How Social and Transportation Policy Intersect and How We Can Make Our Cities Better, or "We Need to Make Our Cities More European"

By Shunyata "Shuni" Lysenko

Wherever one grows up, the form local transportation takes shapes their life. I was raised by a single mom putting herself through university and the poor transportation system in the Bay Area meant that she either had to take extra time out of her schedule to get me to school while traveling to classes herself or send me out onto the roads built for cars to ride my bike to school and hope nothing would happen. Prague’s Metro-Tram system, on the other hand, was able to transport me as a young student safely, and cheaply, from my home on one side of the city to my school on the other without any need for my mother to chaperone me. As a student in Prague, a transportation pass cost $50 a year and was free for anyone under the age of fifteen, compared to the BART in the Bay which is entirely unaffordable for not just students, but commuters, families, and marginalized communities. Yet, the issues within California originate not from a lack of funds, but instead from a lack of efficient leadership. The State government has substantial funding, yet compared to other countries like Czechia, its efficiency is undermining efforts and leads to both declining qualities of transportation and wasted money. 

Integrating urban and suburban communities through a robust transportation system combined with a proactive housing policy meant every neighborhood in Prague could access community and city centers and everyone had a place to live affordably. The access to cheap housing meant that my mother and I, both students without a stable income, could afford to live comfortably with quick access to grocery stores or malls. It meant that anyone, no matter their financial situation could not just afford cheap housing, but also could reach whatever they needed at a low cost to themselves and their family. 

The suburbanization of American cities and residential areas is the largest hurdle in creating a sustainable, interconnected community prosperous for all. The continued stratification of American society because of its car-dependent city planning continues to extenuate societal, economic, and environmental problems. Car-dependent infrastructure results in drivers spending hours out of their day driving, as they often cannot reach other parts of their own city or town without them, let alone a neighboring one, because of poorly funded or non-existent alternatives. Single-family zoning in residential areas results in limited socialization amongst neighboring communities. Combined with a lack of city centers and the decline in malls as a center of urban and suburban communities, it results in more socially isolated and atomized communities.

While suburban municipalities are a problem that can, in part, be solved by zoning reform to promote multi-family housing, there is far more that can be done. Cities like Berlin, Prague, Paris, London, and even Vancouver all have massive suburban sprawls, yet have each, in their own way, connected them to their urban center through well-funded transportation, proactive city planning, and government intervention. Many governments and cities around the world have effectively, or not, done this, from cities within the United States to those abroad, and we can learn from their experiences with interweaving their Urban-Suburban communities. From government programs to assist students, single parents, or low-income families, to robust investments in traditional and alternative public transportation networks, there are ways we can reform our cities without needing to rebuild them from scratch.

Featured Image: Gray Line