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Carmageddon: How Cars Make Life Worse and What to Do About It
A high-octane polemic against cars—which are ruining the world, while making us unhappy and unhealthy—from a talented young writer at the Economist
The automobile was one of the most miraculous inventions of the 20th century. It promised freedom, style, and utility. But sometimes, rather than improving our lives technology just makes everything worse. Over the past century cars have filled the air with toxic pollutants and fueled climate change. Cars have stolen public space and made our cities uglier, dirtier, less useful, and more unequal. Cars have caused tens of millions of deaths and injuries. They have wasted our time and our money.
In Carmageddon, journalist Daniel Knowles outlines the rise of the automobile and the costs we all bear as a result. Weaving together history, economics, and reportage, Knowles traces the forces and decisions that normalized cars and cemented our reliance on them. He takes readers around the world to show the ways car use has impacted people’s lives—from Nairobi, where few people own a car but the city is still cloaked in smog, to Houston, where the Katy Freeway has a mind-boggling 26 lanes and there are 30 parking spaces for every resident, enough land to fit Paris ten times. With these negatives, Knowles shows that there are better ways to live, looking at Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Tokyo, and New York City.
CARMAGEDDON features original reporting from:
Chicago
Detroit
Houston
Las Vegas
Los Angeles
New York
Paris, France
Mumbai, India
Nairobi, Kenya
Tokyo, Japan
London, Birmingham, and Coventry, England
CARMAGEDDON also covers:
Atlanta
Cincinnati
Louisville
Memphis
St Louis
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Copenhagen, Denmark
Lagos, Nigeria
Sao Paolo, Brazil
Singapore
The automobile was one of the most miraculous inventions of the 20th century. It promised freedom, style, and utility. But sometimes, rather than improving our lives technology just makes everything worse. Over the past century cars have filled the air with toxic pollutants and fueled climate change. Cars have stolen public space and made our cities uglier, dirtier, less useful, and more unequal. Cars have caused tens of millions of deaths and injuries. They have wasted our time and our money.
In Carmageddon, journalist Daniel Knowles outlines the rise of the automobile and the costs we all bear as a result. Weaving together history, economics, and reportage, Knowles traces the forces and decisions that normalized cars and cemented our reliance on them. He takes readers around the world to show the ways car use has impacted people’s lives—from Nairobi, where few people own a car but the city is still cloaked in smog, to Houston, where the Katy Freeway has a mind-boggling 26 lanes and there are 30 parking spaces for every resident, enough land to fit Paris ten times. With these negatives, Knowles shows that there are better ways to live, looking at Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Tokyo, and New York City.
CARMAGEDDON features original reporting from:
Chicago
Detroit
Houston
Las Vegas
Los Angeles
New York
Paris, France
Mumbai, India
Nairobi, Kenya
Tokyo, Japan
London, Birmingham, and Coventry, England
CARMAGEDDON also covers:
Atlanta
Cincinnati
Louisville
Memphis
St Louis
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Copenhagen, Denmark
Lagos, Nigeria
Sao Paolo, Brazil
Singapore
256 pages, Hardcover
First published March 28, 2023
115 people are currently reading
3087 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 147 reviews
July 24, 2023
So I grew up in Toronto. For many decades (and still to this day), the city was fairly car-centric, having chronically terrible public transit investment and freeways running through the city. Highway 401 is a comically wide expressway cutting through the city, the Don Valley Parkway is a scourge on some of the best parkland in the city, the Gardiner Expressway acts as a barrier keeping the city's residents from the Harbourfront. Transit was chronically underfunded prior to the mid 2000s: commuter rail was infrequent, subway and bus expansion never quite kept up with the growing expansion of the city. Proposed highways like the Spadina or Crosstown Expressways threatened to sever uptown.
There was a remarkable shift - around 2008, downtown Toronto had a ton of parking lots sprinkled throughout the city. Fifteen years later, downtown Toronto is full of dense neighbourhoods, more reliable transit, and a modest expansion in cycling infrastructure. Around 2008, the government recognised that congestion choked the city and that multimodal transport options were non-existent and sought to rectify that.
Carmageddon's core thesis is that car-centric culture, as it played out in the western world, the former Soviet Union, and China, has completely and utterly destroyed their countries. For those who have occupied urbanist circles online, this is nothing radical, but Knowles (the author) seeks to make this clear and also to explore how auto-centrism isn't a solely American phenomenon. Indeed, in the last few decades, developing countries have shifted more and more towards auto-centrism, while western European countries shift away and Asian countries build credible alternatives to driving.
Knowles' analysis is really comprehensive. The way the car has influenced society isn't a simple impact - and Knowles knows this and explores how cars are absolutely terrible on the climate, how cars have destroyed the social fabric of American society, how highway expansion had often torn vibrant neighbourhoods apart and set into motion urban decay, and how auto-centrism has wide-ranging effects on lower-income people that cannot afford to drive. Highway expansion, for instance, systematically tore neighbourhoods with residents of colour apart. The racial aspect of highway expansion doesn't escape Knowles, either, and he acknowledges the sheer destructive racism inherent in these expansions.
There are some absolutely wild numbers, too. For example, drivers in Texas alone are responsible for 0.5% of global emissions - more than the entire country of Nigeria's emissions. If these are just Texan emissions, what of the rest of the planet, then? Lots of zingers - electric vehicles are the darling of many politicians. But Knowles sees through this - the ethical problems inherent with the extraction of rare-earth metals in developing countries like the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the fact that the power grid would have to be expanded by a monumentally historic factor to support EV drivers mean EVs aren't a credible alternative to petrol vehicles in the first place (and also that EVs are, you know, just heavier cars so cities would still be ugly and a whole host of other problems). He instead proposes a larger more material shift towards a more walkable, transit-oriented society.
