Car-free urbanism is being adopted by a growing number of cities to enhance walkability, reduce pollution and combat climate change, and improve public health. One of the major challenges facing these initiatives is public sentiment and distrust. However, little research has been done to track public interest in this movement over time. Using Google Trends, this research report analyzed 20 search queries related to car-free urbanism and tracked their relative search volume between January 1, 2013, and December 31, 2022. The authors found a moderate rise in public interest in the United States for search terms that were highly specific to car-free urbanism. Among low-specificity search terms, no clear pattern was established.
\n","language":"eng","license":{"name":"Creative Commons Attribution 4.0","short_name":"CC BY 4.0","text":"Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.\n\nNo additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.","url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0"},"keywords":[{"word":"New Urbanism"},{"word":"urban design"},{"word":"15 minute city"},{"word":"Car-free cities"}],"section":"Research Reports","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/682322nw","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Eron","middle_name":"","last_name":"Powell","name_suffix":"","institution":"The University of Utah","department":"","country":"United States"},{"first_name":"Jeremy","middle_name":"R","last_name":"Ellis","name_suffix":"","institution":"Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine","department":"","country":"United States"},{"first_name":"Rachel","middle_name":"L","last_name":"Marcheskie","name_suffix":"","institution":"Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health","department":"","country":"United States"},{"first_name":"Mckay","middle_name":"","last_name":"Muhlestein","name_suffix":"","institution":"The University of Utah","department":"Department of City and Metropolitan Planning","country":"United States"}],"date_submitted":"2024-03-04T05:29:49Z","date_accepted":"2025-02-11T04:38:48.528000Z","date_published":"2025-02-13T13:14:00Z","render_galley":{"label":"CarfreeGalley","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/egj/article/39625/galley/32344/download/"},"galleys":[{"label":"CarfreeGalley","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/egj/article/39625/galley/32344/download/"}]}