What will it take to wake more of the world up to the dangers of mass automobility — and could a book be help Americans imagine a future beyond car dominance?
That's what Sarah Goodyear and her co-authors are hoping as they release their new book "Life After Cars: Freeing Ourselves From the Tyranny of the Automobile." Along with Doug Gordon and Aaron Naperstek, with whom she co-founded the legendary "War on Cars" podcast, she's bringing the conversation about transportation reform to a new audience, and hoping to give even veteran advocates new tools to talk about why we need to radically rethink our streets.
We sat down with Goodyear at the Vision Zero Cities conference in New York City last week to dig deep into the research about how, in her words, “cars ruin” so much of our world, why we can't dismantle other forms of violence without confronting our violent transportation system, and the one politician she most wants to pick up this book.
The following excerpt has been edited for clarity and length. An unedited full version (with AI typos) is available here.
Kea Wilson: It takes courage to publish a book called "Life After Cars," which would be a nightmare for so many people around the country; they're terrified of that instinctively. But you have shown courage throughout your career, too; I know you, first and foremost, as a former Streetsblog contributor, as a journalist and advocate, and, of course, the co-host of "The War on Cars," everybody's favorite podcast. Why don't you tell me a little bit about why you decided to add author to that list?
Goodyear: I am a writer; that's actually one of my primary identities, and has been since I was a very, very small child. So I've written a lot of different kinds of things; I've published a novel, I've written many, many types of journalism that are not streets-related. Publishing a non-fiction book has been a long time goal of mine. I really wanted to write a book that was about ideas.
One of the reasons that I've been interested in this beat for 20 years is that there are so many ideas that come out of this work. Because, as those of you who will read the book will see, we're able to touch on the role of cars in society and in political polarization; we touch on the way that cars affect children and childhood and the way that we grow up, and the way that we encounter our environment from the very beginning. We talk about the effect of cars on nature, which is something that a lot of people aren't fully aware of, just how grave the situation is.
There's just a lot to say about it, and sometimes you can't say all of that in 1,000-word article or a one hour podcast. So writing a book seemed like a natural extension of the work that I and Doug and Aaron have been doing for so long.
We were approached separately by an editor and some agents, and all those people were saying, "Have you thought about writing a book?" And eventually we did sign with an agent, and our agents ended up selling the book to the first editor who had contacted us originally — that's a young editor named Megan McCormick at Thesis, which is a Penguin Random House imprint. And she has just been such a great champion for the book. She really believed in the ideas behind it and helped us to formulate what, I think, is a pretty compelling read.
The great thing about a book is that it does allow us to reach outside of the podcast bubble. I mean, there are only certain number of people who listen to podcasts, period, right? It's not a universal medium. Also what I love about a book is that it's portable; you can give it to somebody else in a physical way. I think it allows us to make more sustained arguments, and more in-depth arguments, and it allowed us to do a ton of research that we wouldn't have had the time to do otherwise.
Our goal writing the book was to write a book that would be meaningful for people who are already in the movement and tell them things that they didn't know, and help them to cohere their own arguments and their own positions, to be a support to them in their advocacy work. But we also wanted to write a book that would be approachable for people who are not familiar with the movement, or who may have only the slightest knowledge of it.
And that's kind of where the title "Life After Cars" comes from. The podcast "The War on Cars" — obviously the title is a provocation. "Life After Cars" is also a provocation, but in maybe a more positive framing. And the cover, which has this traffic light covered in vines with flowers that are growing on it — it asks you to imagine something. It asks you to imagine a world that is not dominated by automobiles.
I hope that is something that's going to intrigue people to say, "Wait —what life after cars? How could that be? I can't imagine that." But that's what the book is; It's an invitation to imagine a better world in which people are put before cars.
