America's Hidden Desire to Live Car-Free

America's Hidden Desire to Live Car-Free

From The War on Cars by The War on Cars, LLC

March 10, 2026 · 46 min · Episode 168

About this episode

The episode discusses a study revealing a significant interest among American car owners in living car-free and explores the implications with the study's authors.

Do people really like our all-enveloping autocentric system quite as much as everyone keeps saying they do? What kind of communities would they live in if given the choice? The answers, as a new study shows, are not exactly what so many of us have been told. Nearly one in five American car owners is "strongly interested" in living car-free, and another 40 percent are open to the idea. We talked about the implications of that study with its authors, Nicole Corcoran, Deborah Salon, and Hue-Tam Jamme, researchers at the Arizona State University School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning in Tempe. Check out their research . Join The War on Cars on Patreon and listen to exclusive ad-free versions of regular episodes, Patreon-only bonus content, Discord access, invitations to live events, merch discounts and free stickers! Order our new book, Life After Cars: Freeing Ourselves from the Tyranny of the Automobile, out now from Thesis, an imprint of Penguin Random House. Find us on tour and get tickets at lifeaftercars.com . Thanks to Upway for sponsoring this episode. Use this link and save $100 off any order of $800 or more with the code TWOC100. Thanks also to Cleverhood…

People in this episode

Host: The War on Cars

Guests: Nicole Corcoran, Deborah Salon, Hue-Tam Jamme

Topics covered

Keywords

Sponsors

Upway, Cleverhood

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Arizona State University School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning, Thesis, Penguin Random House

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