The T&T So­ci­ety of Plan­ners (TTSP) is a pro­fes­sion­al as­so­ci­a­tion com­mit­ted to pro­mot­ing spa­tial, sus­tain­able, and in­clu­sive plan­ning prin­ci­ples as an es­sen­tial means of ef­fi­cient­ly al­lo­cat­ing pub­lic and pri­vate re­sources and sus­tain­ing vi­tal com­mu­ni­ties.

As a learned so­ci­ety, the TTSP strives to be the pre­mier think tank for de­vel­op­ing holis­tic so­lu­tions to the com­plex ur­ban and set­tle­ments prob­lems T&T faces to­day and pledges to con­tin­u­ous­ly in­no­vate so as to en­sure its mem­bers are equipped with the best tools and sup­port nec­es­sary to ad­dress the emerg­ing de­vel­op­men­tal is­sues that the na­tion will face in the fu­ture.This is the first in a se­ries of 12 columns writ­ten by mem­bers of the TTSP.

An es­ca­lat­ing war is be­ing waged in cities across the world; a move­ment that is es­tab­lish­ing new norms, and em­pow­er­ing to­day's gen­er­a­tion of city-dwellers.This is not a vi­o­lent war but a bat­tle of ide­olo­gies, and its sheer mag­ni­tude and sig­nif­i­cance is prob­a­bly lost on most of us, be­cause we are a com­pla­cent so­ci­ety gen­er­al­ly un­in­ter­est­ed in ideas that chal­lenge the sta­tus quo.

We can­not ig­nore the in­evitable dis­rup­tion to our way of think­ing, be­cause soon­er or lat­er we have to un­der­stand that the sin­gle great­est threat to the sta­bil­i­ty, longevi­ty, and vi­tal­i­ty of our so­ci­ety here in T&T is our ob­ses­sion with au­to­mo­biles.The war against the au­to­mo­bile is com­ing. The op­po­nents, pedes­tri­ans and cy­clists, need to be armed and ready to win.We need to un­der­stand why pri­vate car own­er­ship should be deemed pub­lic en­e­my num­ber one.

For years, we have planned and de­signed our ur­ban en­vi­ron­ments with the idea that cars should be the most im­por­tant mode of trans­porta­tion, with lit­tle con­sid­er­a­tion giv­en to pedes­tri­ans, cy­clists and pub­lic modes of trans­porta­tion. The re­sult is a low-den­si­ty ur­ban form known as sprawl, that among oth­er things, is char­ac­terised by a lack of in­vest­ment in pedes­tri­an in­fra­struc­ture.

This re­sults in en­vi­ron­ments that are de­signed to fa­cil­i­tate the move­ment of ve­hi­cles, but are hos­tile to oth­er modes of trans­porta­tion in­clud­ing walk­ing and cy­cling.It is al­so char­ac­terised by a sep­a­ra­tion of land us­es, where our homes are lo­cat­ed far from the places that we work, play, and recre­ate. We are forced to dri­ve, of­ten long dis­tances, de­spite our glar­ing­ly-ob­vi­ous cul­ture of drink­ing and lim­ing un­til un­god­ly hours.

Con­verse­ly, there are nu­mer­ous ex­am­ples of places that were planned with mo­bil­i­ty of all groups as a cen­tral fac­tor, and so one could hop on a train, bus, or sim­ply walk home.Con­sid­er two de­vel­oped coun­tries–Ger­many and the Unit­ed States, with car own­er­ship rates of 572 per 1,000 peo­ple and 797 per 1,000 peo­ple re­spec­tive­ly.The 2010 road fa­tal­i­ty rate in the for­mer was 4.7 per 100,000, and 11.4 per 100,000 in the lat­ter.

Fur­ther­more, the year­ly al­co­hol con­sump­tion rates are 11.21 and 8.55 litres per capi­ta re­spec­tive­ly.In oth­er words, Amer­i­cans own rough­ly 40 per cent more cars, but get in­to 143 per cent more fa­tal ac­ci­dents, de­spite Ger­mans drink­ing 31 per cent more on av­er­age. Why?Per­haps it may have some­thing to do with Ger­many's fan­tas­tic pub­lic trans­porta­tion sys­tems, and com­pact, walk­a­ble com­mu­ni­ties.

I do not claim to be an econ­o­mist, but a clos­er look at our love af­fair with au­to­mo­biles re­veals very in­ter­est­ing eco­nom­ic con­se­quences. The Unit­ed States is the coun­try that led the au­to­mo­bile rev­o­lu­tion, around the be­gin­ning of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry. It was the ma­jor pro­duc­er of cars; it pos­sessed vast de­posits of en­er­gy, and was one of the wealth­i­est coun­tries in the world.

How­ev­er, to­day the coun­try with the high­est GDP in the world is tak­ing dras­tic steps to re­duce its au­to­mo­bile de­pen­dence and pro­mote al­ter­na­tive modes of trans­porta­tion.It makes ab­solute­ly no sense that a small de­vel­op­ing coun­try like ours should de­pend so heav­i­ly on pri­vate car use.We do not pro­duce cars, so our ob­ses­sion with them on­ly serves to fat­ten the pock­ets of for­eign car man­u­fac­tur­ers.The un­bear­able traf­fic con­ges­tion that we face dai­ly is crip­pling our na­tion­al pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and un­nec­es­sary giv­en our small size.

Fur­ther­more, on the in­di­vid­ual lev­el, con­sid­er how your de­pen­dence on an au­to­mo­bile can be a sig­nif­i­cant, and un­nec­es­sary, drain on your in­come.Au­to­mo­biles are not cheap, and giv­en the in­cred­i­bly high im­port du­ties, and our low house­hold in­come lev­els, you can be­gin to see how you can eas­i­ly be­come eco­nom­i­cal­ly-en­slaved.Well, for­tu­nate­ly or not, our fu­el is heav­i­ly sub­sidised mak­ing dri­ving eco­nom­i­cal­ly-af­ford­able.

Yes, gas is cheap, but how much mon­ey does one spend on gas, com­pared to the cost of buy­ing and main­tain­ing a car?It is not too late for us to change our cul­ture of au­to­mo­bile-de­pen­dence, and there are nu­mer­ous strate­gies and best prac­tices be­ing em­ployed in cities as di­verse as San Fran­cis­co, Bo­got�, and Mel­bourne. Join me next Sun­day as I arm you with more knowl­edge on the per­ils of our car cul­ture, and in­tro­duce ideas that can help us avoid a cat­a­stroph­ic fate.