A lot of the arguments in Carmageddon are really convincing in favour of urbanism and systematically deconstructs the idea of a car-centric society. None of his arguments sound forced or repeated, the book flows quite naturally and much like a really long long-form essay published in the news. In some ways it feels a lot like a good complement to what Chuck Marohn argued in Strong Towns, just without the repetition and actually analysing racial and social factors. Good read - would recommend especially to those interested in local politics.
4/5
There was a remarkable shift - around 2008, downtown Toronto had a ton of parking lots sprinkled throughout the city. Fifteen years later, downtown Toronto is full of dense neighbourhoods, more reliable transit, and a modest expansion in cycling infrastructure. Around 2008, the government recognised that congestion choked the city and that multimodal transport options were non-existent and sought to rectify that.
Carmageddon's core thesis is that car-centric culture, as it played out in the western world, the former Soviet Union, and China, has completely and utterly destroyed their countries. For those who have occupied urbanist circles online, this is nothing radical, but Knowles (the author) seeks to make this clear and also to explore how auto-centrism isn't a solely American phenomenon. Indeed, in the last few decades, developing countries have shifted more and more towards auto-centrism, while western European countries shift away and Asian countries build credible alternatives to driving.
Knowles' analysis is really comprehensive. The way the car has influenced society isn't a simple impact - and Knowles knows this and explores how cars are absolutely terrible on the climate, how cars have destroyed the social fabric of American society, how highway expansion had often torn vibrant neighbourhoods apart and set into motion urban decay, and how auto-centrism has wide-ranging effects on lower-income people that cannot afford to drive. Highway expansion, for instance, systematically tore neighbourhoods with residents of colour apart. The racial aspect of highway expansion doesn't escape Knowles, either, and he acknowledges the sheer destructive racism inherent in these expansions.
There are some absolutely wild numbers, too. For example, drivers in Texas alone are responsible for 0.5% of global emissions - more than the entire country of Nigeria's emissions. If these are just Texan emissions, what of the rest of the planet, then? Lots of zingers - electric vehicles are the darling of many politicians. But Knowles sees through this - the ethical problems inherent with the extraction of rare-earth metals in developing countries like the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the fact that the power grid would have to be expanded by a monumentally historic factor to support EV drivers mean EVs aren't a credible alternative to petrol vehicles in the first place (and also that EVs are, you know, just heavier cars so cities would still be ugly and a whole host of other problems). He instead proposes a larger more material shift towards a more walkable, transit-oriented society.
A lot of the arguments in Carmageddon are really convincing in favour of urbanism and systematically deconstructs the idea of a car-centric society. None of his arguments sound forced or repeated, the book flows quite naturally and much like a really long long-form essay published in the news. In some ways it feels a lot like a good complement to what Chuck Marohn argued in Strong Towns, just without the repetition and actually analysing racial and social factors. Good read - would recommend especially to those interested in local politics.
4/5
May 26, 2023
This polemic against cars was written, surprisingly, by the Chicago correspondent of The Economist. Fascinating: even from the perspective of a free-market fanatic, cars are just awful. (And electric cars solve exactly none of the problems caused by their predecessors — they are a big scam.) Individual cars are the least efficient way to transport people ever invented. It's depressing to learn that a century ago, at the start of the car era, no small number of people predicted exactly how these deadly machines would ruin our cities and kill huge numbers of people.
This author points out that car culture is not really a product of the free market — cars get massive public subsidies. Space in cities for living, working, gardening, or anything else keeps getting more and more expensive — space for cars, however; remains free. Toll roads are also consistently unpopular. The fact that people won't pay a few dollars to get around traffic shows that highways are as "valuable" as capitalist politicians pretend they are.
The author, despite the connection to The Economist, makes no attempt at a material explanation for car culture. It's just a dumb idea that got stuck in people's heads a century ago. So his program is literally nothing: a vague hope that some day people will turn against cars.
The simple fact is that cars are a fantastic source of capital accumulation. It's hard to imagine any other system that could squeeze so much profit out of working people who need to get around. No one has ever gotten particularly wealthy off public transport. There is also very little in this book about the catastrophic changes to our climate that are already underway. Defenders of capitalism work hard to push such knowledge to the very back of their minds. Cars are therefore presented as pesky, rather than as something actively killing humanity in the fairly short term. This is why it's also a bit weird to hear the author flew around the world several times in order to write his book about cars.
Despite its weaknesses, this is a well-written and well-argued polemic. It helps us imagine: what if we had cities made for people instead of for cars? That, however, will require a fight against capitalism.
This author points out that car culture is not really a product of the free market — cars get massive public subsidies. Space in cities for living, working, gardening, or anything else keeps getting more and more expensive — space for cars, however; remains free. Toll roads are also consistently unpopular. The fact that people won't pay a few dollars to get around traffic shows that highways are as "valuable" as capitalist politicians pretend they are.
The author, despite the connection to The Economist, makes no attempt at a material explanation for car culture. It's just a dumb idea that got stuck in people's heads a century ago. So his program is literally nothing: a vague hope that some day people will turn against cars.
The simple fact is that cars are a fantastic source of capital accumulation. It's hard to imagine any other system that could squeeze so much profit out of working people who need to get around. No one has ever gotten particularly wealthy off public transport. There is also very little in this book about the catastrophic changes to our climate that are already underway. Defenders of capitalism work hard to push such knowledge to the very back of their minds. Cars are therefore presented as pesky, rather than as something actively killing humanity in the fairly short term. This is why it's also a bit weird to hear the author flew around the world several times in order to write his book about cars.
Despite its weaknesses, this is a well-written and well-argued polemic. It helps us imagine: what if we had cities made for people instead of for cars? That, however, will require a fight against capitalism.
February 22, 2023
Rounding up to 4 stars. I would recommend this book to others based on the topic, staggering facts/figures, and overarching conclusions. But maybe especially because I think car dependency is such a big problem, I was upset by parts I think Knowles gets wrong. Freeway building and suburban expansion didn't just innocently happen. The "market" and capitalism won't fix our polluted and congested cities. An angle more interested in democracy and the joys of public space and public transit would have been better, but overall I found myself highlighting and sharing lots of passages that were really compelling.
