I love barreling a truck down a dirt road in the desert. But for me, there is no greater joy than topping off at a gas station, putting some music on, and turning onto the highway, knowing in that turn that I’ll be doing nothing for hours but cruising down the road to somewhere, anywhere.
I really do think the problem is largely that driving is no longer much of an adventure due to the cars and the roads.
Back when I started driving – in the mid 60’s – cars were not so reliable that one could just jump in them and go anywhere – especially the cars teens could afford. One had to know car repair, maintenance, and care to be able to have a chance on a successful road trip. Tires failed, brakes were not able to handle mountains if you weren’t aware of your situation, carburetors made starting at sub-zero temperatures unsure. And frankly to keep a car in good condition required some know how – which was impressive and something to be proud of. Much like getting a pilot’s license was an achievement.
And then there are the roads – back then there was no radar, and the roads were actually not crowded once you got out of the cities. The “open road” was. Driving was an adventure, you got to go places and do things that were off the beaten path. It was fun – and intoxicating.
Now modern cars are basically not owner repairable and so reliable that the new drivers don’t have to bother learning maintenance. So there’s no cred for being able to take care of a car. And most cars don’t have bench seats – so getting intimate is way more difficult..
Finally, the roads are so crowded that passing on rural interstates is often done in the right lane as the left is tied up with traffic. Only time the roads are open is in the dead of night – or WAY off the beaten paths.
So where’s the fun that would make young folks want to drive? Darned if I know.
@Typhoon
Great post. Couldn’t agree more.
Typhoon has an excellent descriptions of the issues involved.
While his post is well reasoned, I’d like to offer a stenographer’s version:
Cars = hassle.
It’s not a lot of fun. Expensive to own, insure, operate, park. You get fines. You get told of the hazards of driving and you end up being your friends’ driver if you have one. There used to be lots of open roads – now there’s gridlock.
And why did we want cars in the first place? To get around. How do people get around today?
While grown ups are at best immigrants to the internet, kids are residents. And they know how to use it. Judging by my daughter and her friends, they are spending the money traveling the world instead of being anchored to the limited radius of a beater.
(At War5cry – over a period of 45 years, you got a new car every nine weeks? What did you do to them?)
Any car that’s “fun” anymore is so expensive you have to worry too much about breaking it that it’s no longer fun. Add in gridlocked highways, nanny-state cameras, and police departments trying to make up for revenue shortages and any fun still around is quickly squashed.
I was a teenager in the 1990s and my friends and I would drive around all night on deserted roads and have a blast. In 15 short years all that has changed. Most of my friends now either don’t have cars or they still have whatever they brought to the city and left parked on the street. They think it will probably start if they decide to drive it again.
3 years ago my car was sitting in a garage for weeks at a time yet I was paying $185 a month for parking, $90 a month for insurance, $80 a year for city stickers, $80 a year for plates, $300 a month for the payment… I got laid off and it was the first thing to go. I never missed it. I got a new job pretty quickly and said to myself that I would get a new car when I got around to it. It took 3 years and that was only because we had a baby and felt that it was worth it just in case we needed to take him to the doctor or something and didn’t want to wait to schedule a rental.
We rented and took taxis around. Buses and trains too. There was even a period where we rented a car every single weekend for 3 months and even then it was still cheaper than what we were paying previously to keep a car in the city. Plus, I never had to worry about maintenance or car washes or even little dings and scratches (Hertz rocks, BTW).
Safety and room were the only real considerations when deciding which car to buy. If only car magazines and websites weren’t so focused on horsepower and 0-60 times. Or maybe they could find me a road within an hour of my place where I could stomp on the accelerator and not hit another car before I got to 60.
A gen-Xer, I grew up in a time and place where cars still very much equalled freedom. Got my license at 9am on my 16th birthday … had the car months before, waiting. My family was in the business, so I got to drive lots of cool cars, and after uni I went into the business myself, with a few import franchises. For the first 35 years of my life, cars were my world.
But by the late 90s I’d become disillusioned with where the industry was headed, so when I received an unexpected offer for my stores, I decided to cash out. For me, the cars themselves were no longer stimulating enough to make the daily grind of retail bearable.
Eventually I went back to school, got a professional degree and moved to a big city–where living without a car is still not possible, but you have to drive for hours just to get to a road worthy of a good one. As a result, the practical factors weigh heaviest when choosing cars nowadays. Even so, on a regular basis I’ll wait till the traffic dies off in the late evening, open the window and sunroof and just cruise around the city aimlessly. If it’s warm enough, I’ll do the same, only on my sportbike. In either vehicle, I’ll run up and down through the gears between the stoplights … and marvel at how doing so hasn’t completely lost its therapeutic value, even after all these years.
Excellent comment, Typhoon! And yeah, always choose a fun used car over a boring/bland new econobox. I never have and never will never buy new unless I somehow make it enough in life to be able to afford a luxo brand. Otherwise, I’m going with lightly used.
My parents had SUVs/minivans/wagons in the 1990s and I never enjoyed driving until I got my first own car. I don’t think it is atypical – who wants to drive the Family Truckster?
Only in large and old towns like NYC, where there is a good mass transit system, can one not have a car and not pay a huge penalty. THis is a tiny % of all US citizens that can do that, the rest HAVE to have a car whether they like it or not.
My town of 100-200k people does NOT have any mass transit to the airport 30 miles away. Taxis and limos are a ludicrous $50 each way, almost as much as the … plane ticket! Uncomfortable and slow local shuttles cost $35 each way, not insignificant either. If you park your car, even the long term parking, walking distance from the terminal, charges $20 a day, and an extra hour is a damned extra day! Remote parkings (more time wasted with their slow free shuttles) are $10 a day.
