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For the history in the US of how streets when from being 'mixed use' pre-automobiles to being basically only about automobiles see Fighting Traffic by Peter D.

For the history in the US of how streets when from being 'mixed use' pre-automobiles to being basically only about automobiles see Fighting Traffic by Peter D. Norton: > Before the advent of the automobile, users of city streets were diverse and included children at play and pedestrians at large. By 1930, most streets were primarily a motor thoroughfares where children did not belong and where pedestrians were condemned as "jaywalkers." In Fighting Traffic, Peter Norton argues that to accommodate automobiles, the American city required not only a physical change but also a social one: before the city could be reconstructed for the sake of motorists, its streets had to be socially reconstructed as places where motorists belonged. It was not an evolution, he writes, but a bloody and sometimes violent revolution. Norton describes how street users struggled to define and redefine what streets were for. He examines developments in the crucial transitional years from the 1910s to the 1930s, uncovering a broad anti-automobile campaign that reviled motorists as "road hogs" or "speed demons" and cars as "juggernauts" or "death cars." He considers the perspectives of all users--pedestrians, police (who had to become "traffic cops"), street railways, downtown businesses, traffic engineers (who often saw cars as the problem, not the solution), and automobile promoters. He finds that pedestrians and parents campaigned in moral terms, fighting for "justice." Cities and downtown businesses tried to regulate traffic in the name of "efficiency." Automotive interest groups, meanwhile, legitimized their claim to the streets by invoking "freedom"--a rhetorical stance of particular power in the United States. Fighting Traffic offers a new look at both the origins of the automotive city in America and how social groups shape technological change.Peter D. Norton is Assistant Professor in the Department of Science, Technology, and Society at the University of Virginia. * https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/2924825 https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/2924825 * https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262516129/fighting-traffic/ https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262516129/fighting-traffic/