"There is simply no good reason why the sustainable option - living in s decent sized apartment or rowhousen in a neighborhood where you can walk, cycle, and use public transport to get around - ought to be so expensive, some living in an enormous detached house and using vast quantities of resources is the cheap option. It is because of decisions made over decades that have compounded to create a world where wasting resources is normal, and sustainable living is rare."
"There is simply no good reason why the sustainable option - living in s decent sized apartment or rowhousen in a neighborhood where you can walk, cycle, and use public transport to get around - ought to be so expensive, some living in an enormous detached house and using vast quantities of resources is the cheap option. It is because of decisions made over decades that have compounded to create a world where wasting resources is normal, and sustainable living is rare."
January 11, 2025
Reading Carmageddon: How Cars Make Life Worse and What to Do About It was a slightly peculiar experience because I've also written a book titled Carmageddon - this was the informal title of my PhD thesis. My theme was the same (cars = bad), just focused on Britain and containing reams of graphs and tables. This version is obviously much more entertaining and accessible, as it draws on a range of interviews and international examples to explain how cars damage the economy, society, built and natural environments, and basic human wellbeing. Knowles synthesises an impressive array of material on the topic, albeit without formal citations or endnotes. (I'm accustomed to academic writing on this topic, I suppose.) Despite my professional familiarity with arguments against cars, I found Carmageddon: How Cars Make Life Worse and What to Do About It informative and rewarding to read. As well as really good explanations of material I already knew, it covers developments since the COVID-19 pandemic began (including low traffic neighbourhoods) and details of American and Japanese transport policies that were new to me.
I particularly appreciated learning the phrase 'bionic duckweed' for technologies that are perpetually five years away and thus used as an excuse for not adopting actual existing technology. The key transport example is hydrogen-powered vehicles, which have been used to postpone rail and vehicle electrification. After observing hydrogen's progress for twenty years, I've essentially come to the conclusion that it's a dead end hyped by fossil fuel companies that are scared of decarbonisation. My opinion could change if the technology finally makes a much-promised breakthrough, but for the last few decades it has been a pretext to put off reducing greenhouse gas emissions:
I recall reading academic literature seven years ago that presumed policy needed to be ready for fully autonomous cars in a year or two. As of early 2025, there are still none in the UK, partially automated cars have killed several people, and some of hype has died down. As Knowles emphasises, they are a distraction from the real issues. Transport systems are based on infrastructure decisions made many decades ago; road-building creates car traffic. Nowhere demonstrates this better than America, although the book shows how the predict-and-provide road-building fallacy is being exported to cities in the developing world. I found the chapter on parking especially enraging. Apparently 99% of American car journeys have free parking at their destination! That must be much lower in the UK. I noticed an instant difference to my neighbourhood when parking charges were introduced, including permits for residents. Suddenly the streets weren't so clogged with parked cars and double-parking ceased. A great improvement to a high density urban area with excellent public transport links.
Another notably rage-inducing discovery was how America's Corporate Average Fuel Company (CAFE) standards for new cars create a perverse subsidy of the world's richest (and most divorced) man. I knew CAFE was poorly designed and ineffectual, but didn't realise the offsetting was quite this bad:
By contrast, I was delighted to learn about low car use in Japan: '95% of Japanese streets have no street parking at all' and, 'under a nationwide law passed in 1957, overnight street parking of any sort is completely illegal'. Combined with reliable and fast public transport, these policies obviously has a massive impact on the built environment and daily life. As a rich country, Japan has relatively high car ownership, yet car use is low. I argued in my PhD that to reduce car mileage in Britain car ownership had to be discouraged, but Japan is an interesting counter example. As Knowles comments, though, Japan's low level of driving is based on more than fifty years of consistent policies that would be hard to quickly replicate elsewhere. Fittingly, transport policy is full of path dependence. Still, as the introduction of parking charges in my neighbourhood shows, incremental changes help even if fully banning on-street parking isn't practical.
I highly recommend Carmageddon: How Cars Make Life Worse and What to Do About It if you're interested in transport and its vicissitudes. It would read well with two other recent books on the subject, Road to Nowhere: What Silicon Valley Gets Wrong about the Future of Transportation and Mobility Justice: The Politics of Movement in an Age of Extremes. And if you fancy some poetry about how terrible cars are, Autogeddon is wonderful.
I particularly appreciated learning the phrase 'bionic duckweed' for technologies that are perpetually five years away and thus used as an excuse for not adopting actual existing technology. The key transport example is hydrogen-powered vehicles, which have been used to postpone rail and vehicle electrification. After observing hydrogen's progress for twenty years, I've essentially come to the conclusion that it's a dead end hyped by fossil fuel companies that are scared of decarbonisation. My opinion could change if the technology finally makes a much-promised breakthrough, but for the last few decades it has been a pretext to put off reducing greenhouse gas emissions:
The idea that we could extract hydrogen cheaply from biomass - literal 'bionic duckweed' - is unrealistic when you think about the difficulty of extracting hydrogen from anything. It is typically an energy-intensive process that creates a gas that is then extremely difficult to store or transport. It would be brilliant if we could use hydrogen - which when burned, generates only water - to power more stuff. But it is very far away from being practical.
In the transportation sector, unfortunately, there is an awful lot of bionic duckweed. Electric cars, for all their fault, are not bionic duckweed. They are very real bit of technology that do, on the important measure of carbon emissions at least, starkly improve the damage done by cars to the environment. But much else is. Chief among them is the idea of autonomous, 'self-driving' cars.