My town of 100-200k people does NOT have any mass transit to the airport 30 miles away
Um, Hertz?
“BDB :
October 25th, 2009 at 11:55 am
My town of 100-200k people does NOT have any mass transit to the airport 30 miles away
Um, Hertz?”
What are you talking about???? Does one have to… rent a car to go to the stupid airport???
I love the discussion on this site. It has been said in varying comments but I’d boil it down to this:
1. Many kids today grow up in urban/old suburban areas where they don’t need a car to get around.
2. Kids who go off to college often don’t need a car to get around and are often discouraged from bringing one on campus.
3. Upon graduation the kinds of places that these young adults are attracted to are easy to get around without cars.
Gen Y seems to be on the cutting edge of wanting live, work and play in places that they can get around by walking, biking and public transit and freeing themselves of the need to own an expensive “appliance.” A good take on this can be found here http://www.cooltownstudios.com/2009/10/12/emerging-gens-prefer-world-beyond-cars “Emerging Gens Prefer World Beyond Cars.” Also here “Top City Lists for Emerging Creatives” http://www.cooltownstudios.com/2009/10/02/top-city-lists-for-creatives-fall-2009. All the top cities that people are moving to are easy to get around without cars.
That’s the story. For more info on the benefits of going carless visit http://www.carfreediet.com.
To put things into perspective one has to read I think “Drive On!: A Social History of the Motor Car” by L.J.K. Setright, the greatest motoring journalist ever, according to many car guys.
This all makes me feel like Clint Eastwood in Grand Torino; I feel more in common with foreigners, with the rapidly motorizing Chinese and Indians, than with the youth in my own country.
And I’m only 30.
Here is some advice to all the “demotorized” youth reading this site: join the fucking military. It doesn’t matter you believe in it (working hard for something you don’t believe in is an important job skill to develop). The military will give you shit to drive (expensive shit that I have paid a lot of money for – real Hummers), instead of killing you on insurance just to drive some fwd piece of shit with a wing on it. And it will piss off your baby boomer parents. And college alone is worthless in an age where any white collar job can be offshored to India through a high speed internet connection. Security cannot be offshored. And with increasing income inequality and increasing natural resources competition it is the career of the future.
The problem is: the car lifestyle is not cool.
Living in town, meeting friends for drinks, hooking up with available people: that stuff is cool nowadays. You sit in a cafe and the obnoxious guys they in New York call bridge-and-tunnel people drive by with their loud music and their haircuts: they are the opposite of cool.
As a genuine car bore, I find this sad but inevitable. Check out vice.com or other websites that tailor to young sexy things and you’ll see hardly a mention of cars, unless it is the odd feature about Tesla or other EVs.
Here’s what I find ironic: when old farts say young guys don’t like cars anymore because those young guys lack masculinity. Do you have an idea how much sex young people get nowadays?
Why are we regretting that many young people are carless? Do you guys want to have MORE congestion and delays when you take a highway trip, or less?
Actually, a great side benefit of higher gas prices will be the decreased congestion as some percentage of commuters will decide that it makes more sense to take a bus or a train to work and actually rest, or read the paper, or do some work, while commiting, instead of worrying that the clown behind you is getting too close and does not realize it and he or she will soon rearend your car while still applying her makeup or texting or whatever other infernal non-driving activity she is engaged in.
My perceptions might be a little off because I work in consulting and most of the people I know work from home when they aren’t on the road. In my work, I see more and more companies moving toward that model. In fact, I work with several “virtual companies” that have no physical offices – everything is done over the Internet.
Going forward, as more work can be done remotely, the balance between living in the suburbs with a car and living in the city without one changes. If you don’t need a car to get to work the desire to have a car is going to be greatly reduced.
Some might argue that most people would live in the country if they didn’t have to commute – I would argue that the isolating nature of working from home is going to push more people into urban areas that have more opportunities to socialize outside of an office setting.
re: Autosavant:
If people don’t care about cars then car owners are screwed. Look at Britain: speed cameras everywhere, national consensus on GPS based road usage charges, massive taxes and fees on cars. That is the future in the US country if people stop caring about driving. It’s not good to be in the minority.
However, even more important than an American desire to drive is that the US continues to be a major manufacturer of cars. Look at where the lowest car taxes and the best drivers’ rights exist in Europe – in Germany and Italy, the last major car producing European countries. If car manufacturing continues to provide a lot of US jobs then politicians will have to be friendly to car buyers, but if the US stops becoming a car manufacturer, as the UK has, then US car owners are fucked, as UK car owners are.
Don’t buy American so Americans work, buy American so that Americans can continue to have the right to drive.
Very interesting thread. I’m the oldest of 4 children and a 34 year- old member of Generation X with a wife, kid, 2000 square foot home on 1/3 of an acre, a 30 minute commute, a Chevy S-10, and a Honda Odyssey. My youngest brother is 23 and just getting out into the world with a bachelor’s degree from the University of Kentucky. He lives in a downtown duplex 10 minutes from his job, rides his bike a lot, and has no immediate plans to replace his Dodge Neon.
I’ll have to talk to him about the differences.
When I was seventeen, I drove whatever I could, and dreamed of roaming the country in a car.
My seventeen year old rides a bike around town, doesn’t have a drivers license, and dreams of roaming (once) exotic countries.
Horizons, as well as many other things, have changed. Mostly for the better.
