Last night I mentioned the car-free city of Vauban. NYT’s Room for Debate has some expert opinions on the article. Here are a few highlights (and lowlights):

This guy has clearly never been to Washington:

There are only six American downtown districts that are dense enough to support mass transit, which you need if you’re going to be carless: New York City (Midtown and Downtown), Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston and San Francisco. That’s it.

Christopher Leinberger has a snappy overview of walkable urban places in the beltway, as well as a set of market-based policy prescriptions:

Metropolitan Washington, D.C., has more walkable urban places per capita than anywhere else in the country. Of the 30 emerging or existing walkable urban places in the region, 70 percent are in the suburbs: like downtown Bethesda, Md., Reston, Va., and the string of places along Wilson Boulevard in Arlington, Va., including Ballston, Court House and Clarendon.

The monster in Virginia that is known as Tyson’s Corner, 44 million square feet of drivable-only commercial development which is universally hated, is seeing four new Metrorail stations built and has community support to increase its size to 100 million square feet … but it will evolve into a walkable urban set of places.

J.H. Crawford is poetic in his description of cities free of cars:

Once the last car disappears from the street, it becomes a playground for people of all ages. This can be seen any day in Venice or Fes. Peace, safety and tranquility settle over the street, and a rich and vibrant social life takes the place of the stink, noise, and danger of cars.