I recall reading academic literature seven years ago that presumed policy needed to be ready for fully autonomous cars in a year or two. As of early 2025, there are still none in the UK, partially automated cars have killed several people, and some of hype has died down. As Knowles emphasises, they are a distraction from the real issues. Transport systems are based on infrastructure decisions made many decades ago; road-building creates car traffic. Nowhere demonstrates this better than America, although the book shows how the predict-and-provide road-building fallacy is being exported to cities in the developing world. I found the chapter on parking especially enraging. Apparently 99% of American car journeys have free parking at their destination! That must be much lower in the UK. I noticed an instant difference to my neighbourhood when parking charges were introduced, including permits for residents. Suddenly the streets weren't so clogged with parked cars and double-parking ceased. A great improvement to a high density urban area with excellent public transport links.
Another notably rage-inducing discovery was how America's Corporate Average Fuel Company (CAFE) standards for new cars create a perverse subsidy of the world's richest (and most divorced) man. I knew CAFE was poorly designed and ineffectual, but didn't realise the offsetting was quite this bad:
For every electric vehicle the manufacturers sell, they lower their fleet-wide average a bit. That, in turn, frees them up to sell another monstrous petrol-burning SUV. [...] They do not even have to sell the electric cars themselves. In the first quarter of 2022, other automakers in the United States paid Elon Musk's firm $679 million in credits that it earned from overshooting the overall fuel efficiency targets, or about $2,200 for every car the firm produced. Every Tesla on Amerca's roads creates a little bit more regulatory space for another Chevrolet Suburban. Before 2022, Tesla was making more from selling the right to pollute to other car firms that it was in profit from selling its own cars.
By contrast, I was delighted to learn about low car use in Japan: '95% of Japanese streets have no street parking at all' and, 'under a nationwide law passed in 1957, overnight street parking of any sort is completely illegal'. Combined with reliable and fast public transport, these policies obviously has a massive impact on the built environment and daily life. As a rich country, Japan has relatively high car ownership, yet car use is low. I argued in my PhD that to reduce car mileage in Britain car ownership had to be discouraged, but Japan is an interesting counter example. As Knowles comments, though, Japan's low level of driving is based on more than fifty years of consistent policies that would be hard to quickly replicate elsewhere. Fittingly, transport policy is full of path dependence. Still, as the introduction of parking charges in my neighbourhood shows, incremental changes help even if fully banning on-street parking isn't practical.
I highly recommend Carmageddon: How Cars Make Life Worse and What to Do About It if you're interested in transport and its vicissitudes. It would read well with two other recent books on the subject, Road to Nowhere: What Silicon Valley Gets Wrong about the Future of Transportation and Mobility Justice: The Politics of Movement in an Age of Extremes. And if you fancy some poetry about how terrible cars are, Autogeddon is wonderful.
July 29, 2023
Good and informative, but felt a bit too much “How Cars Make Life Worse” and not enough “And What We Can Do About It”
December 29, 2023
holy shit. i need to blow up my car
March 31, 2025
Knowles highlights the pros and cons of what I call the "pre-car" vs. "post-car" lifestyles in the US and UK. The geography and rhythms of life changed drastically in our towns and cities pre-WWII (trains, bikes, trams, walking) as compared to post-WII (cars, busses, planes).
At times, the book feels like a Brit looking down his nose at Americans: "Those unsophisticated Yankees and their gas guzzlers." (Does Knowles really know how big the US is?) He harps on too much about climate change for my liking (I'm personally more worried about pollution and toxins than rising global temperatures). In the chapter about VW, Knowles says he doesn't want to call VW an evil car company, yet the chapter is literally titled "Evil Carmakers." It's easy to write off Knowles as entirely anti-car.
But looking past his bias, I still got much out of the book and I appreciated the cultural commentary. I was fascinated by many of the statistics he cites and his descriptions of the historic changes the car brought to cities like Newark, Los Angeles, Detroit, Houston, and Atlanta. I think the last chapter is well-rounded: we need to find a more balanced approach to transportation, with less car dependency, not a removal of all cars entirely.
I'm not anti-car. But if I never had to drive again a day in my life, I'd be happier. I've lived in both cities and suburbs where my home was within walking distance to many local businesses and public transportation. And I miss that dearly (now I'm in a suburb where nothing is within easy walking distance). I don't like that the choice between a pedestrian vs. car life means a choice between a city vs. suburban life, which inevitably means a choice between crime vs. safety and convenience vs. inconvenience.
My ideal neighborhood would consist of a seamless blend of walking/pedestrian life and car life, at the same time. The ability to walk to work, school, church, and some local shops right outside my front door, while also owning a car--keeping it in a garage in the back, and using an alleyway behind my home to connect to larger roads and freeways outside the town center, roads that take me to long-distance destinations without hampering the walkability of storefronts near my home. The dream would be the ability to drive a car occasionally, at will, not constantly out of necessity.
This book mentions Jacobs's The Death and Life of Great American Cities.
I listened to this audiobook alongside episode #23 of the Martyr Made podcast, which is about the Great Migration and inner city crime: https://martyr-made.squarespace.com/f.... Why in school did I never learn about the riots in 1967 or the demolition of black neighborhoods to build freeways in the 1960s?
At times, the book feels like a Brit looking down his nose at Americans: "Those unsophisticated Yankees and their gas guzzlers." (Does Knowles really know how big the US is?) He harps on too much about climate change for my liking (I'm personally more worried about pollution and toxins than rising global temperatures). In the chapter about VW, Knowles says he doesn't want to call VW an evil car company, yet the chapter is literally titled "Evil Carmakers." It's easy to write off Knowles as entirely anti-car.
But looking past his bias, I still got much out of the book and I appreciated the cultural commentary. I was fascinated by many of the statistics he cites and his descriptions of the historic changes the car brought to cities like Newark, Los Angeles, Detroit, Houston, and Atlanta. I think the last chapter is well-rounded: we need to find a more balanced approach to transportation, with less car dependency, not a removal of all cars entirely.