For a childless 29-year old in Boston like me, having a car is far more trouble and expense than it’s worth. Most of my friends here don’t. I have one pretty much because I’m a car lover, and am something close to ashamed at the irrationality of my preference.
Which, of course, tempts me to trade in my MINI for something far more irrational. Any suggestions?
Re: Blau – how about a carbon fiber road bike? They’re expensive, you actually can do most of the repairs yourself if you care to learn, and perceived speed is pretty high compared to driving.
And re: this generation being sissified, what do you mean by macho? Willingness to be exposed to danger? If so, then cars with side impact airbags, good bumpers, and crumple zones aren’t macho. Bicycles are.
The carless generation – it’s a sign of health, not something to worry about.
They’re not sitting in their rooms. Today’s youth are out there getting as much sex as ever, they just don’t need cars to do it.
Stein X Leikanger brings up a point that I guess shows how thoroughly I was infatuated with cars. Because cars in general were considered to have much shorter life spans in the sixties and seventies, a ten year old Austin Healey with perhaps seventy thousand miles on it and a dead overdrive might only be worth a few hundred dollars, or whatever the local equivalent was then. Consequently, it wasn’t unusual for me to have anywhere between six and eight cars at any one time. Just to put things in perspective, around 1970, I had a 1959 Aston Martin DB 2/4 Mk. III as my daily car, a 1962 DB4 GT Zagato as an occasional weekend and race car, a 1959 XK 150S drophead for a convertible as well as a couple of other cars. My then wife didn’t share my passion and found her 1968 MGB GT uncomfortable so she drove something else (I can’t remember what) most of the time. As one might imagine, indulging on this level really tended to boost the numbers and I’m afraid that I only began to slow down when the cars that I particularly liked became too expensive to do this with. Looking back on it all, I’m sure that saner people would view my behaviour as compulsive, but since the cars tended not to cost much to trade on an overall basis, I was able to indulge myself in this way for a very long time. Even today, with a not atypical Los Angeles family of a wife and three driving children, we still have five cars between us. I hope that this explains, if not excuses the numbers. War5cry
If you don’t want the car culture to die, work to build excellent public transportation. Only when cars are seen as a choice instead of a necessity will the appliance-mobiles stop selling. People that don’t need a car but choose to own one will buy cars that interest them in some way or another. Auto manufacturers will respond and design cars that meet those interests which will drive more sales to other people that don’t actually need cars. And when the nanny-staters complain about high speeds and texting while driving then we can simply tell them that if they don’t like it they can take the train – it’s faster, safer, cheaper, more environmentally friendly, etc…
re: blau:
“Which, of course, tempts me to trade in my MINI for something far more irrational. Any suggestions?”
http://www.confederate.com/confederate3/machines.php
Or a 6mt t-top V8 f-body.
“no_slushbox :
October 25th, 2009 at 2:12 pm
re: Autosavant:
If people don’t care about cars then car owners are screwed.”
If people stop driving their POS SUVs and econoboxes a zillion miles a year, then NY City traffic may FINALLY be a JOY to drive in, even at rush hour. Unless one is a masochist, one would be really unhappy being in congested traffic jams all the time. I am very fortunate to live in a small city (100-200k people) where we have a rush minute, not several hours of rush traffic every day, so I should not care, but all those who waste their lives in traffic jams day aftewr day, should!
Another poster said it much better recently.
.
“Which, of course, tempts me to trade in my MINI for something far more irrational. Any suggestions?”
if you do not need it as a daily commuter, why not an exotic?
You can get an excellent Ferrari F355 1995-1997 spyder or coupe with few, if any, miles, for as little as $50k, and a really good one for $70k. For that kind of dough, you can’t get an S class or a 7 series new! And they depreciate like hell, while your F3555 might be actually a really good investment and appreciate. If I had enough garage space I’d get me one. Even tho I live in the snowbelt. Or a used 911, but they also do not depreciate as fast as these big 4 door uebersedans..
re: Autosavant:
If the masses stop driving then NY City traffic will be illegal to drive in. If your town doesn’t have bad traffic then don’t worry about other drivers, they’re more votes against red light cameras and GPS based per-mile road fees.
Maybe it’s because driving, for the most part, sucks now more than ever. Too much traffic. I love to drive at night because I can actually drive then with less traffic on the roads, but during most of the day it’s just stop and go and it’s a chore. I think this is true of many suburban and urban areas around the country and world.
Paul said: “My seventeen year old rides a bike around town, doesn’t have a drivers license, and dreams of roaming (once) exotic countries.”
No kidding. Middle class younger people today are much better traveled than I was at that age. Colleges are pushing study abroad programs, churches are sending kids on mission work trips to very poor countries and so on. Many young people still want to travel and see things, but they aren’t limited in their plans by what you can do with a $750 beater car. If you live in a situation where car ownership isn’t essential, the money saved by not owning a car will fund a whole lot of interesting global travel.
What I’d like to know is how anyone that is carless can survive.
How do you get a week’s worth of groceries, your toiletries, and maybe some nice toys (ie: a book, CD, video game, whatever)… if you can’t actually get to the stores to buy them?
And if you’re in a major city with a good public transportation system… how do you even carry all that back with you? All you have is two hands, ya know!
The thought of having to grocery shop every 2-3 days is, quite frankly, not worth it. Same for having to make multiple trips out and back due to not having enough hands to carry everything.
And lastly, why give up the joy of snaking your car down a small mountain backroad with your heart in your throat?