skhunted 3y ago
What’s disheartening is how ingrained car prioritization has become in the U.S. Our communities are largely un walkable and consist of large underused concrete parking lots. Everything is spread out. It is abnormal to see kids playing in the streets now and most people seem to be O.K. with this. We’ve become a people who rarely go outside other than to drive from one building to another. And when we do go outside we end having to drive to a place where one can be in a location away from cars.
- itronitron 3y ago
  I stayed at a place in the US a few years ago where I should have been able to walk the half mile to the grocery store but there was no path through the neighborhood to the strip mall where it was located, and there was no sidewalk on my side of the highway that was the other option.
  - alamortsubite 3y ago
    In much of the U.S. this is totally normal. Most people aren't even aware that situations like this exist, as they never walk anywhere themselves.
  - ToucanLoucan 3y ago
    My home is like that right now. There's a grocery store maybe 10 minutes walk from here, but we always drive because the final leg of the trip goes over a busy thoroughfare that includes a roundabout, and people in my area are dangerous as shit at roundabouts. I've been nearly hit there almost every time I dare to make the trek.
    - ghaff 3y ago
      I live about a mile from a grocery store. But it's a mile on a busy country road with no sidewalk and through an interstate interchange. It would be taking your life in your hands to walk. I also remember one time I was staying at a hotel and could see the mall and restaurants across the street but I think it was a 6 lane road with literally no way to cross. And, yeah, roundabouts are often dangerous for pedestrians. There's a lot going on and often no good controlled pedestrian crossings.
    - toast0 3y ago
      > people in my area are dangerous as shit at roundabouts That's cause roundabouts are terrible. The design goal is for cars to merge into the circular lane without stopping. In order to do that, drivers need to be looking in the direction the circular lane traffic comes from. But there may be pedestrians crossing from the other side, which most likely won't be seen until it's too late. You can make the pedestrian crossing safer by moving it away from the circle, but then you've added inconvenience if pedestrians want to travel straight along a road, or want to travel to the corner properties; and pedestrians will likely not follow inconvenient paths (statement of fact, not a judgement). You can build up fences and what not, but that's a lot of expense and people are going to circumvent those too. A signalled intersection, with responsive pedestrian buttons, and reasonable car detection would probably have better outcomes for everyone in less space.
snakeyjake 3y ago
>Before the advent of the automobile, users of city streets were diverse and included children at play and pedestrians at large. This is not true and there are numerous counter-examples. City streets have always been dangerous for pedestrians and notable illustrations of this are the separate gates at city entrances for vehicles (pulled by beasts of burden of course) and pedestrians and the construction of sidewalks and crosswalks one example of which I've seen in person is the civil engineering of Pompeii where pedestrians were segregated from road traffic over two thousand years ago. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pedestrian_crossing_in_Pompeii.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pedestrian_crossing_... Another example is the Pont Neuf bridge in Paris. Completed in the early 1600s it was built with wide sidewalks to keep pedestrians out of the road. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b9/P1140241_Carnavalet_Ecole_fran%C3%A7aise_Projet_Pont-Neuf_vers_1577_rwk.JPG https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b9/P1140241... Oldest photograph of London: https://londonist.com/london/art-and-photography/oldest-photograph-drawing-london https://londonist.com/london/art-and-photography/oldest-phot... Amsterdam, 1891: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Old-Amsterdam_1891-street-1.jpg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Old-Amsterdam_1891-stre... What do you see? Sidewalks. In various paintings and engravings of city scenes from the 1600s and 1700s a common theme emerges: every area that could afford them built sidewalks and pedestrians were segregated from road traffic. Raucous examples of people teeming in the streets in similar works seem to be trying to depict scenes of anarchy or poor slums. Another is the fact that numerous Roman emperors banned carriages from city streets during daylight (both for safety and noise pollution reasons) with varying degrees of success. That was much easier when you had an army of slaves to carry goods into the city. One glaring expression of the dangers of pre-automobile urban streets is the fact that in New York City fatalities due to horse-pedestrian collisions greatly surpass the rate of fatalities of automobile collisions. In both "Herald Square, 1896" and "A Trip Down Market Street, 1906" you can see pedestrians travelling with the road along sidewalks and crossing the road at any point. This indeed used to be common, before the invention of traffic signals and crosswalk and is the primary reason for the increase in fatality rates due to collisions. The fatality rate for deaths due to horses in Chicago was seven times the present rate of pedestrian fatalities and in New York City is was double. From Horse Power to Horsepower: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6sm968t2 https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6sm968t2 Herald Square: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRf5z75-GbU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRf5z75-GbU Market Street: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Q5Nur642BU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Q5Nur642BU Children didn't play in city streets because it was a death sentence. Pedestrians DID cross from sidewalk to sidewalk at any location because crosswalks didn't exist (in most places) yet. Regardless of all of that, in positive news more and more cities all over the US and the world are pedestrianizing their streets. Not because "users of city streets were diverse and included children at play and pedestrians at large" but because mixing pedestrians and ANY vehicle to include pre-automobile vehicles is dangerous and pedestrians should either stay out of the street or have it dedicated solely to their use.

skhunted 3y ago

What’s disheartening is how ingrained car prioritization has become in the U.S. Our communities are largely un walkable and consist of large underused concrete parking lots. Everything is spread out. It is abnormal to see kids playing in the streets now and most people seem to be O.K. with this. We’ve become a people who rarely go outside other than to drive from one building to another. And when we do go outside we end having to drive to a place where one can be in a location away from cars.