I'm not anti-car. But if I never had to drive again a day in my life, I'd be happier. I've lived in both cities and suburbs where my home was within walking distance to many local businesses and public transportation. And I miss that dearly (now I'm in a suburb where nothing is within easy walking distance). I don't like that the choice between a pedestrian vs. car life means a choice between a city vs. suburban life, which inevitably means a choice between crime vs. safety and convenience vs. inconvenience.
My ideal neighborhood would consist of a seamless blend of walking/pedestrian life and car life, at the same time. The ability to walk to work, school, church, and some local shops right outside my front door, while also owning a car--keeping it in a garage in the back, and using an alleyway behind my home to connect to larger roads and freeways outside the town center, roads that take me to long-distance destinations without hampering the walkability of storefronts near my home. The dream would be the ability to drive a car occasionally, at will, not constantly out of necessity.
This book mentions Jacobs's The Death and Life of Great American Cities.
I listened to this audiobook alongside episode #23 of the Martyr Made podcast, which is about the Great Migration and inner city crime: https://martyr-made.squarespace.com/f.... Why in school did I never learn about the riots in 1967 or the demolition of black neighborhoods to build freeways in the 1960s?
February 23, 2024
4.5/5 This book was such a chefs kiss idc what anyone says. Reading it right after the book about parking made me feel like a real expert when the parking chapters came up. My public transportation era continues!!!! 🗣️🗣️
Anyways, I thought about giving this 5 stars but that felt weird so 4.5 it is. I just really enjoyed this & I haven’t paid this close attention to an audiobook in a v long time. The material was so engaging & interesting & perfectly mixed in with anecdotes. LOVE!!
Also, I listened to this whole thing while driving :( shame! It’s like 10 hours I think? I listened on 1.75x speed but STILL! This book has inspired me to try to make changes in my life and my own car dependency when I can. Changes like biking to the grocery store or library (about a mile or less away) instead of driving. Also, taking the train into the city. Even though I have to drive to the train station which sucks I think even making the effort to be partially less car dependent on my commutes to places is worth it. It’s realistic & I think I can do it for sure! 😤
Anyways, Goodreads is not my personal diary. Enough from me. It was a good book, you should read it.
Anyways, I thought about giving this 5 stars but that felt weird so 4.5 it is. I just really enjoyed this & I haven’t paid this close attention to an audiobook in a v long time. The material was so engaging & interesting & perfectly mixed in with anecdotes. LOVE!!
Also, I listened to this whole thing while driving :( shame! It’s like 10 hours I think? I listened on 1.75x speed but STILL! This book has inspired me to try to make changes in my life and my own car dependency when I can. Changes like biking to the grocery store or library (about a mile or less away) instead of driving. Also, taking the train into the city. Even though I have to drive to the train station which sucks I think even making the effort to be partially less car dependent on my commutes to places is worth it. It’s realistic & I think I can do it for sure! 😤
Anyways, Goodreads is not my personal diary. Enough from me. It was a good book, you should read it.
May 23, 2023
An occasionally repetitive, always insightful book not about why cars inherently suck but why (mostly western) society has continued to create a lifestyle in which everyone is at least a little bit miserable.
July 2, 2023
God I hate cars.
I'm deducting a star for fatphobia.
I'm deducting a star for fatphobia.
September 8, 2023
"When poor people occupy land without paying for it, it's called squatting. When the rich do the same thing, it's called parking."
I had never thought of it this way, but it certainly illustrates yet another fucked up set of priorities in the world. Traffic also kills more people every year than Tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, and Malaria does each, and more than homicides, suicides, wars, and terrorism combined. Which illustrates some more twisted priorities. Especially since, as Knowles points out,"[t]here is no region on the planet where the number of cars is not increasing."
And that is part of the problem described in "Carmageddon," a very passionate denouncement of cars and most policies relating to them. Especially the ridiculous amount of subsidies, laws, and policies that prioritize them over pretty much everything else in our society - particularly other modes of transportation, the environment, and people.
The book comes down heaviest on the U.S., the planet's O.G. caroholic. That, and the fact that the book is written primarily for a U.S. audience by an author living in the U.S.. Knowles' British origin can also be seen throughout the book. But this isn't an issue for me. On the contrary, transportation infrastructure being constructed in the developing world today largely mirrors the U.S. post WWII development, so the mistakes made in 50s and 60s America and their results provide a grim forecast globally if something doesn't change.
"Carmageddon" argues that we the people, governments, and developers worldwide have to stop our car-focused life-model and start developing people-focused cities, towns, and communities. Not just for the planet or the environment, but for humans. In doing so, Knowles does a really good job of showing that cars very rarely contribute positively to our lives. Roads fracture societies, coming down hardest on those already hurting the most, traffic rips apart families (it drives divorce rates) and pollutes our cities, and our new fancy electric cars are the direct result of neocolonialism, exploitation, and slave labor.
He juxtaposes this with a world where car interests aren't widely subsidized and prioritized over most everything else. It's a healthier and more sustainable world where walking, biking, and other means of transports are not only available but preferable. Crucially, he does this while allowing for that cars and trucks will continue to be necessary for certain purposes and/or in some locations, he just wants to eliminate the unnecessary aspects of them - promoting infrastructure investments and city-planning across the world to gradually make cars more and more superfluous.
While he acknowledges that this may well cost more up front - it does, after all, cost a bit more to build new or improve upon public transit networks than it does to build or widen a road - Knowles argues that it is cheaper in the long run. And that's without taking things like environmental and climatic goods into consideration, much less other tangible and intangible knock-on effects. It's difficult to argue otherwise in my opinion, but to illustrate his point he ones again uses the U.S. as an example noting that the holistic cost of parking alone puts our priorities to shame:
"In the United States, as a rule, nothing is provided for free. With one major exception, parking. [...] it is not the free market that results in American buildings being surrounded with oceans of tarmac for storing vehicles, it's the law. [...] free parking costs America somewhere between two thirds and twice as much as it spends on all other transportation infrastructure combined."