—
My point is that in real-life, you *HAVE* to get from point A to point B. Outside of major cities, that requires personal transportation.
And that’s the bottom line.
“How do you get a week’s worth of groceries, your toiletries, and maybe some nice toys (ie: a book, CD, video game, whatever)… if you can’t actually get to the stores to buy them?”
Urban dwellers have dealt with this for a very long time. When the stores you need to visit are along the path you walk from the train station to your apartment, you just pick up things as and when you need them. Otherwise you might do your shopping while out on an evening stroll. Little collapsible personal shopping dollies have been around for over a century and you will see people using them in cities.
No need to do a massive one to two week hauling it home in the monster truck routine for most urban dwellers.
Also, don’t forget online shopping. Amazon didn’t just post record profits and record sales for nothing.
BomberPete But none of the young bucks strike me as the sort of guy who could handle a 1,000-hp Bugatti Veyron on a track, much less a Miata. The closest we have to a calm, assured and mature masculine presence is President Obama. As much as I admire him, I don’t see him doing any smoky burnouts in the next 3-8 years.
Pres Obama did have a Chrysler 300 muscle car before he was outed during the election for it, after castigated the D-3 for “building bigger, faster cars…” At which point he got an Escape Hybrid and dumped the 300. But yeah, I doubt he’s going to be driving anything in the next 3-7 yrs.
The arrogant, self-important, condescending replies from people who label themselves “baby boomers” is disgusting. If I allowed marketing douchebags to apply a label to me, I’m also a “boomer” — 1965 is the last year for this demographic. Fortunately, I have a brain, and don’t buy into any of this divisive, Madison Avenue invented, generation bullshit. I don’t believe an accident of birth makes me “special”. I think things through for myself, and actively oppose Madison Avenue brainwashing.
When I was a high school kid, most teens had cars because used cars were cheap, and relatively easy to repair. Most of the cars of my youth still had carburetors(electronic injection was just getting started), and the most complicated bit of electronics was the “breakerless ignition” module.
Today cars are complicated, and difficult, or impossible, for backyard mechanics to repair. America is long over the hype of car ownership. Traffic is hell in most places. Traffic laws are aggressively enforced. Auto insurance is sky-high. Geopolitical conflict threatens to send gas prices to $10/gal. Kids have numerous diversions not available to prior generations — cell phones, wall sized flat screen TVs, computers, internet, iPods, etc. Is it any wonder why most 16 year old kids don’t give a shit?
For such a “tolerant” generation, you sure do a lot of hating — like everyone who came before or after you. Get over it, “baby boomers”, there’s nothing special about you, save for your narcissism and gullibility. With Great Depression 2.0 finally here, many of you are going to get your a well deserved, and long overdue, ass reaming. Now bend over, and squeal like a pig.
@ skor
I’m fairly sure you’ll find “Baby Boomer” is a term from demographers rather than marketeers.
With Great Depression 2.0 finally here
Nonsense.
Jim,
This is your third article, I believe, on this theme and thusfar your best.
That said, because it’s not your first article, I’m not going to go with the levity angle and instead I’m going to be rather harsh because you (and many of the commenters) made these same points several times and there’s an pair of errors in judgment that I need to disabuse you of, mostly because I find them offensive—no, not offensive, annoying:
* One, is that you make the common assumption that your generation and it’s aspects are both the epitome of social evolution and “the way things should be”. Everyone does this.
* Second, that which you do not value, understand or appreciate is objectively less worthwhile, or possibly degenerate. This is also common, and it bothers me to no end.
The first assumption is incredibly common, and it happens because the human lifespan is very short, and humans are narcissistic by nature. We fail to understand that society really does not change appreciably over centuries, and that history is slow, gradual and cyclical, and thusly we end up with war babies who think that Boomers are unappreciative and spoiled, Boomers who think that Gen-X are slackers and Gen-Xers who think that Gen-Y/whatever are intellectually understimulated. All of the above fail to understand that they’re not greatly different from each other, or from the tens, if not hundreds, of generations that preceded them. It’s also not a little bit arrogant to think that one and one’s values and aspects are so different—so much better—than anyone who comes later. It’s so natural to assume that everything was better then and worse now, that you’d think more people would realize that there’s a logical flaw: if it was always better then than now, it must have been pretty fucking fantastic only a quarter-millenium ago. Yet it wasn’t.
It’s your second assumption that I find troublesome, if not outright insulting. Yes, we’ve the internet and cellphones and Twitter and Facebook. Yes, we don’t give quite the social weight to the car that previous generations did. Previous generations didn’t heavily weigh the horse, or early apprenticeship, or marriage and bearing children young, or devout religion, or knowing Latin, or being able to hammer sword blanks on an anvil. That doesn’t make one generation good and the other degenerate; it only seems that way because you don’t value those skills and—this is what bugs me—because you don’t value them they must automatically be valueless, and because they don’t value what you do, that they must automatically be degenerate in some manner. Giving a damn about the car doesn’t make you better or worse, just like being on Facebook or owning a horse does: it just means that you’re different in what you know. You, and they, are still people. As per point one above, you’re not actually that different, despite the moral decay that you imply started around 1969.
I had a similar discussion with someone, recently, who was bemoaning that people will eventually lose map-reading skills because of the GPS. I asked him “when was the last time you used a sextant, and do you know your constellations?”, because it’s an equally valid (eg, not valid at all). So are people who complain about the death of penmanship (“Can you do calligaphy with a quill or carve letters on stone tablets?”). This reminds me of that discussion: Facebook and Twitter don’t retard you as a human, they’re just contemporary aspects of communication and understanding that are relevant now. In thirty years I’m sure it’ll be different and I’ll be bitching about how kids these days don’t take the time to type and just relay direct mind-to-mind or somesuch. And I’ll be just as wrong and misguided and, quite frankly, arrogant and out-of-touch for thinking so.
