Peace and Environment News* April 1996
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Peace and Environment News * April 1996 |
Reviewed by Mike Gifford
On my way home, I often cross under the Queensway and am continually struck by the noise, dirt and pollution that automobiles create and the space and resources they consume. It is difficult to imagine how communities around the world ever accepted the automobile into their neighbourhoods, let alone their hearts. In Down the Asphalt Path: The Automobile and the American City, Clay McShane does an incredible job outlining the preconditions for our current auto-centred culture by sampling over 150 years of American and European urban design and transportation technology, ending with World War I.
McShane begins with a riot in Philadelphia in 1840, where residents stoned railway workers who were attempting to construct a steam railway line through their neighbourhood. The press of the time were unable to comprehend why the rioters, mainly women and children, opposed this new symbol of progress and prosperity. The residents saw that the invasion of the railway would convert their streets from meeting places, markets and playgrounds into transportation corridors to wealthy suburbs. The residents knew that the railway would reduce the value of their homes, they would be constantly covered in soot, and sparks would create fire hazards in their community.
There has always been a close tie between roads and the vehicles that travelled on them. By beginning his story before the advent of the railway, McShane is able to show why communities accepted the automobile. Urban population growth was a major contributor to the development of the suburbs, particularly in America. This pushed the development of faster forms of transportation to allow for a larger suburban area. The cost for road improvements was initially the responsibility of those whose land abutted the road, but as the need for faster, more expensive roads grew, the costs and ownership shifted to private companies and to increasingly centralized governments. Particularly in America, the trend to the suburbs symbolized health, prosperity, and individual ownership, as well as a return to idealized rural roots.
Seeing how urban transportation developed, we can understand how the automobile was seen as a clean, safe form of transportation, especially compared to horse-drawn vehicles, which often left several inches of manure and urine on city streets, and to steam vehicles, which were feared because of exploding boilers. The private automobile answered many of these problems. McShane also examines many of the transportation alternatives available at the turn of the century, including steam trains, electric and cable-driven trolleys, electric and steam automobiles, ferries and bicycles.
Down the Asphalt Path also does a good job of providing a race, class and gender analysis of automobility. The early automobile was a toy almost exclusively of wealthy men and occasionally their wives. Introduction of the automobile into the urban environment caused many pedestrian casualties, mostly children. The children in poorer immigrant neighbourhoods often responded to this deadly invasion of their street playgrounds by throwing rocks at motorists. This wealthy class of motorists also became involved in designing our present traffic laws and redesigning our urban environment. Not surprisingly, these new regulations and designs heavily favored the automobile. McShane offers examples of how advertising was often designed to shame men into buying cars. He also examines the role that the popular media played in perpetuating automobile use.
This book is filled with interesting insights into the trends which have led to our present transportation crisis. It offers hope, in that it provides examples of places where communities did successfully resist the implementation of certain transportation options, at least for a short while. Unfortunately, it is written in an almost exclusively American context, and although it does apply to our Canadian situation, many of the examples will mean more to those familiar with American cities, particularly New York. It is also rather dry reading.
I would recommend this book to anyone interested in urban design and alternative transportation. McShane clearly shows us what our streets have lost by our auto-fixation and how many of our "new" ideas for alternative transportation are actually older than that of the automobile itself.
Converted April 11, 2000 - Lg
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