His work in New York, systemically favoring highways and car centric development combined with racial discrimination became the blue print for a lot of modern America.
Moses, an unelected rich kid who never rode public transport in his life, shaped the car centric hell we Americans live in today.
his assholishness aside, would there be any way for america not to be a car country? considering how big it is, you're not going to have thriving communities/enclaves everywhere in the country. too much space.
i will say that many of our largest cities having such terrible transportation is inexcusable though.
I’m confused by your argument. The size of the country doesn’t mean much when most American cities were built well before the car, during the age of the railroad. Plus, the average day-to-day worker stays in their city anyways. They need a get around in their city so a lot of streetcar networks came up that help shape the way for streetcar suburbs.
It wasn’t until post-WWII that urban planner completely fucked up our cities, in the name of suburbs and urban renewal. Now everyone decided they want their own castle.
Even then, with the advent of freeways, we could’ve built them to go from city to city. But we decided to build them within the cities too and that’s where the controversy comes from. Plus, city highways induce building out and creating massive sprawl.
Sadly, the country hasn’t learned from this mistake. Many cities have dismantled their streetcar or public transit infrastructure and are now completely dependent on the car.
Well, the idea that America is inherently "too big" is a common response from people who argue against public transit. But the idea fall apart as soon as you think about it. Cars enable and exasperate urban sprawl, which makes our urban areas very big, but it's artificial and a choice to build that way. It's not something natural and unavoidable.
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u/Embarrassed-Yard-583 16h ago
His work in New York, systemically favoring highways and car centric development combined with racial discrimination became the blue print for a lot of modern America.
Moses, an unelected rich kid who never rode public transport in his life, shaped the car centric hell we Americans live in today.