Maybe It’s the Car
Work in progress
Maybe It’s the Car is a reflective, interview‑driven documentary and multi‑channel installation that explores how car‑centered design quietly shapes our health, happiness, stress, and sense of connection — and what life feels like in cities built around people instead of vehicles.
Filmed in Barcelona, Stockholm, and the Bay Area, the project gathers voices from locals as well as people who have arrived from all over the world — some from more car‑dependent places and others from cities with strong transit and pedestrian cultures — each bringing a different lived perspective. Using a simple, consistent set of questions across all three cities, the interviews reveal how the same place can be experienced in profoundly different ways depending on where someone comes from and how they’ve lived before.
The film doesn’t prescribe solutions or lecture. Instead, it holds up a mirror. Through personal stories, small observations, and the texture of daily routines, viewers begin to recognize patterns in their own lives — the stresses they’ve normalized, the joys they’ve overlooked, and the subtle ways the built environment shapes the rhythm of a day. Across these voices, a theme emerges: that loneliness, frustration, and health challenges may share a common root, hidden in plain sight.
Maybe… it’s the car.
Baseline Question (This grounds each interview in origin and context, opening the door to comparison between past and present.)
Where are you from originally, and where do you live now?
Core Interview Questions (Final)
These questions are designed to work across very different environments — from highly walkable cities to deeply car‑dependent ones — and to reveal contrasts across geography, memory, and experience. They are simple, open, and emotional without being leading.
1. How does the place where you live shape your daily life — in ways you love and in ways you wish were different?
2. How do you usually get around in your day‑to‑day life, what travel options do you have, and do you wish you had others — and how does all of that make you feel?
3. Has living here changed anything about your stress, health, or sense of connection with other people?
These three questions form a consistent spine. A person in Barcelona who moved from a car‑dependent city will answer differently than someone still living in that car‑dependent place — and those contrasts become the story.
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We’re just beginning this project and would love to invite people to participate—either in person or remotely.
We’ve decided to keep the filming process very simple: all interviews will be short and captured either with an iPhone 17 Pro Max or via Riverside.fm (similar to Zoom but with higher-quality audio and video).
If you are interested in answering our three core questions on camera, please reach out at david@newstory.space.
Thank you, David & Hi-Jin
Documentary Work
A FILM SERIES
LIFE ON WHEELS TRANSPORTATION FOR A NEW URBAN CENTURY
An exploration of modern and future mobility.
(Available on Amazon Prime)
WALK WITH ME EXPLORING LIFE ON FOOT
A personal narrative about the filmmakers’ rediscovery of the value of walking.
INTO THE WOODS SHARING A FUTURE WITH FORESTS
A film that aims to build new connections with the forests that sustain us.
THE IMPOSSIBLE HOUSE BUILDING NEW INSIGHTS AND POSSIBILITIES
An exploration of three families’ difficulties in finding suitable housing in Northern California.
VOICES OF THE CITY WHAT IS A HEALTHY CITY?
A look at seven global cities that asks, what creates fair housing, better transportation, social equity, gender equality, environmental health, and overall livability?
W(HERE) WE LIVE VLOG (in development)
An ongoing series of short films drawn from interviews we filmed for our upcoming documentary, The Impossible House. Featuring conversations with experts in planning, law, policy, and design, the series explores how zoning, permitting, lawsuits, and local politics shape today’s housing crisis.