Urban Jungle - George Monbiot

What is the best way of wrecking a city? Pour cars into it. Heavy traffic, 50 years of research shows, breaks up community, disrupts social life and crushes local cultures. Noise drowns out conversation and drives people indoors. Pollution makes streets inhospitable. Cars take up the space that might have been used for children to play, adults to meet and local projects to grow. 

The Range Rover Evoque.

Streetlife is treated as an impediment to traffic. In cities all over the world, it has been cleared for cars. Stalls, hawkers, football and cricket games, old people playing dominoes, chess or petanque: all must make way for the car. So much land is required for driving and parking that there is little left for human life. In cities like Barcelona, that curb traffic, cars use about 25% of the urban area. In cities like Houston, which don’t, they use 60%. The car eats the public space that could otherwise become parks, cycle lanes, markets and playgrounds.

Land Rover’s new advertisements for its Range Rover Evoque create the opposite impression: that this ridiculous gas guzzler contributes to urban culture. The Evoque is marketed as “the Range Rover for the city”, which sounds like a contradiction: SUVs like this were originally designed for dirt roads in the countryside. But now, according to the agency behind this revolting campaign, we are invited to use it to “explore your city” and create your own “urban adventures”. 

Read the piece by Guardian columnist George Monbiot - “Urban Jungle.”