How do you get a week’s worth of groceries, your toiletries, and maybe some nice toys (ie: a book, CD, video game, whatever)… if you can’t actually get to the stores to buy them?
Well, shit, humanity must have sprung from the earth like Athena from Zeus’ skull in 1890, because I have no idea how they could have managed without the car.
Ronnie Schreiber says we should consider that men have become feminized.
I respect Ronnie, even if I might agree with him once in a blue moon, but this is one of those statements that I feel is shortsighted
Men and women haven’t changed in their essential nature in centuries, and “home life” more or less works the same way it always has. There have been gentle cycles and regional differences, but it’s not like testicles collectively shrunk since JFK was shot.
I’d agree with aspects of that. Celebrity male role models today aren’t Steve McQueen or Paul Newman. I’m sure that either Justin Timberlake or Shia LeBeuf is capable of knocking a girl up, and probably have. But none of the young bucks strike me as the sort of guy who could handle a 1,000-hp Bugatti Veyron on a track, much less a Miata.
Timberlake and LeBoeuf are equivalent to Fabian, Frankie Valley, Frankie Avalon or Pat Boone. I think you’re being a little selective in casting your net, as well as in your memory.
The really, really simple comparison, for stub-your-toe-obvious reasons, would be Vin Diesel, but there are so many others: Heath Ledger comes very immediately to mind. I could think of others, if I tried, but young male starlets are not really my thing.
Like other posters, you’re showing a lack of perspective.
@ typhoon
COTD!
I have to say, despite my name, I would LOVE to be able to walk everywhere for groceries, restaurants, bars, you name it. That having been said, there’s another part of me that wants to take a fine German machine (preferably with three pedals) out to twisty mountain roads on the weekends and open up the throttle.
I can safely say that driving to the store does not equate to taking hairpin turns in an Appalachian pass, and the banality of driving to the store is, in many cases, simply not amusing. The straightness of roads or the amount of traffic is to blame. This is why a lot of younger people do not appreciate driving, as they are either not given or do not have the chance to experience a situation where it can be fun.
Personally, I liken a good car to a personal roller coaster, except one over which a person has full control. However, the vast majority of my generation (the Millennials) is completely apathetic to the automobile. This saddens me, but given the state of traffic congestion and the utter tedium of daily driving, I can understand why.
To: John Horner
I specifically mentioned that for those in major cities, public transportation was available.
My beef was why anyone would want to put themselves into a situation where they *HAD* to shop on a daily basis just to survive (ie: limited carrying capacity = not much food at home = gotta get some every day just in case). Having lived like that in Seoul, South Korea… I can attest to the fact that I *HATED* that precariousness. G-d forbid you get the flu, cause you’d be starving within a 2-3 days. (Though, I’m willing to bet that after the first serious problem, these carless wonders will see a need for personal transportation, much like how a mugging victim suddenly understands the need for personal protection.)
Furthermore, online shopping doesn’t do well for frozen goods. Additionally, you’re paying more for the shipping.
The article was about Generation Y and up not really going the ‘car’ route. Not urban dwellers. So, without living in a major city, how *DO* these carless wonders get from point A to point B.
Mooching only goes so far before your friends and family tell you to get lost.
Furthermore, online shopping doesn’t do well for frozen goods. Additionally, you’re paying more for the shipping.
You’ve never heard of peapod have you?
http://www.peapod.com/
It’s easy to live in an urban area and go “carless.” It’s also easy to live in a suburban area that has close transportation ties to an urban area and go carless.
It’s next to impossible to live in a suburban Sunbelt metropolitan area and go “carless.” East Coast Intellectuals can get all goo-ey and gush all over a carless society, but we’d pretty much have to bulldoze most of our country to make it happen.
That being said, kids have a lot more choices today. Instead of “football or baseball or basketball” there’s also soccer, lacrosse, hockey, swimming, track, fencing, etc. And that’s just the boys.
The girls get all that, except football, but have field hockey.
Add in the common experiences of online gaming, and socializing, etc. Socializing is very important to them.
Peer pressure works two ways. It can steer a kid towards bad behavior, or it can steer a kid toward good behavior. If your friends don’t care much about cars or driving, and their moms and dads don’t mind driving their kids around, then there is no incentive for a kid to drive.
So unfortunately, for us car enthusiasts, we see something we love and enjoy, and it’s starting to wane. Which means that we have something to commiserate about when we see our friends and colleagues who still build ships in bottles, have massive train sets in their basements, race slot cars, build and fly r/c planes, etc.
I try to be efficient and shop once a week, and do a A-B-C-D-E-F-A trip, where BCDEF are stores I visit, all with ample free parking, and not all of tghem necessarily every week. There are no stores of interest within walking distance, and mass transit consumes a God-Awful amount of time, and in the winter who wants to wait for the damned bus in -20 F?
But in my summer home, I only use the much smaller car (a 5-sp lightweight 91 civic hatch with low miles, like new) to drive to offices in the big city 35 miles away, and I always walk to the only supermarket, which is a few blocks from our summer home. And I am in far better shape when i do that. And as the store is right in front of the beach where I swim, it is on my way home, and if it is not crowded, it makes sense to buy a few things every day and eat FRESH food for a change.
