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Loading... Fighting traffic : the dawn of the motor age in the American city (edition 2008)by Peter D. Norton
Work InformationFighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City (Inside Technology) by Peter D. Norton
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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 restructured for the sake of motorists, its streets had to be socially reconstructed as a place where motorists belonged. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)388.3Social sciences Commerce, Communications, Transportation Transportation Vehicular transportationLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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"Beneath the grief and anger of many safety reformers lay an old assumption: city streets, like city parks, were public spaces. Anyone could use them provided they did not unduly annoy or endanger others. Under this construction of the city street, even children at play could be legitimate street users, and even careful motorists were under suspicion. In the 1920s, however, the pressure of traffic casualties divided old allies. Some renewed their resolve to compel motorists to conform to the customs of the street as it had been, especially by limiting their speed. Others, more pragmatic, wanted to save lives by giving pedestrians more responsibility for their own safety. Finally, some newcomers proposed a more radical social reconstruction of the street as a motor thoroughfare, confining pedestrians to crossings and sidewalks." - p. 64
"The dawn of the motor age has something to tell us about power. Like money, power is a medium of exchange between social groups. Because it comes in many currencies, it is hard to measure by any one standard. Motordom had substantial and growing financial wealth. By the mid 1920s it was organized enough to dispense this wealth to promote a social reconstruction of the street, through a well-funded rhetorical campaign and through gasoline taxes linked to road construction. By then it was also exercising direct political power, especially through its influence in the Commerce Department. But drivers themselves exercised power every time they traveled at speed in the streets, resorting to the horn instead of the brake to proceed. This exercise of power drove pedestrians from the streets and sometimes barred them from access to streets, even at designated crossings. Horsepower gave motorists a literal, physical form of momentum that collided with the social momentum of old constructions of the street, changing their trajectories." - p. 259 ( )