Freeing cities from cars? Stranger things have already happened

(this is from an email I wrote to somebody around 2003. We aren’t there yet, but it’s interesting to see that lots of the pieces to make what’s described below happen are already in place, even if in ways I’d have not imagined back then)

Let’s make cities with more condos, to save space and energy. With lots of city parks, locally administered. Above all, with cars out of the way. They take too much space to stay idle all the time. I hope to see the time when people regularly leaving their cars in the street or the driveway every night will be regarded just as those who emptied their chamberpot on the sidewalk below their window.

A miracle? A pipe dream? Maybe. But I’m not even forty, and I remember well when it was just normal (in Italy, at least) to smoke inside a movie theater, or in the same room with children and expecting mothers. I remember when there where no cell phones and you had to walk to the TV to change channel. Or when the bigger your car, the smarter and more successful you looked. Strangers things have already happened.