In terms of ways and policies to solve the car problem, Knowles' arguments are a little less solid. That's not to say that "Carmageddon" doesn't discuss things like best practices and solutions across the world, but these arguments are less fleshed-out than his criticisms of the status quo. There's no real surprise there, to be fair, the examples just aren't as plentiful. I generally think what he's proposing are good ideas, mind, but I can understand those who criticize this aspect of the book.
What he does make abundantly clear though is that electric cars are not the solution (nor are ride-shares, but I'll leave that for you to rea about, the statistics on this phenomenon are fascinating). Not only are electric cars still extremely resource intensive and exploitative to produce, they are still cars, contribute to most of the car-issues discussed in the book (including pollution and emissions), and put additional pressure on electricity generation and electric grids that are already inundated and dependent on fossil fuels. Being heavier and running more quietly, they're also greater threats to pedestrians, bicyclists, and other people they share space with. And they don't exactly solve the parking issue, do they.
No, Knowles is adamant that the solution is fewer cars of all kinds on the roads and in the world. A big part of that is making it easier to not have or use a car, including repurposing roads into something more human. This also means closing or minimizing accessibility for cars and giving back cities and towns to pedestrians and bicyclists. Efforts to do just that always face loud and persistent protests and arguments that it'll kill businesses and create more traffic jams - to name just a few - and constant laments about the "war on cars." In response, the author leaves us with this:
"So far, no city that has closed a major road has felt it necessary to reopen it."
Recommended (with a slight warning for some hyperbolic statements and arguments).
I had never thought of it this way, but it certainly illustrates yet another fucked up set of priorities in the world. Traffic also kills more people every year than Tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, and Malaria does each, and more than homicides, suicides, wars, and terrorism combined. Which illustrates some more twisted priorities. Especially since, as Knowles points out,"[t]here is no region on the planet where the number of cars is not increasing."
And that is part of the problem described in "Carmageddon," a very passionate denouncement of cars and most policies relating to them. Especially the ridiculous amount of subsidies, laws, and policies that prioritize them over pretty much everything else in our society - particularly other modes of transportation, the environment, and people.
The book comes down heaviest on the U.S., the planet's O.G. caroholic. That, and the fact that the book is written primarily for a U.S. audience by an author living in the U.S.. Knowles' British origin can also be seen throughout the book. But this isn't an issue for me. On the contrary, transportation infrastructure being constructed in the developing world today largely mirrors the U.S. post WWII development, so the mistakes made in 50s and 60s America and their results provide a grim forecast globally if something doesn't change.
"Carmageddon" argues that we the people, governments, and developers worldwide have to stop our car-focused life-model and start developing people-focused cities, towns, and communities. Not just for the planet or the environment, but for humans. In doing so, Knowles does a really good job of showing that cars very rarely contribute positively to our lives. Roads fracture societies, coming down hardest on those already hurting the most, traffic rips apart families (it drives divorce rates) and pollutes our cities, and our new fancy electric cars are the direct result of neocolonialism, exploitation, and slave labor.
He juxtaposes this with a world where car interests aren't widely subsidized and prioritized over most everything else. It's a healthier and more sustainable world where walking, biking, and other means of transports are not only available but preferable. Crucially, he does this while allowing for that cars and trucks will continue to be necessary for certain purposes and/or in some locations, he just wants to eliminate the unnecessary aspects of them - promoting infrastructure investments and city-planning across the world to gradually make cars more and more superfluous.
While he acknowledges that this may well cost more up front - it does, after all, cost a bit more to build new or improve upon public transit networks than it does to build or widen a road - Knowles argues that it is cheaper in the long run. And that's without taking things like environmental and climatic goods into consideration, much less other tangible and intangible knock-on effects. It's difficult to argue otherwise in my opinion, but to illustrate his point he ones again uses the U.S. as an example noting that the holistic cost of parking alone puts our priorities to shame:
"In the United States, as a rule, nothing is provided for free. With one major exception, parking. [...] it is not the free market that results in American buildings being surrounded with oceans of tarmac for storing vehicles, it's the law. [...] free parking costs America somewhere between two thirds and twice as much as it spends on all other transportation infrastructure combined."
In terms of ways and policies to solve the car problem, Knowles' arguments are a little less solid. That's not to say that "Carmageddon" doesn't discuss things like best practices and solutions across the world, but these arguments are less fleshed-out than his criticisms of the status quo. There's no real surprise there, to be fair, the examples just aren't as plentiful. I generally think what he's proposing are good ideas, mind, but I can understand those who criticize this aspect of the book.
What he does make abundantly clear though is that electric cars are not the solution (nor are ride-shares, but I'll leave that for you to rea about, the statistics on this phenomenon are fascinating). Not only are electric cars still extremely resource intensive and exploitative to produce, they are still cars, contribute to most of the car-issues discussed in the book (including pollution and emissions), and put additional pressure on electricity generation and electric grids that are already inundated and dependent on fossil fuels. Being heavier and running more quietly, they're also greater threats to pedestrians, bicyclists, and other people they share space with. And they don't exactly solve the parking issue, do they.
No, Knowles is adamant that the solution is fewer cars of all kinds on the roads and in the world. A big part of that is making it easier to not have or use a car, including repurposing roads into something more human. This also means closing or minimizing accessibility for cars and giving back cities and towns to pedestrians and bicyclists. Efforts to do just that always face loud and persistent protests and arguments that it'll kill businesses and create more traffic jams - to name just a few - and constant laments about the "war on cars." In response, the author leaves us with this:
"So far, no city that has closed a major road has felt it necessary to reopen it."
Recommended (with a slight warning for some hyperbolic statements and arguments).
