Auto-Oriented Development Is a Huge Experiment.
“We are living through, today, what is the largest social, cultural, political and financial experiment that’s ever been attempted by humankind.”
For thousands of years, humans built settlements scaled to people who walked. Even as inter-city transportation technology changed from domestic animals to trains and cities began to develop streetcar networks internally, the vast majority of daily trips were still made by foot.
This, of course, changed with the advent of the automobile, a technology that became ubiquitous in America following World War II. Over the past two generations, we have reshaped an entire continent to accommodate this new technology, from interstates to connect our cities to the streets within them. That change seems normal to most of us because it's the only America we've ever known. But it's actually a massive experiment—one with consequences that we're still discovering today.
The following video explains how the suburban experiment came to be and what its impacts are on our cities and towns. It's part of a series called the Curbside Chat. If you've been a member of Strong Towns for a while, you're probably familiar with it. If not, it's time to acquaint yourself.
View the whole Curbside Chat here.
This amazing video was created by Gracen Johnson.
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We’ve been living for decades on the urban economic equivalent of anabolic steroids: it’s time for some good old-fashioned diet and exercise. The key is to reorient the way we approach growth. Instead of thinning out our cities and taking on more infrastructure liabilities, we need to wring real value out of the places we’ve already built.