MOVING OUT IN MADRID - NY TIMES TRIVIA

The notion that European cities are different from American cities because they discourage automobile use in certain places obscures larger similarities.

In many European cities, the population on the periphery has boomed.

It is true, for example, that because of policies favoring pedestrian streets, fewer parking spaces, resident-only permit zones and a battery of other measures, it is much more difficult to drive through central Madrid than it used to be. These measures have widespread support within this immediate area because central Madrid, like many European cities, has experienced a dramatic surge of gentrification.
The core, with its very high land prices, is increasingly home to affluent residents, high-end businesses, government officials and tourists who are willing to walk, use taxis and transit and forgo the use of their cars for short daily trips because any inconvenience is vastly outweighed by the benefits of restricting noise and pollution along old, narrow streets and, not incidentally, stemming the tide of automobiles owned by working class suburbanites who must commute into the central city.
However, central Madrid occupies only a small and diminishing part of the urban area. As is the case with virtually all European cities, as population at the core has dropped, population in the periphery has boomed. Between the censuses of 1991 and 2001, for example, the population of the central city dropped over 2% while the five suburban rings increased by 19% to 90%. Along with that shift toward lower densities and single family houses went a dramatic increase in automobile ownership and use. Between 1995 and 2001 alone car ownership rose from 372 automobiles per 1,000 residents to 478. Because of the construction of a vast new system of subways and superhighways, however, average vehicle speeds actually increased.
Concentrating on pedestrian zones at the center and ignoring the new freeways at the periphery obscures one of the real differences between American cities and European cities: the Europeans' willingness to pay for new public infrastructure of all kinds. Whether it has spent too much is another issue.


Source: http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/06/28/car-clash-europe-vs-the-us/growth-on-europes-urban-periphery?scp=10&sq=moving&st=cse


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