June 1, 2023
Can’t say enough good things about this book. In fairness, Knowles is preaching to the choir here. (I’m a city dwelling nondriver who prefers getting around on foot, or using my bike or public transportation. And, I live in one of the densest, most walkable cities on earth, with easy access to outstanding affordable public transportation.) Even given this shared bias though, Knowles’s book is extraordinarily readable, really well researched, full of interesting historical information about the unintentional primacy given to cars in our culture, statistics about how the unconscious skewing toward automobile damages life for everyone, especially drivers, and vital global context. It also feels up-to-the minute in terms of its information and argument. Very fresh. Bonus, closing arguments favor discussions with auto enthusiasts, offering rhetorical approaches likely to be convincing for drivers, rather than vesting exclusively in readers like myself who were convinced before we’re started reading the book.
October 28, 2024
READ THIS BOOK!!! got it from the Library but it was so good i had to buy my own copy and one for erin. i’m sold!! ditch the cars!!!!
January 26, 2024
learned a lot about the history of cars and public policy in lots of places but definitely a little offput by the complete lack of conversation about how disabled people factor into car usage vs public transit usage.. good informative look at the open wound that is the production and excessive usage of cars but not every person can ride a fucking bike dude
November 18, 2024
In many cities a car is the only option for getting around, which limits freedom, increases inequality, makes us less healthy, and hurts the planet. In a few cities like Amsterdam, Tokyo, Paris, and New York, fewer people use cars, and their cities and citizens flourish as a result. This is a great overview of how cars shape our society and what we can do to turn the tide.
4 stars ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
4 stars ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
June 26, 2023
Everybody should read this book. Everybody.
February 20, 2024
This book offers much food for thought. However, since I live in a small town with no public transportation and I never learned to ride a bike, I will be keeping my car, for now.
January 23, 2025
A depressing and angering book about cars’ impacts on the world in all aspects. And don’t think your Tesla absolves you of this, as a car company’s emission caps are based on their fleet - one more electric car sold makes room for one more giant truck on the road. And that Finker Musk is making the world a worse place with his money and fear of public transportation: he’s only invented a train made out of Teslas to run in his new tunnels. That’s not visionary, that’s a travesty.
April 23, 2023
I live in New York City and bike to work and typically take the subway to events. I also co-own a car that I rarely use. This book is a really good reminder for us to look around and to realize that cars are such a dominating force and they do so many things that are unhealthy for us as humans. I've only outright owned one car my life so I'm very biased but I felt like this was a really good primer for why cars are so destructive and maybe how we can get back to more human scaled living.
April 18, 2024
Phew, the amount of times I had to keep getting this from the library to finish it! (3)
It’s well written and contains a ton of information. Knowles investigates the harm of cars from many angles; I appreciate that he didn’t overlook the role of race and labor. However, none of the research— studies or articles— was cited, which would’ve given this more legitimacy. I was already on board with Knowles’ arguments and this further fomented that stance. It was just a slog to get through for me!
It’s well written and contains a ton of information. Knowles investigates the harm of cars from many angles; I appreciate that he didn’t overlook the role of race and labor. However, none of the research— studies or articles— was cited, which would’ve given this more legitimacy. I was already on board with Knowles’ arguments and this further fomented that stance. It was just a slog to get through for me!
August 14, 2023
Cars ruin cities.
April 7, 2024
I’ll always be a sucker for 230 pages of complaints that I already agree with.
December 30, 2024
ITS E BIKE GURL SUMMER 🚴♀️💨
April 18, 2024
Because I have little to no audience for a review of this kind of subject, I’ll paste some quotes from Knowles’ conclusion chapter.
“The problem is not cars themselves. It is privileging cars over any other form of transport, so that they are not a luxury or an occasional necessity, but rather something that we are forced to rely on, day-to-day. The problem is building our homes and our cities in such a way that pavement, rather than people, comes first. Americans spend only a little less on buying and running their cars than they do on housing themselves. If we did not need them as much, we could have a lot more left over to spend on whatever we want. And not needing as many cars is not some lofty, unrealistic goal. It is frankly bonkers to think that every family spending $5,000 to $10,000 a year on their own individual vehicle is the most efficient way of getting people around.”
“Yet on balance, I think that we are beginning to make the turn away from cars. The biggest challenge may be the cultural one. I have owned one car in my life. I hope to never own another. But we have so ingrained the ideas that car ownership is tantamount to freedom and that your car is an expression of your personality, that it will take time to unlearn. I think of a friend of mine in Chicago, originally from Texas, who keeps a car. Even though she only rarely uses it, she says she would feel trapped if she didn't know it was there.
It will take time for people who have gotten used to living with a vehicle at their beck and call to realize that it can be just as liberating not to have one: to never have to worry about gasoline prices, or parking, or maintenance, or insurance, or whether you can have a beer on a night out without having to worry about how to get home afterward.”
“In the Netherlands, the prime minister, Mark Rutte, travels to his meetings by bicyele. In Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark, even the crown princess is known for taking her children to school in a cargo bicycle in the midst of winter.
These are the richest, most innovative places on Earth. They are the places with the highest quality of life, the longest life expectancy, and the happiest people. That is also why they are among the most expensive places on Earth.
People are desperate to live in them, in a way they are simply not desperate to live in, say, Albuquerque. The reality is that using public transport or traveling by foot or by bike does not have to be an inferior alternative to having your own motorized vehicle. It can actually be more convenient, less stressful, quicker, and cheaper. When space is made for them, bicycles, trains, and buses offer the liberation that cars promise and then fail to deliver.”
“I say this sincerely, but reducing the number of cars on the road is not just about climate change, or about urban mobility. It is about justice too. Cars are engines of inequality, because, put simply, we do not have the resouroes for everyone to have their own.”
“The problem is not cars themselves. It is privileging cars over any other form of transport, so that they are not a luxury or an occasional necessity, but rather something that we are forced to rely on, day-to-day. The problem is building our homes and our cities in such a way that pavement, rather than people, comes first. Americans spend only a little less on buying and running their cars than they do on housing themselves. If we did not need them as much, we could have a lot more left over to spend on whatever we want. And not needing as many cars is not some lofty, unrealistic goal. It is frankly bonkers to think that every family spending $5,000 to $10,000 a year on their own individual vehicle is the most efficient way of getting people around.”
