I want to preface this that I think public transportation and more dense urban housing is a pro-social idea. I would consider myself to be on the side of urbanism in general.
As I prepare to move from my semi-rural Colorado home to Seattle after finishing my CS degree this fall, I find myself grappling with a big question: in a future where more people live in dense urban housing without cars, will certain hobbies and hands-on endeavors go extinct or at least be relegated to those with the financial means to purchase extra space?
I’ve learned so much from my time in this house doing projects and building things; through it all the garage for me has been a space of infinite possibilities graciously provided by my mentors/hosts (old school engineers).
get a cool old CNC machine and need to move it inside and put it somewhere? -> garage
need 220V power? -> get some from the box in the garage
ill advised experiments with neon sign transformers? -> garage
do experiments which fill said garage with noxious fumes and need to air it out? -> garage
spill acid on the floor and need to dilute with water and not cause water damage? -> garage
need a big indoor place to fly drones? -> garage
build a hovercraft snow removal thing that never worked? -> garage
build a greenhouse and stage it? -> garage
fix an old whitewater raft and take it out rafting? -> garage + truck
covid screw your chemistry lab class? -> garage
It seems to me that the single family house is the boogyman of the urbanism movement and to some extent rightfully so:
- car dependency bad
- bad land use efficiency
- heating and cooling a lone house is inefficient due to surface area exposed to elements
Although I see this, and generally agree with it, I have a fear within me that when I move—and indeed, if other people always lived in dense urban housing without cars—many of my formative experiences that relied on the garage as a space, and a car to pick up heavy items, will be lost to me and never found by others.
The most poignant argument I can think of is that urban areas have maker spaces, but in my experience, they have many rules about taking up space and restrictions on what is allowed and what is not—all very responsible given the shared nature of the space. Lastly, age requirements: in high school, I would have loved to go to a maker space, but it was 18+ due to liability reasons. This led to me setting up a lathe under some stairs at my parents’ house, which was never very easy to use.
In short, I love the idea of walking to the local shop and not having to drive, reducing my environmental footprint, and enjoying more socialization (seriously, we’re lonely out here). But at the same time, I worry that I will lose my autonomy to make things. Many of the condos I’ve looked at don’t have garages, or they only have parking garages that I doubt would welcome industrial equipment setups. You have limited power service and can’t break into the walls to route new cables.
As with any place where people live closely together, more restrictions are placed upon the population. These restrictions are generally shaped to avoid impacting most citizens’ lives and to keep those who don’t know what they’re doing from harming themselves or others. If I burn down my house out here, it’s mostly my problem. If I burn down a condo building, it could be a problem for everyone in it and the surrounding city.
What solutions are there to these problems? (Hey, you European folks!)
Are my fears grander than they need to be, or are these just the costs of the benefits I’ve mentioned?
These fears are both true and (kinda) not.
First, I would preface this by saying that many of those hobbies are functionally things which from the early-20th century / post-WW2 US wealth and population boom:
Having a CNC machine at home unrelated to your business? Unlikely. Farmers might have had machines needed for their labors, but dense urban populations were very unlikely to have had any machine at home which did not have either practical utility (i.e., spinning wheel)
Some were simply financially out of reach. “Hobbyist drones” and various chemical experiments for fun were far less available to the pre-WW2-era urban population.
Some are even directly related to the conceit of living on open, privately-owned land. (No land? No need for each apartment to have motorized snow removal thingies.)
…now, understand when I’m saying this, I’m 100% with you. I love tinkering. One of my dreams is to set up a small machine shop for running various hobbyist engines.
So, what can you do?
Well, there aren’t any easy answers. Trust me, I’ve looked. Local makerspaces are hard to find, and pricey to boot. You can try to limit your housing search to locations which do have a suitable garage, recognizing that this will limit you. You could try and rent a garage or utility space from a local business or something.
But one thing I would say is that if you’re using your garage for actual hobbyist purposes, then I don’t think you need to feel “car guilt”. Or, at least, I wouldn’t - at that point, you are paying not for a space to house a car (and all the associated issues), but space to house your hobbies.