My parents do the same there, they go shop for groceries almost every day, never take the car, and that keeps them in great shape.
I try to be efficient and shop once a week, and do a A-B-C-D-E-F-A trip, where BCDEF are stores I visit, all with ample free parking, and not all of tghem necessarily every week. There are no stores of interest within walking distance, and mass transit consumes a God-Awful amount of time, and in the winter who wants to wait for the damned bus in -20 F?
This says it all, really. We designed, for years, communities that benefited the automakers, city tax departments and developers—everyone except the people who’d actually have to live in them. Then we spent a lot of time and effort convincing people that this lifestyle wasn’t just the ideal, but the norm.
And for good measure, we gutted traditional urban centres with a double-whammy of zoning laws and infrastructure rot.**
Maybe the question isn’t about $8/gal fuel taxes or the end of automobilia as we know it; instead, it’s how can we design places that work for people so that we have enough fuel and a light enough footprint that we can keep cars for fun.
** Band-aid solutions like “more public transit” do not help. If the Right’s misconception is miscasting suburbia as the Real American’s Dream, the Left’s patent idiocy is pushing public transit (and high-density housing, for that matter) as some kind of panacea. Public transit makes sense as a way to get from hub to hub, not as a replacement for a sustainable community development or a poor man’s car. As Autosavant says, no one likes waiting for a bus, nor do they like walking a kilometer to a bus stop for the privilege. No one likes living in forty-story apartments, either, which is why real urban planners talk about mixed-use neighbourhoods and low-rise developments, not ghetto towers.
carlos.negros: I think the explanation can be found in demographics. If you look at the most popular places for educated young people to move to after college, all of these places have public transportation. Portland, Seattle, Boston, Chicago, New York, DC.
Actually, that’s incorrect. Here are the facts:
*Since the mid-1990s, Boston, for example, has been losing educated workers, particularly those over 30. Boston is one of the very few places that is now graduating fewer bachelor of arts now than in the past decade.
*New York City has fewer private sector jobs today than it did in 1969; the recent financial collapse has accelerated that trend.
*Job creation in these supposedly “hip” cities has lagged behind that of more sprawling areas for some time now.
*Since 2003, when gas prices began their climb, suburban population growth has continued to outstrip that of the central cities, with about 90 percent of all metropolitan growth occurring in suburban communities. The most recent statistics from the annual American Community Survey, which is conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau, show no sign of a significant shift of the population to urban counties, at least through 2007.
*Since the 1970s, the suburbs have been the home for most high-tech jobs and now the majority of office space. By 2000, only 22 percent of people worked within three miles of a city center in the nation’s 100 largest metro areas. From 2001 to 2006, job growth in suburbia expanded at six times the rate of that in urban cores.
*This means that people who want to live closer to their jobs won’t necessarily be moving to the central city.
*Much of the supposed wealth of many urban areas relies on two factors. The first is that uban residents are more likely to remain childless. Seattle, for example, has roughly the same population as it did in 1960. Only it now has half as many children living within its borders as it did in 1960. People who have children tend to move to the suburbs, where they want to have a car. The second is that more than a few urban residents are those who bought houses and condos BEFORE the run-up in prices, and felt wealthy. Wanting to keep certain people out and prevent change, they also pushed for policies that stifled growth and job creation.
Sorry, but Sex and the City and Seinfeld are just television shows that reflected the biases of their creators, not reflections on how the majority of Americans live, work and play.
carlos.negros: Also, remember that young people self-identify as Democrats by a large margin. Democrats in general are more comfortable with urban life.
Actually, young people are increasingly likely to register as “independent.”
carlos.negros: There is a sense of freedom in walking, being one of the crowd on a train, or riding a bike on a bike path; that you just don’t experience with red-light cameras, drunk-driving checkpoints, or by having Smokey up your ass on a lonely highway.
That is more of an argument against red-light cameras (which aren’t used out on the open highway anyway), stupid efforts to enforce ridiculously low speed limits on limited access highways and drunk-driving checkpoints than it is against owning a car.
I think we will find that the death of both the car and car culture have been been greatly exaggerated. The object of that affection will change – the SUV is on the way out; the Fiesta is on the way in – and people in the suburbs will appreciate more transportation options, but lots of people will still like cars and driving.
Incidentally, I do believe that one factor is increasing debt incurred by people who are seeking college degrees. Given that incomes have not kept pace with rising college costs, this will force a re-evaluation of how we view college. Fewer young people are going to go to college for four years, live on campus, and take on a huge amount of debt before they earn one penny. They will increasingly use community colleges, work while they go to classes or go to college after a stint in the military or the real-world workplace.
If you are like most college students, you work, live at home, and drive to school. You use a car to do this.
If we imagine college as some kind of super campus with thousands living on it – our idea of what college is today is flawed. While many students still pursue this kind of lifestyle, a growing majority now don’t. These students don’t have time for Facebook, time for social networking, and work harder than ever, while finishing a degree.
So, these folks polled a fiction, and got fictional numbers to reaffirm their prejudices.
I was born in 77, and my brother in 91. He’s 18 and just got his license. I think there are many reasons.
1) Shelterd/world is scary attitude
2) Traffic sucks
3) Mom chaufers him whereever he wants
4) Most important: ignorant of the opportunities.
