The anti-automobile age

[Bones]

Copenhagenize.com - Building Better Bicycle Cultures: The Anti-Automobile Age - and what we can learn from it

I've continued reading the excellent Fighting Traffic - The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City by Peter D. Norton. It's a digestive book. I find myself reading a few pages at a time and then putting it down, finding it necessary to reflect.

Norton has divided it up into three parts and the first part deals with the way automobiles were regarded in the public eye between 1900 and up through the 1920's. To put it mildly, automobile traffic was not popular.

Almost a century on it seems that certain myths persist. That apart from some growing pains at the beginning, cars were always just a given in cities. I've been quite amazed to learn how massive the resistance to them was. Norton writes about the 'street' and the perception of what the street was for.

The public at the time regarded the street much in the same way as people had since cities were first formed. It was a space for people. A place to walk, a place to play, a place to alight from a streetcar. Cars were regarded as violent intruders in this common space

More at the link.


Disquieting, isn't it, that Saint Louis (and other cities) are currently decaying, post-industrial, mechanistically alienated shit mires. Automobiles exacerbated our social disconnect and inhumanity a thousand fold over the past century. The same goes for other various technological and industrial innovations, however the automobile sure seems to be the prominent culprit in transforming once citizen-centric cities into dronish, car-reliant labyrinths detrimentally preventing, for a large amount of people, basic vis a vis contact.

The automobile has drastically, empirically, irrevocably altered the way we interact with each other. (All of these adjectives I'm using. I sound like a pastor on the mound.)

 

[Vargulf]

Go back to the horse.

 

[Silver Fox]

I agree, we can live without the pollution.

 

[JBeukema]

Go back to the horse.

 

[Skull Pilot]

You'll have to pry the steering wheel of my truck from my cold dead hands.

 

[Abishai100]

Radical Reaper

Here's a monkey-wrench into the equation/discussion:

"The Toyota Mirai is an advanced vehicle that runs on hydrogen instead of petroleum. Thinking about people commuting to work in a Mirai carpool makes you think, 'Hey, suddenly my car is a political prize!'"




Toyota Mirai

Fury Road (Film)