Still on the right track? I live in Dundee city centre, so why do I still have a car?

I’ve realised that living in Dundee city centre, I really shouldn’t need a car. This newfound clarity has, of course, absolutely nothing to do with the £600 bill I got from my mechanic yesterday after my tin-can of a Kia, Peanut, failed her MoT “miserably”.

Those were the boy’s words, verbatim: “Failed miserably”. As a straight-A student and type-A personality, I didn’t take that very well.

And the whole wallet-eating, prideknocking debacle has me wondering: Why do I even need a stupid car anyway when I live in the city centre?

In theory, I don’t. I work from home and I can walk to the high street where, you would think, I can get anything I need.

In fact, being within walking distance of everything I need is partly why I moved to Dundee from the suburbs to begin with. It had loads of Stuff, all close together. And Stuff, not unis and cathedrals, is what separated the city from the suburbs in times gone by.

Growing up somewhere outside Falkirk, I went everywhere in the car. You couldn’t walk to the supermarket on your way home to pick up dinner, or pop down to New Look on your lunch for a wee browse.

Those were Saturday afternoon expeditions, involving a 15-minute trundle down the motorway to a retail park or shopping centre three or four towns (or two hours on two buses) away.

So moving to Dundee city centre was like winning the convenience lottery.

Stuff is what makes a city centre, central; a nucleus from which we navigate both geographically and economically.

It creates what annoying buzzword folk are calling “walkable communities”.

And “walkable communities”, grating as the phrase may be, encapsulates what residents want from a city centre.

They are what make cities the adult equivalent of a magic boarding school or run-down orphanage in a children’s book – a place where adventures can happen because everyone and everything is already right there.

There’s an alchemy in that; possibility mixed with proximity.

But ironically, as the powers that be scramble to make footpaths and improve transport links to the centre from the suburbs in the wake of lockdown’s walking revolution, the centre itself is emptying out.

I hate to get all “death of the high street” but it really is dying. Now, weekly shops aren’t done while out on the hoof but on a planned trip up the Kingsway on Saturday.

Now, as much as I’d like to get rid of my car (and at £600 down, I really would), being without it now would be a right pain.

So if I need my car to live that “handy” life, I’m starting to question what exactly it is that living in the city centre can offer in this post-central world (besides an abundance of restaurants and rapidly depleting pubs).

Because if I wanted a suburban lifestyle, where you need to drive to everything… well, I’d move back to the suburbs.

I didn’t pay city housing prices all this time just for some kind of cultural bragging rights. I paid them because staying within walking distance of everything is handy.

And I’m fortunate – the difference between “handy” and “inconvenient” for me is the difference between “accessible” and “inaccessible” for others.

Already, readers are pointing out that for people who don’t drive, the retail park is more difficult to get to than the city centre.

It’s a problem I fear the privileged, myself included, are at risk of underestimating.

I spend so much time in the online world – working, shopping, connecting with others – that I sometimes forget I have a body that I need to cart around. But we do, tragically, live in a physical world.

And many non-drivers – those with chronic illness, wee weans, mobility issues or who are simply older and less able to travel long distances – are constantly, painfully aware of the logistics of moving their bodies through the world.

For me, a 30-minute walk is nothing. For others, that walk is impossible.

An extra five minutes from the bus station may not seem like much to you or me, but add on stairs, a busy car park and a bigger premises, and that one shop changing can have a huge impact on someone less mobile.

Plus, in this current reality of rail strikes, bus route cuts and skyrocketing taxi fares, travel logistics are not only practically challenging – they’re huge financial burdens too.

Environmentally, the trend towards retail park shopping also seems a bit ‘one step forward, two steps back’.

A 30-minute walk is nothing. For others, that is impossible

Sure, it decreases traffic to an already busy location, meaning less air pollution.

But people aren’t going to make sustainable choices if they equate to realworld hardships. Life’s hard enough.

So without prompt and efficient adaptations to new layouts from public transport services, emptying out city centres is just forcing more folk to keep their cars on the road.

Even young, fit, folk like me – who’d happily scrap it, and just walk.

CENTRE RESERVATIONS: City centres may be changing but many – including Rebecca – still need cars to get some necessities.