I took him on road trips the past couple of summers and tried to treat him as a peer. We’d go all over the place…let him drive my 335i…took him across the desert at 135 mph in it…showed him how to road-trip on the cheap…drove like a bat outa hell up mountain passes…broadies in a sandy parking lot. Basicaly, being a bad influence and showing an advanture to a kid who actually needs these kind of influences to level out as “normal”. This year, my wife & I told him about all the crazy shit we did, and freedoms available to us, as car-driving 16 year olds. Weekend camping trips to the beach at just months after my 16th birthday with friends, over spring break. Road trips more than a days drive from home, up to Canada. Weekend ski vacations with my girlfriend and noone else when I was only a few months older than him.
I also showed him how to drive stick and how to do basic maintenaince, making cars in general less intimidating.
I think he actually got pissed he’s missed out on these kinds of opportunities. He immediately went home and got his license.
psarhjinian :
October 25th, 2009 at 11:03 pm
Timberlake and LeBoeuf are equivalent to Fabian, Frankie Valley, Frankie Avalon or Pat Boone. I think you’re being a little selective in casting your net, as well as in your memory.
The really, really simple comparison, for stub-your-toe-obvious reasons, would be Vin Diesel, but there are so many others: Heath Ledger comes very immediately to mind. I could think of others, if I tried, but young male starlets are not really my thing.
Fair enough, maybe I am being selective. I’d add Daniel Craig to the list too, but Diesel and he can only drive an automatic and they both seem to prefer having a driver do it for them. Ledger’s dead, but then again, so was James Dean at the height of his popularity. Boone, Fabian et. al. were before both our times (I’m 46).
Look, I have no problem with a man being in touch with his feminine side. I just would like to see it balanced with a little grit too.
Like other posters, you’re showing a lack of perspective.
I don’t agree. You’re right that a span of 50-100 years in humankind is nothing in the grand scheme of things, especially since the automobile isn’t very old. So maybe we are over-reacting. But if you’re going to criticize lack of perspective, aren’t all of us softies compared to the men of 100, 500 or 2,000 years ago?
I actually think Carguy got it right on the 4th comment, way back when.
It’s not so much that people are living without cars, it’s more that for those of us who are older, that first car was a big deal (I lived a fairly middle class life and until my parents divorced in 1978 we never had more than 1 car. And that was pretty much the norm in our suburban neighborhood – 2 car families were the exception, not the rule, even when both parents worked.)
Fast forward to today – the longevity of modern cars means that there are plenty of cheap used cars out there.
Try this sometime: Imagine you are a kid with a thousand bucks burning a hole in his pocket (the equivalent in 1979 dollars – 1979 chosen arbitrarily as that was the year I got my first car – would probably be something like $400.)
Now go onto Craigslist and see how many cars in decent running condition you can buy for that little cash.
Back in 79 finding a car in running condition for a small amount of money was difficult, and was likely to lead very quickly to expensive repairs that would likely total more than the cost of the vehicle. Cars had 5 digit odometers for a reason back then. So back then a decent car was something that required a considerable investment of both money and time. Thus people tended to value and fetishize cars more.
So it’s not so much that people are living without cars (as long as there are sububs, young people will need cars, that’s just a fact) it’s that they take them for granted and don’t think much about them. A car is for getting around, and not much more (I think the sex aspect has been pretty well made moot by changing social mores.)
psarhjinian wrote:
We designed, for years, communities that benefited the automakers, city tax departments and developers—everyone except the people who’d actually have to live in them. Then we spent a lot of time and effort convincing people that this lifestyle wasn’t just the ideal, but the norm.
And for good measure, we gutted traditional urban centres with a double-whammy of zoning laws and infrastructure rot.
Totally agree that the root of the problem is poor (or non-existent) urban planning. Europeans have been living in large cities without cars for centuries, and even today’s car-owning Euros usually only take it once a month or so on a big shopping excursion–typically a trip to the Costco and big-box equivalents, which are almost always located out in the suburbs. Daily necessities, on the other hand, are purchased daily … with the attendant benefits of freshness and serendipity. The image of a French salaryman walking home from work with a briefcase in one hand and a baguette in the other is not just a quaint stereotype.
North America is mostly wide open spaces outside of metropolitan areas and that is where the adventure of cars really kicks into the equation for me.
“In knowledge-economy areas such as Boston, MA; Washington, D.C.; and San Francisco, CA, more than 40 percent of adults hold a bachelor’s degree.”
http://www.brookings.edu/reports/2009/03_metro_demographic_trends.aspx
“Obama carried white college graduates. Moreover, his margins were quite spectacular in a number of these states. He carried white college graduates by 11 points in California, 10 points in Delaware, 30 points in Hawaii, 24 points in Maine, 26 points in Massachusetts, 13 points in Minnesota, 18 points in New Hampshire, 15 points in New York, 28 points in Oregon, 49 points in Vermont, 26 points in Washington and 12 points in Wisconsin.”
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2009/03/pdf/progressive_america.pdf
“If you’re about graduate and are worried about finding a job in an overcrowded market, moving to a less-popular city may mean your skills are in higher demand. But for those who want to follow their fellow classmates, here are the top 10 cities this spring among college students looking to find a job:
1. New York, NY
2. Washington, D.C.
3. Los Angeles, CA
4. Boston, MA
5. San Francisco, CA
6. Chicago, IL
7. Denver, CO
8. Seattle, WA
9. Atlanta, GA
10. San Diego, CA”
http://www.careercast.com/jobs/content/ten-best-cities-college-graduates-jobs-rated
All of the above cities, except San Diego, have good or growing mass transit.
Geeber, you were wrong before the election, and you are wrong again. Keep trying.
carlos.negros: “In knowledge-economy areas such as Boston, MA; Washington, D.C.; and San Francisco, CA, more than 40 percent of adults hold a bachelor’s degree.”
