Discuss the Impact of the Automobile’s Rise on Urban Form During the Twentieth Century and Critically Evaluate Planning Measures Used to Limit the Negative Social and Environmental Aspects

As people have difficulties to reaching services and activities without having a car, owning a car has its disadvantages and problems also. The problem’s origin date back to the 1920s. While cities were being planned, overall design was based on car usage, but did not account for growth in that population. Urban sprawl added to increased car usage, which was not taken into account during the design phase, and improper

During the 1920s and 1930s, Britain saw a movement of its inner-city industries moving out to adjacent sites which lead to Britain’s road network to be redeveloped.

Small roads with interconnecting patterns of streets and sidewalks within the complex, instead of huge highways surrounding and isolating them, began to be greatly favoured. However, New Urbanism, too, like all other architectural styles had its drawbacks. Alex Marshall, a journalist, argued that New Urbanism was essentially a grand fraud, a gimmick, a marketing scheme that repackaged the conventional suburban sprawl behind the façade of nostalgic imagery and empty aspirational slogans. In some cases that adopted this style, the span of the complex was so large, that providing only pedestrian pathways was not feasible and reliance on automobile was constructed. In other cases, automobiles were allowed inside the complex, maybe a bit too liberally, forcing the design to lose its essence. Also, some so-called New Urbanist designs implement the strategy of segregating spaces according to function and the connecting them through a couple of bridges plonked here and there. So, these towns only wear the veil of a New Urbanist town whereas it is actually following the hundred-and-fifty-year old prototype of an urban

According to Foner, “By 1960, 80 percent of American families owned at least one car, and 14 percent had two or more, nearly all manufactured in the United States”(). Many families owned automobiles, for it enabled long-distance vacationing and commuting to work, malls, etc. The ability for people to travel farther distances through means other than trains and trolleys stimulated a population shift from cities to suburbs. Approximately one third of Southern California, a mainly suburban area, was “paved over with roads and parking lots,” hence showing a transformation in American landscape. Infrastructure had to accommodate for cars as they became central to American life. Not only did the automobile alter the American landscape with a web of roads and freeways, but it also led to “the construction of motels, drive-in movie theaters, and roadside eating establishments”(). The automobile revolutionized America, as it allowed for individual mobility and private choice-a symbol of

We know that the city has been designed mainly for the car and this auto centricity has created

The roads and streets favor drivers more than it does pedestrians but is that terrible? Urbanization happens because people want it to happen. Homes are closer to work, the city is always nearby as well as their favorite restaurants and friends. When you have to choose urbanization with severing “human perception, expectation, and action from the organic world in which our bodies exist.” the choices seems very extreme.

Drivers can spend upwards $150 dollars a week on gasoline, but this is not the only negative impact driving has. Automobile inefficiency and the fact that they run on fossil fuels have detrimental and long term impacts on the environment. It has become increasingly apparent that suburban development in the future needs to focus on building communities that require less travel by traditional means and “closer knit”

The effect of the built environment on transportation and travel behavior is confirmed by more than 200 empirical studies. This literature is summarized in recent reviews by Cao et al. (2009), Heath et al. (2006), Pont et al. (2009), Graham-Rowe et al. (2011), and Salon et al. (2012), and in meta-analyses by Leck (2006) and Ewing and Cervero (2010). If sprawl has any consistently recognized outcome, it is automobile dependence. I would expect to find that, after controlling for other relevant influences, compact urbanized areas have relatively high transit and walking commute mode shares and short drive times to

The author Jeff Speck is city planner and an urban designer. He is trying to save Americans lives by trying to make the city more walkable since automobiles have now become a great danger to the Americans. This book is more concerned with cars and buildings in order to achieve the goal of a walkable city. People are the lifeblood of the city and not cars therefore, in order to pull off the feat of ushering America to the urban century, there is need to prove to people that walkability is important and also that their actions and decisions will help will to improve this aspect.

Since the beginning of the United States the American people have been on the move. Public transportation has played a major role in the development of this nation and in bringing its citizens together. In the book “Divided Highways”, author Tom Lewis takes the reader on a journey of the building of the Interstates and the consequences(good and bad) that came from them. Lewis believes that the Interstates are a physical characteristic of America and that it shows “all our glory and our meanness; all our vision and our shortsightedness”(xiv).

In recent years, major cities across the globe have developed innovative new methods of transportation that could revolutionize the way humans travel and ultimately replace automobiles throughout the industrialized world. Many supporters of this movement believe restricting the use of cars will have a positive impact on society as a whole. Some people believe that taking away automobiles is preposterous given the gravity of which citizens depend on them; although true, replacing cars would have significant benefits throughout society that would outweigh this consequence and ultimately create a new global social order. Restricting cars in cities and encouraging alternate methods of transportation would reduce humans’ carbon footprint, make cities

Cities are generators of economic life and source of changes in the world. Thereby, Jane Jacobs in her book The Death and Life of Great American Cities puts into relief the role of cities on the social and economic levels, while denouncing the disastrous consequences of urban renewal programs. To that extent, in chapters 2 and 3, she discusses "The Uses of Sidewalks”, arguing that over all people need safety and trust in their city. Therefore, first she claims the necessity of keeping streets and sidewalks safe because they are the “vital organs” of cities (29). Secondly, she argues that the functioning of cities should be organized in order to foster human interaction in which “casual public

The developments in planning and design of urban cities inform the argument surrounding the unsuitability of grids to carfree cities, whose medieval patterns provided efficient radial routes for centrally located goods, services, and transport. The emergence of city planning as a profession borrows significantly from the long and complex history of planning, whereby all cities display variations in forethought and conscious designs that define their layout and functioning. The paper uses Rome as a case study to analyse and critique the concepts and principles in the history of urban planning and design, and their

New Urbanism, a burgeoning genre of architecture and city planning, is a movement that has come about only in the past decade. This movement is a response to the proliferation of conventional suburban development (CSD), the most popular form of suburban expansion that has taken place since World War II. Wrote Robert Steuteville, "Lacking a town center or pedestrian scale, CSD spreads out to consume large areas of countryside even as population grows relatively slowly. Automobile use per capita has soared, because a motor vehicle is required for nearly all human transportation"1. New Urbanism, therefore, represents the converse of this planning ideology. It stresses traditional planning, including multi-purpose zoning,

The need of short blocks is described with the example of Manhattan, where the use of long blocks segregate walking citizens and isolate people socially as well as economically. She argues that frequent streets and short blocks are more valuable since they provide cross-use of the streets. Most shops are dependant on people passing by each day, and short blocks could control the passings and create a diverse and balanced income for them.