I’m quite aware, as I most certainly did not coin the term “motonormativity!” Thank you for sharing! What I’m proposing is that motonormativity is a rational, adaptive response to our century-in-the-making auto-dependent milieux.
Cultural bias with a healthy dose of regulatory capture?
Premise:
Motonormativity (aka “car brain”) is the result of adapting, as humans so capably do, to auto-dominated physical, financial, social, and political environments.
Thoughts?
Neuroinclusive design principles:
Provide sensory-friendly spaces (acoustic/lighting control), clear, intuitive layout design, and diverse, adaptable, and quiet areas to manage stimulation.
Sounds like car-free spaces.
Been thinking how anti-hope propaganda (e.g., your op-ed is useless, that protest was worthless—as though visible and collective actions never help build momentum) is little more than “I’m so clever and world-wide” signaling.
That we won’t get very far in the mode shift program if we simply appeal to folks’ financial or moral sensibilities. Instead, we have to restructure the entire constellation of incentives so that driving becomes relatively less attractive/adaptive than biking/walking/rolling/transit. Easy peasy.
Having thought a good long while about how to incite measurable mode shift, I’m at last coming to terms with the notion that driving—in the vast majority of places in the U.S.—is an entirely rational behavior given the nature of our material, financial, political and social environments.
Not tonight.
Hear me out: fruit trees (orchards, guilds, idm) in public parks. Let’s get this going.
Look at Cleveland Heights.
Food need not be scarce.
thelandcle.org/stories/5-ye...
Providing what quality social science does best: confirm what we’ve intuited all along. Build 🚲 infra and they will 🚲
share.google/s3T59zGKwfpw...
Cartier building in NYC. Built in 1905. 5-story building with red fabric awnings designed in the neoclassical style but has a mansard roof—a multi-sided roof characterised by two slopes on each of its sides, with the lower slope at a steeper angle than the upper, and often punctured by dormer windows. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartier_Building
Drakeford Library parking deck in Carrboro, NC. Built in 2025. 5 stories of concrete parking deck with first floor floral mural. Photo: author.
What our not-too-distant ancestors propped up (left) vs what we prop up today (right) 🧐
Truth
Cartoon featuring two drivers attempting to enter a popular pocket park in a city, realizing there’s no parking there and exclaim, “This city is going to hell! This used to be a parking lot.”
Tracks to this day.
What is happening to Carolina? 🏀
poster for an event at Queens University featuring me 'Reframing our roads" Jan 28 4-5:30pm
Two weeks today will be in Kingston at Queens University talking a little Reframing Our Roads. Open to the public if you are in the area.
It would seems. Appears best to “weaponize” socially moral and legal behavior while operating tanks.
Only in America can we unironically galvanize the masses by “weaponizing” compliance with a pro-social law.
Also, slowing down helps everyone—even large SUV drivers!—from avoiding death and injury on top of identifying feds. Win win.
Was thinking the same. Also, not there for the first time in too long a while. Enjoy time with friends!
Buck with rather long antlers facing the camera from the top of a small, wooded hill in Carrboro, North Carolina, USA
Would this guy limit himself to only ever enjoying “man cereal?”
Course not. He’s secure with who and what he is.
Houston, Kansas City, Bentonville, San Jose, Detroit, MI; and San Francisco may not appear to have much in common
However, they all are committed to the same sou: permanently reducing or removing car traffic on some of their streets
www.fastcompany.com/91460867/new...
Carrboro (NC), take note
View of dozens of people-, animal-, and earth-unaliving cars outside a popular local brewery in Carrboro, NC.
Relish the day this is no longer a common view from a local brewery in Carrboro or anywhere. Happy 2026!
Oh my.
Christmas ornaments in the shape of stars, bells, and trees with Pittburghese vocab like nebby, jagoff, yinz, happy holidays n’at!, etc. from Pittsburgh’s Christmas market.
Hard to deny the mellifluousness of Pittsburghese around the holidays.
Would like to see this global plastics production line next to the global VMT (or car production) line.
How many academic research center closures at UNC will cover his salary? Two? Three?
Sunrise in Carrboro, NC illuminating the underside of clouds, casting a pinkish orange light over the town
Almost makes the cold worth it
We’d be wise to appreciate Margaret Heffernan’s keen insight on ‘manufactured inevitability’:
“Anyone claiming to know the future…is just trying to own it.”
www.bbc.com/audio/play/m...
Highly recommended
Suppose that is what these researchers are saying—kudos for enduring it all!
New study by Mousely and colleagues illustrates how for most, “adolescence” persists until age 32.
Consider what adolescents are permitted to do in the U.S., often decades before we might consider them biological adults. 🤔
www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/202...
