Just south of the Globe building in Toronto is a thicket of shiny new glass towers reaching toward the sky. These are the dwellings of the Condo People - hip young multiracial 20- and 30-somethings who labour in our city's knowledge industries. They have all the stuff you can fit into an 800-square-foot condo - iPods, iPhones, flat-screen TVs, and (for couples) fluffy little condo-sized dogs.
What they do not have is cars.
They don't need them. They can walk to work, or take the subway. If they need a car, they can walk up the street and rent one for 11 bucks an hour. Not only is a car not a necessity for them. It's an expensive nuisance.
These people are bad news for the conventional wisdom. The conventional wisdom is that car sales will soar again once the recession is over. The conventional wisdom is that if only Detroit designed cars that people liked, its problems (and ours) would be over.
“Loving your car is what it's all about,” pronounced an ABC-TV reporter the other day.
But maybe the problem in the auto industry are far deeper than that. Maybe our love affair with cars is over.
“I owned cars for years. I loved cars,” says a 41-year-old man I know. He lives in a downtown neighbourhood with his wife and two kids.
“I had a Honda Civic. I slapped the nice rims on it, and the racing tires. I had it for 10 years. But then it started to break down, and I started to dislike it. My wife and I said, this is the perfect opportunity to see if we can live without a car. ”
That was three years ago. So far, so good.
Ever since I can remember, North America has been dominated by car culture. When I was little, my dad could be relied on to drive home a brand-new set of wheels every two years. I distinctly remember a powder-blue Chevy with tail fins (I must have been around 7) that I thought was particularly fine. Families would get their pictures taken standing next to their new car, in the same way that new immigrants would pose with their refrigerators. It showed the folks back home that they had made it.
Life without a car was inconceivable, unless you were a student or extremely poor. It was a passage into adulthood. It was the first thing you got after university, especially if you were a guy. My first car was an elderly white Peugeot that only started if you pointed it downhill. It cost me $500. It was rear-ended beyond repair very quickly, which is a good thing because it was a death-trap. In spite of several half-hearted resolutions to live without a car, I have owned one ever since.
Fifteen years ago, it was almost unimaginable for a middle-aged, middle-class family man not to own a car. Such a person would have been regarded as mildly eccentric. But today, I seem to be surrounded by them.
“The reasons I don't own a car are largely selfish,” says a colleague, who is a 44-year-old father of one. For starters, he hates driving in traffic. It's a major stressor. So he lives in the city and commutes to work by bike. Then there's the expense. He figures that owning and operating a car costs a minimum of $8,000 a year. Every year he tallies up the family's total spending on public transit, taxis and car rentals. He always comes out ahead. Then there's the nuisance factor. “I love not having a big hunk of metal to look after,” he says. “There's freedom in not owning a vehicle.”
Wait a minute. Isn't freedom the very thing that cars used to stand for?
Today, freedom is defined by Zipcar and Autoshare. Both offer short-term car rental without the hassles.