That says nothing about job growth or economic growth. It only proves that these cities ALREADY have a high concentration of people with college degress, which I did not dispute.
What you are saying is similar to the defense that GM fanboys have offered over the past few years:
“GM sells more vehicles than anybody else, so they must be in good shape!”
Never mind the trends in market share and sales, the cost disadvantages and the cultural problems that prevented GM from making the best use of its resources.
Nowhere does what you have posted prove incorrect the key facts in my previous post.
carlos.negros: “Obama carried white college graduates. Moreover, his margins were quite spectacular in a number of these states. He carried white college graduates by 11 points in California, 10 points in Delaware, 30 points in Hawaii, 24 points in Maine, 26 points in Massachusetts, 13 points in Minnesota, 18 points in New Hampshire, 15 points in New York, 28 points in Oregon, 49 points in Vermont, 26 points in Washington and 12 points in Wisconsin.”
You’ve switched tracks. Originally you said that young people are more likely to “self identify” as Democratic. This above post only shows that they voted for one particular candidate in a recent election.
People who identify themselves as independents usually end up voting for one of the two mainstream candidates in the final election. Those choices are basically “Republican” and “Democrat.”
(Plus, in many states, to vote in the primary, they had to register with a particular party, as people are only allowed to vote for the candidates of their own party. This encouraged many people to switch party registration. This is what happened in Pennsylvania.)
Obama ran the better campaign in 2008, so he got the majority of votes among younger people, who are less likely to identify with either major party.
Here is an article from The Wall Street Journal on party registration trends since the 2008 election:
In the months since Barack Obama won the presidency, independent voters have rocketed to their highest number on record. Meanwhile, the ranks of Republicans and Democrats have thinned dramatically.
Independents hold the balance of power in the Obama era. That’s the conclusion of a recent, 165-page Pew Research Center survey that shows independent voters climbed to 39% from 30% of the electorate in the five months following the 2008 election. During that same time, Democratic identification fell to 33% from 39%, while Republicans fell four points to 22% — their lowest since post-Watergate.
This is evidence that President Obama’s election does not represent a liberal ideological mandate, as House Democrats have claimed. It also shows continued rejection of the Republican brand.
On virtually every policy issue, independents are situated between increasingly polarized Democrats and Republicans. They more accurately reflect centrist national attitudes than the 11% of Americans who describe themselves as liberal Democrats or the 15% who call themselves conservative Republicans.
Hardly seems like a major realignment in favor of the Democrats is in the making (although it hardly seems like the Republicans are in line for a resurgence, either).
carlos.negros: “If you’re about graduate and are worried about finding a job in an overcrowded market, moving to a less-popular city may mean your skills are in higher demand. But for those who want to follow their fellow classmates, here are the top 10 cities this spring among college students looking to find a job:
1. New York, NY
2. Washington, D.C.
3. Los Angeles, CA
4. Boston, MA
5. San Francisco, CA
6. Chicago, IL
7. Denver, CO
8. Seattle, WA
9. Atlanta, GA
10. San Diego, CA”
Nowhere does this prove incorrect what I posted about where job growth has been occurring over the past decade.
This link does say that people want to go to certain cities…it doesn’t prove that they are successful in their job search. Nor does it prove that all of those cities are more successful at generating new jobs for those young people.
And please note that “wanting to go to a city” and actually doing it are also two different things.
Many people with college degrees go to New York City and end up working as a sales clerk at Macy’s or a waiter instead of working as an accountant or public relations executive.
Of course, that isn’t helping their standard of living.
Now, I have no doubt that living in New York City is more glamorous than living, in, say, a suburb of Kansas City or Dallas, let alone Harrisburg.
And working as a waiter or other low-responsbility job and spending nights hanging out at clubs and hitting on members of the opposite (or same) sex seems more exiciting that doing yardwork, balancing a checkbook or going to bed early because there is an early morning meeting.
Of course, that lifestyle doesn’t look as appealing at 35 as it did at 25, and seems positively pathetic by 45.
But that doesn’t prove that young people will still want to live like that when they are 35 or 40. Plus, many people are happy to trade glamour for more tangible assets like a house, a car, good schools and quiet neighborhoods.
They just aren’t the subjects of an HBO series, so they aren’t as visible.
carlos.negros: Geeber, you were wrong before the election, and you are wrong again. Keep trying.
You must be thinking of some other poster. I never said that Obama was destined to lose the 2008 election. I have pointed out that, in many cases, the emporer has little or no clothing, and he has continued many Bush policies since he assumed the Oval Office. His appointees have hardly been scandal-free (tax-dodging seems to be a particular problem, which is interesting considering that they are part of the the party that usually advocates higher taxes).
Judging the criticism President Obama has received from some on the left on certain subjects, that view is hardly incorrect.
And for good measure, we gutted traditional urban centres with a double-whammy of zoning laws and infrastructure rot.
What “gutted” the inner cities was a combination of the growing affluence of post-WWII America in the 50’s and desegregation and white flight to the suburbs in the 60’s and 70’s. That’s why many Southern cities, in particular (I’m thinking of Charlotte, NC, where I lived from 1996 – 98) have an office filled “urban core”, a decaying and poverty ridden “inner ring” and are surrounded by an “outer ring” of affluent suburbs. As the wealthier people move out of the city, they take the tax base with them.
This, of course, was also helped out by the availability of cheap gasoline that made commuting from the outer ring into the urban core a sensible thing to do.