The U-Turn Not Taken

Looking further ahead, some urban planners are imagining how suburbs might evolve. Alan Berger, codirector of the Center for Advanced Urbanism at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, suggests that if efforts to retrofit suburbs and reduce car dependency pay off, the paved area (in the form of roads and parking lots) in future suburbs could be

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But ultimately it was not laws that would change attitudes toward the automobile, but familiarity. Hostility toward cars and drivers began to diminish as vehicles became more affordable. As car ownership came within reach of more people, in cities and countryside alike, some of the initial objections to the automobile, such as the noise and dust, c

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At midcentury, Los Angeles was served by more than a thousand electric trolleys a day.6 These were torn out in a vast criminal conspiracy that is as well documented● as it was inevitable. It’s easy to get mad at General Motors and forget that, at the time, most cities and citizens delighted over the change from old-fashioned streetcars to streamlin

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