itronitron 3y ago
I stayed at a place in the US a few years ago where I should have been able to walk the half mile to the grocery store but there was no path through the neighborhood to the strip mall where it was located, and there was no sidewalk on my side of the highway that was the other option.
- alamortsubite 3y ago
  In much of the U.S. this is totally normal. Most people aren't even aware that situations like this exist, as they never walk anywhere themselves.
- ToucanLoucan 3y ago
  My home is like that right now. There's a grocery store maybe 10 minutes walk from here, but we always drive because the final leg of the trip goes over a busy thoroughfare that includes a roundabout, and people in my area are dangerous as shit at roundabouts. I've been nearly hit there almost every time I dare to make the trek.
  - ghaff 3y ago
    I live about a mile from a grocery store. But it's a mile on a busy country road with no sidewalk and through an interstate interchange. It would be taking your life in your hands to walk. I also remember one time I was staying at a hotel and could see the mall and restaurants across the street but I think it was a 6 lane road with literally no way to cross. And, yeah, roundabouts are often dangerous for pedestrians. There's a lot going on and often no good controlled pedestrian crossings.
  - toast0 3y ago
    > people in my area are dangerous as shit at roundabouts That's cause roundabouts are terrible. The design goal is for cars to merge into the circular lane without stopping. In order to do that, drivers need to be looking in the direction the circular lane traffic comes from. But there may be pedestrians crossing from the other side, which most likely won't be seen until it's too late. You can make the pedestrian crossing safer by moving it away from the circle, but then you've added inconvenience if pedestrians want to travel straight along a road, or want to travel to the corner properties; and pedestrians will likely not follow inconvenient paths (statement of fact, not a judgement). You can build up fences and what not, but that's a lot of expense and people are going to circumvent those too. A signalled intersection, with responsive pedestrian buttons, and reasonable car detection would probably have better outcomes for everyone in less space.

snakeyjake 3y ago

>Before the advent of the automobile, users of city streets were diverse and included children at play and pedestrians at large. This is not true and there are numerous counter-examples. City streets have always been dangerous for pedestrians and notable illustrations of this are the separate gates at city entrances for vehicles (pulled by beasts of burden of course) and pedestrians and the construction of sidewalks and crosswalks one example of which I've seen in person is the civil engineering of Pompeii where pedestrians were segregated from road traffic over two thousand years ago. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pedestrian_crossing_in_Pompeii.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pedestrian_crossing_... Another example is the Pont Neuf bridge in Paris. Completed in the early 1600s it was built with wide sidewalks to keep pedestrians out of the road. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b9/P1140241_Carnavalet_Ecole_fran%C3%A7aise_Projet_Pont-Neuf_vers_1577_rwk.JPG https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b9/P1140241... Oldest photograph of London: https://londonist.com/london/art-and-photography/oldest-photograph-drawing-london https://londonist.com/london/art-and-photography/oldest-phot... Amsterdam, 1891: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Old-Amsterdam_1891-street-1.jpg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Old-Amsterdam_1891-stre... What do you see? Sidewalks. In various paintings and engravings of city scenes from the 1600s and 1700s a common theme emerges: every area that could afford them built sidewalks and pedestrians were segregated from road traffic. Raucous examples of people teeming in the streets in similar works seem to be trying to depict scenes of anarchy or poor slums. Another is the fact that numerous Roman emperors banned carriages from city streets during daylight (both for safety and noise pollution reasons) with varying degrees of success. That was much easier when you had an army of slaves to carry goods into the city. One glaring expression of the dangers of pre-automobile urban streets is the fact that in New York City fatalities due to horse-pedestrian collisions greatly surpass the rate of fatalities of automobile collisions. In both "Herald Square, 1896" and "A Trip Down Market Street, 1906" you can see pedestrians travelling with the road along sidewalks and crossing the road at any point. This indeed used to be common, before the invention of traffic signals and crosswalk and is the primary reason for the increase in fatality rates due to collisions. The fatality rate for deaths due to horses in Chicago was seven times the present rate of pedestrian fatalities and in New York City is was double. From Horse Power to Horsepower: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6sm968t2 https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6sm968t2 Herald Square: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRf5z75-GbU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRf5z75-GbU Market Street: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Q5Nur642BU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Q5Nur642BU Children didn't play in city streets because it was a death sentence. Pedestrians DID cross from sidewalk to sidewalk at any location because crosswalks didn't exist (in most places) yet. Regardless of all of that, in positive news more and more cities all over the US and the world are pedestrianizing their streets. Not because "users of city streets were diverse and included children at play and pedestrians at large" but because mixing pedestrians and ANY vehicle to include pre-automobile vehicles is dangerous and pedestrians should either stay out of the street or have it dedicated solely to their use.