Thirteen Most Common Trends Shaping Automobile Dependence Worldwide and the Global Implications of these Trends Kenya

Walking being the oldest form of urban transport, and until the advent of major transformationsin transport technology in the nineteenth century, most cities were structured in ways that supported walkability.Today, there is a change in transportation which emphasizes, the traditional pedestrian paths which are increasinglybecoming non-regulated spaces when compared to the urban spaces for automobile modes. This change in emphasisis noticeable partly because urban walkability has rarely been planned for in the past few decades and ultimately mayreplace our automobile dependency. It has brought enormous changes to urban landscape in recent times particularlyin the developed world. Automobile dependency comes in different ways, forms and degrees. For instance, thereare few cities worldwide that are absolutely automobile dependent (where driving is the only form of transport).Even areas that appear to be highly automobile dependent often have a noteworthy amount of walking, cycling andtransit travel among certain groups or in certain areas, although use of these modes tends to be undercounted byconventional transportation planning. Contemporarily, reducing car dependency has been discussed broadly in thescientific community by professionals in the built environment and of course by the general public. With increasingvehicular streets worldwide, it raises a swirl of questions, how did we get to this point of automobile dependency andare the alternatives more desirable? In answering this question, this paper identified and discussed extensively thirteenmajor distinct trends that are responsible for the automobile dependencies in most cities of the world.