By William Rosen, Samuel I. Schwartz
With wit and sharp perception, former site visitors Commissioner of recent York urban, Sam Schwartz a.k.a. “Gridlock Sam," essentially the most revered transportation engineers on this planet and consummate insider in NYC political circles, uncovers how American towns grew to become so beholden to automobiles and why the present shift clear of that development will endlessly modify America's city landscapes, marking not anything in need of a revolution in how we get from position to place.
When Sam Schwartz was once growing to be up in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn—his block belonged to his neighborhood: the youngsters who performed punchball and stickball & their mom and dad, who'd on a regular basis stroll to the neighborhood companies at which in addition they labored. He didn't comprehend it then, yet Bensonhurst used to be already extra like a museum of a long-forgotten way-of-life than an image of America's destiny. Public transit traveled over and lower than urban streets—New York's first subway line opened in 1904—but the streets themselves were conquered by means of the interior combustion engine.
America's dependency at the motor vehicle begun with the 1908 advent of Henry Ford's car-for-everyone, the version T. The “battle for right-of-way" within the Nineteen Twenties observed the dying of streetcars and reworked America's streets from a multiuse source for socializing, trade, and public mobility into unique arteries for personal autos. the following destruction of city transit platforms and submit WWII suburbanization of the USA enabled by means of the Interstate street procedure and the GI invoice without end replaced the way in which americans commuted.
But at the present time, for the 1st time in heritage, and after 100 years of regular elevate, vehicle riding is in decline. more youthful americans more and more favor energetic transportation offerings like strolling or biking and taking public transit, ride-shares or taxis. This isn't a final result of upper gasoline costs, or perhaps the commercial downturn, yet fairly a collective choice to be much much less depending on cars—and if American towns are looking to continue their more youthful populations, they should plan hence. In Street Smart, Sam Schwartz explains how.
In this transparent and erudite presentation of the foundations of clever transportation and sustainable city planning—from the easiest cobblestoned highway to the courageous new international of driverless autos and trains—Sam Schwartz combines rigorous historic scholarship with the private and enjoyable reminiscences of a guy who has spent greater than 40 years engaged on making plans clever transit networks in manhattan urban. Street Smart is a publication for everybody who desires to recognize extra concerning the who, what, whilst, the place, and why of human mobility.
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Extra info for Street Smart: The Rise of Cities and the Fall of Cars
Sample text
He had written in his postwar autobiography, “Germany had made me see the wisdom of broader ribbons across the land,” and he was now in a position to do something about it. The “something” was the National System of Interstate and Defense Highways, better known as the Interstate Highway System. The Interstate Highway System was and is an extraordinary achievement, fully deserving of the superlatives that appear regularly in every account of its construction. ” So did the American Society of Civil Engineers.
Schwartz To those of us in the business of transportation, the best thing to be said about the Cross-Bronx Expressway is that it is a really good cautionary tale. Even on its own terms—moving cars efficiently from one point to another—the Expressway remains a disaster. It is an overbudget, destructive, and ugly corridor that actually increases the congestion it was built to relieve. The portion that runs from Baychester Avenue to the Major Deegan Expressway has the distinction of being the most congested corridor in the entire country.
By design, the law effectively made it cheaper to buy than to rent, and a lot easier to move to the suburbs. As taxpayers flowed outward from existing cities, money followed, first in a trickle, then in a flood. And since the places where the money stopped had streets, but neither streetcars nor buses and sometimes not even sidewalks (not that there was anything much worth walking to), a car was an absolute necessity. And once you could afford it, two cars, or more. nnn Cars, and especially multiple cars, were not a necessity for everyone, of course.