Fighting Traffic is about the 1920s. Does it still matter?

I agree with those who say that a clear perception of the present depends upon a clear perception of the past. In our personal lives, our memories give us our chance to discover and escape old patterns that would otherwise confine us. I believe the same is true of our shared history.

A paradigm no longer serves those who cannot escape it. And in the twenty-first century we are challenged to escape old paradigms: that cities must be rebuilt to accommodate cars, that retailers need more land for parking than for floor space, that congestion necessarily indicates a shortage of road capacity, or that bicyclists and pedestrians are traffic nuisances.

Many people routinely ascribe our dominant traffic paradigm to Americans' "love affair" with the car. Because Americans love cars, they rebuilt their country (and especially their cities) to accommodate them. And because this love will not go away, we must continue on this course.

Of course the love affair is, in part, real. But it's a half truth. And if there's something more dangerous than a lie it's a half truth. Its true side lures people into accepting the whole thing.

The other side of this half truth is that Detroit invented the "love affair" thesis in 1961. (I'll tell this as-yet-untold story in a later post.) Automobile manufacturers used it to simplify and clean up a far messier story about Americans' adoption of the motorcar. There was sufficient enthusiasm for cars in the 1910s and 20s to give this story credibility decades later. But in 1920, hostility to cars was more evident than love.

Since about 1930, the prevailing view has been that an urban road that is clogged with automobiles needs widening. But just a few years earlier, a mainstream member of the first generation of traffic engineers would have regarded such a proposal as absurd. If a street was crowded with automobiles, the problem was the car’s prodigious demand for space. A typical recommendation was to give spatially efficient “trolley cars the right of way,” and to “place restriction on motor vehicles in their relations with street cars.”

The revolution in conceptions of traffic safety was just as total. In 1920 cars injured and killed pedestrians with astounding frequency. To most city people, newspapers, and judges, the car and its driver were almost automatically at fault in such cases. Why? In 1920, streets were regarded as public spaces (like city parks today), open to everyone who did not obstruct or endanger others. On these terms, the operator of a fast and dangerous machine carried a substantial responsibility.

The commonsense perceptions of 1920 were marginalized by 1930. In the vanguard of this revolution were those with a stake in the car’s urban future.

Today we must confront difficult problems. Do we have the room we need for everyone to use cars for nearly all transportation needs? Will we have enough affordable energy (in any form) to do so? Can we do so and still emit less carbon? To many, the most stubborn obstacle in change's way is Americans' love affair with the car.

History, however, demonstrates that apparently inevitable truths about people, roads and vehicles are not so inevitable after all. This is why Fighting Traffic is (I think) relevant today. It shows that the dominant paradigm was an invention, and that alternatives are possible. Our choices are not confined to those that will fit within the "love affair" paradigm. We need to know this if we are to adapt to the new conditions that face us in the twenty-first century.

What's Fighting Traffic about?

In Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City, I try to explain how American cities came to be dominated by automobiles. I claim that the motor age city was not the result of Americans' "love affair" with the car; it was the result of a struggle for the future of the American city—a struggle waged mostly in the 1920s. Even in 1930 most city people still did not own cars, but by then the motor age had dawned; American cities would be automotive. Many city people in the 1910s and 1920s had an affair of hatred for cars as usurpers of pedestrians' ancient rights to the pavement and as threats to the lives of city children. The transformation is sometimes ascribed to elite city planners, who saw the automobile as a way to deconcentrate crowded cities, but in fact city planners had relatively little influence. Neither was the transformation due to a deliberate subversion of electric street railways by the automotive industries (as many have alleged); street railways declined for other reasons. The automotive city was the result of a successful campaign to redefine city streets as motor thoroughfares. Those with a stake in a strong future for automobiles in cities fought this battle to shift responsibility for horrific traffic casualties (especially among pedestrians, in particular children) away from motorists. These groups collaborated to rewrite the rules of city traffic, to delegitimize pedestrians' use of streets, and to train a new generation of Americans that streets are for cars. This campaign was a substantial success, and in the decades following it, American cities were rebuilt to accommodate the automobile. We are dealing with the consequences today.

What kind of blog is this?

Recently I've noticed that authors have been making blogs about their books. It looks like a good way to turn a protracted monologue (a book) into a dialogue, or even a small forum. It may also help the book find more of its intended readers. If this blog can serve these purposes, it will have been worthwhile. So I will share excerpts from and commentary about my book, Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City (MIT Press, 2008).

To most bloggers, a blog is an opportunity to shout into a magic valley that can generate echoes that are greater, not less, than than the original shout. So I will intersperse posts about Fighting Traffic with comments by its author—whatever might generate echoes of interest.