A committed, soft-spoken diatribe against the car culture that
romanticizes the alternatives, by the architecture critic for the
Nation. Kay marshals all the expected arguments plus a host of
novel ones (behind the wheel "we forfeit the. . . right to muse"),
addressing issues of social, political, industrial, and individual
responsibility, and costs to health, to ecosystems, to humane and
aesthetic ideals. In a long-winded and discursive narrative, she
makes the case that the proliferation of highways generates more
traffic and exponentially more accidents, pollution, and by
extension more sprawl, more waste (antifreeze, tires, etc.), and
more environmental toxins. Her most sobering chapter examines the
spiraling inequity of automotive disenfranchisement for the poor
and older citizens: the destruction of poor urban neighborhoods for
highway projects, the diversion of public monies away from public
transit. After identifying the symptoms of "car glut," Kay looks at
the history of the problem, citing Franklin Roosevelt for ratifying
the motorization of America with the New Deal road-making programs
and postwar Veterans Administration mortgages for enabling suburban
single-family housing (which spurred the growth of the Interstate
Highway System and suburban sprawl). Kay advocates housing
centralization and calls for the development and linkage of quality
train and trolley systems; for rezoning to legalize multifamily and
pluralistic building usage; and for city and town design that
fosters walkability, privacy, and pleasure. Also, she recommends
levying higher tolls and gasoline taxes, smog fees, and
peak-congestion fees to discourage driving, and contends that the
polity must say no to future highway expansion. There's little
question that Kay's earnest arguments are compelling, but they seem
to downplay the difficulties (and costs) involved in getting from
our present situation to this new world, and the impact that such
changes would have on an American economy deeply dependent on the
automobile. They also ignore the essential fact that Americans have
largely embraced a car culture. (Kirkus Reviews)
An examination of how the automobile has ravaged America's cities
and landscape since the end of the 19th century together with a
strategy for reversing their automobile dependency. The text
provides a history of the rapid spread of the automobile and
documents the huge subsidies commanded by the highway lobby, to the
detriment of once-efficient forms of mass transportation.
Demonstrating that there are economic, political, architectural and
personal solutions to the problem, it shows that radical change is
entirely possible.;The book should be of value to everyone
interested in the history of America's relationship with the car,
and in the prospect of returning to a world of human mobility.
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