“Yet on balance, I think that we are beginning to make the turn away from cars. The biggest challenge may be the cultural one. I have owned one car in my life. I hope to never own another. But we have so ingrained the ideas that car ownership is tantamount to freedom and that your car is an expression of your personality, that it will take time to unlearn. I think of a friend of mine in Chicago, originally from Texas, who keeps a car. Even though she only rarely uses it, she says she would feel trapped if she didn't know it was there.
It will take time for people who have gotten used to living with a vehicle at their beck and call to realize that it can be just as liberating not to have one: to never have to worry about gasoline prices, or parking, or maintenance, or insurance, or whether you can have a beer on a night out without having to worry about how to get home afterward.”
“In the Netherlands, the prime minister, Mark Rutte, travels to his meetings by bicyele. In Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark, even the crown princess is known for taking her children to school in a cargo bicycle in the midst of winter.
These are the richest, most innovative places on Earth. They are the places with the highest quality of life, the longest life expectancy, and the happiest people. That is also why they are among the most expensive places on Earth.
People are desperate to live in them, in a way they are simply not desperate to live in, say, Albuquerque. The reality is that using public transport or traveling by foot or by bike does not have to be an inferior alternative to having your own motorized vehicle. It can actually be more convenient, less stressful, quicker, and cheaper. When space is made for them, bicycles, trains, and buses offer the liberation that cars promise and then fail to deliver.”
“I say this sincerely, but reducing the number of cars on the road is not just about climate change, or about urban mobility. It is about justice too. Cars are engines of inequality, because, put simply, we do not have the resouroes for everyone to have their own.”
August 8, 2024
Daniel Knowles advocates for better alternatives to automobile use and calls on city governments to create more bike lanes, prioritize pedestrian life, invest in public transportation and build more housing within walking distance. I love all the arguments he makes in support of sustainable modes of transportation, but I wished he got into more of the nitty gritty details on how to make it happen. Though Knowles does an incredible job reporting on the crisis by observing cities like Nairobi, London, and suburbs in America, I wished that he went more in detail about the political pushback against localized efforts or talk more about lobbying by car manufacturers.
His reporting on the cobalt mines that produces minerals needed for electric vehicles, and how MORE electric vehicles isn’t necessary the best solution, was eye opening.
NYC and Tokyo are commonly mentioned and it really was not a surprise to see that, and I am becoming more and more convinced that these two cities are models for how less cars are not only better for the air or for cyclists, but just better for the damn economy if people can RELY on public transportation and safe bike lanes. It will be interesting to see where the current debates on congestion pricing in NYC will lead to.
His reporting on the cobalt mines that produces minerals needed for electric vehicles, and how MORE electric vehicles isn’t necessary the best solution, was eye opening.
NYC and Tokyo are commonly mentioned and it really was not a surprise to see that, and I am becoming more and more convinced that these two cities are models for how less cars are not only better for the air or for cyclists, but just better for the damn economy if people can RELY on public transportation and safe bike lanes. It will be interesting to see where the current debates on congestion pricing in NYC will lead to.
February 16, 2024
Carmageddon critiques car dependency through a broad lens (financial, ethical, environmental, mental/physical health, etc) that resonate with every urbanist & car-hater like myself.
I really did enjoy this and came out with a lot more information in my arsenal on why we urgently need to fix the car problem. I would recommend this to my other urbanist & environmentalist friends.
However, most of my neighbours (in a sprawling city suburb) think public transit and bikes are a menace to their way of life. Knowles noticeably jabs at these Americanized mindsets, a kind of humor I struggled with. In the fight for building cities that de-centralize the car, these are the people that really need to be convinced. I don't know if this book is going to be the thing that wins them over.
I really did enjoy this and came out with a lot more information in my arsenal on why we urgently need to fix the car problem. I would recommend this to my other urbanist & environmentalist friends.
However, most of my neighbours (in a sprawling city suburb) think public transit and bikes are a menace to their way of life. Knowles noticeably jabs at these Americanized mindsets, a kind of humor I struggled with. In the fight for building cities that de-centralize the car, these are the people that really need to be convinced. I don't know if this book is going to be the thing that wins them over.
May 5, 2024
Really interesting and accessible read. Reiterated my love of PUBLIC GOODS!! Knowles does a great job discussing how centering cars (and profit) in urban design degrades communities, is racist, horrible for the environment, etc etc. I wish he went more in o the “what we can do about it”. I left feeling a little stuck: the world should be greener, more human centered but so much of the damage is done and it’s seems like there is so much ‘we’ are up against. Though, the discussion of various initiatives abroad helped me to imagine a more ideal world, the vision of how we will get there is still a little fuzzy. Great read nevertheless!
September 27, 2023
It’s been quite a few years since I read a polemic, and I think it’s probably hard for them to ever be five-star books. Maintaining synthetic outrage for 200+ pages is just really hard!
But within the confines of the genre, this is a fun, thought-provoking book. The best bits look at how planning and zoning requirements around parking can either make or break cities as being dominated by cars - and the most hopeful bits chart how local decisions (eg LTNs in the UK) can very quickly change the patterns of car usage in and then the characters of communities.
Overall - and as someone who loves living in central London and has never owned a car - I agree with this wholeheartedly.
But within the confines of the genre, this is a fun, thought-provoking book. The best bits look at how planning and zoning requirements around parking can either make or break cities as being dominated by cars - and the most hopeful bits chart how local decisions (eg LTNs in the UK) can very quickly change the patterns of car usage in and then the characters of communities.
Overall - and as someone who loves living in central London and has never owned a car - I agree with this wholeheartedly.
February 2, 2025
rly enjoyed. this book reminded me why i hate big car, big oil, and big gas AND why i think it should be illegal for any of these companies to lobby AND how capitalism doesn’t breed innovation, BABYYY!!!!
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