Rooms of Their Own
Walking to lunch from work, I often see people in their parked cars. Eating, or napping, or just hanging out, listening to the stereo.
I think this reflects a largely unconsidered aspect of car culture, one which we need to understand and address if we’re ever to have any chance of moving away from the one car per person (and if you don’t have one, you should just stay home) transportation infrastructure.
Namely that if you’re one of a huge number of people, then your car is the only place you really control your environment. A place that’s solely your domain.
Most people don’t have the privilege of living alone. (And many of those who do have to answer to a landlord.) Relatively few people have private offices or work spaces.
So you deal with others’ noise, others’ smells. Their posters and pictures and furniture. Making accommodations to their schedules. Sometimes simply literally taking orders from others. Bound into roles, shaped by those relationships, all the time you’re there
But your car’s an isolated bubble — wholly autonomous. It provides shelter, entertainment, a comfy chair. And you’re in control. There’s no one to tell you what you can play on the stereo, or how loud. No one to make you pick up your trash. You can smoke cigars, stay up late, sing out of key, pick your nose, or scratch your butt without anyone’s judgement or criticism. It’s an embassy of the self within the foreign land of society. Driving’s the only time a lot of people have to be alone, or to be in charge, or both.
For someone working in a cubicle maze and going home to a family of five, or working in retail and going home to an apartment shared with two other people, or working in a busy kitchen and going home to a tiny room in a building with shared bathrooms and walls so thin everyone can hear everyone else, it’s easy to see how this could be important. Easy to understand why they might resist the idea of replacing their driving time with riding mass transit, even beyond the convenience and expense arguments.
I write this from an acknowledged position of privilege. I have a private office, with doors I can close. I live alone in a place that’s tiny, but is a stand-alone house in a small yard. I do rent, but I’m not much interested in doing anything that’d violate the lease. I have plenty of autonomy and control over my space at work and home — a car wouldn’t meaningfully add any, for me.
If we want to advance mass transit, another of the problems we need to solve is how to provide a lot more people rooms of their own.
The solution is obvious to me: fewer people, by any means necessary.
Of course I'm aware that many don't agree with me.
Posted by Jimcat on March 25 2003 09:17
Nothing personal, Jimcat--I find it hard to agree with just about anybody who uses the phrase "by any means necessary." We plan to deliberately have fewer children than parents in our family, for the third generation in a row. But "any means" includes a *lot* of means.
It used to be that nobody really ever had a room of their own--it wasn't human-normal for much of human history. I do think that it's an improvement to have them as a possibility, though. Historical human norms are not my idea of a good time.
Posted by Mris on March 25 2003 09:31
Oh, Jim's trolling with the 'by any means necessary' part. And since I agree with him about the importance of promoting negative population growth, I wish he wouldn't, as it's a hard enough message to get heard let alone considered without the trolling.
Posted by Zed on March 25 2003 10:12
Just thought I'd spice things up with a guest appearance of the Total Bastard Jimcat. But I take both of your points. As Marissa mentioned, having a place to oneself hasn't been very common throughout human history. But then again, neither has the concept of public transportation. For the most part, people lived near where they worked, or else "living" and "working" weren't even separate concepts (as with farmers, who made up a large portion of the population before the Industrial Revolution).
I think that most of the blame for the pervasiveness of car culture can be laid upon business owners, who choose to locate places of employment where the land is cheap and the taxes are low. These places are usually far from any mass transportation, which is why they were cheap in the first place. So we've got businesses creating a situation where people have to use their cars just to earn a living. Taking this one step further, the businesses want to lower their capital expenses in order to become more profitable, which in turn enables them to produce more Stuff and employ more people. Which is what our capitalist society wants. In short -- we did it to ourselves!
As far as population issues are concerned, I know it's a serious matter. But never in my life has taking things seriously been high on my agenda.
Posted by Jimcat on March 25 2003 12:26
Reminds me of a movie I saw as a child during the "gas crisis" of the 70s where people converted their abandoned vehicles into housing.
But yeah, I see this on the street in New York all the time, people eating, sleeping, studying in their cars. I think it's high time for a car manufacturer to recognize this third space aspect of the automobile and design accordingly.
Why settle for five cup holders when you could have a kitchenette and room to cross your legs? You wouldn't need an SUV or RV for this-- look at those British Airways business class seats, for instance. You just need dual use design.
Posted by csnyder on March 25 2003 21:15