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I think it is well known the car and petrol companies were heavy lobbyists in developing the transit architecture in the US (including zoning and so on) after t
by fsloth 9y ago
I think it is well known the car and petrol companies were heavy lobbyists in developing the transit architecture in the US (including zoning and so on) after the second world war. To exaggerate a bit, the entire country was designed to facilitate automobile sales.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_the_car_on_societies https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_the_car_on_societ...
In the continental europe most of the urban centers predate the automobile hundreds if not thousands of years, thus the existing infrastructure does not use the private automobile as one of the key design constraints.
Not so in the US, where huge areas were populated and zoned specifically with the support of the automobile as one of the key constraints.
Once the infrastructure has been built using one design constraint, it's really expensive and difficult to unravel it.
- DoctorOetker 9y agothe webs we weave :o
- simonh 9y agoThis was the one thing that really surprised me when I first visited the US in the 90s. We'd stop at a store or restaurant somewhere and the nearest neighbouring stores on either side would be 200m away, with their own huge parking lot and no pedestrian route between them. We were driving from Chicago to LA and so when we'd stop I'd want to stretch my legs, but the barriers in the way made a walk like that rally difficult. I couldn't understand why anyone would design a place like that. It was engineered around cars, not people.
- mirimir 9y agoYes, and it all looks the same. We call it "Generica" :)
- archagon 9y agoAs an aside: this is one of the running themes in "Little Golden America", a book that chronicles a coast-to-coast American road trip underdtaken by two Soviet humorists in the 30's. The title in Russian is "Single-Story America", in reference to the flatness and uniformity of the country between the few major cities. Really fascinating account, and much of it still rings true to this day. (My review, if anyone is interested: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2114423486 https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2114423486)