Are Cities Without Automobiles More Liveable?
Let’s start designing for humans instead.
‘Forget the damned car and build cities for lovers and friends’ — Lewis Mumford
Automobiles have had an unprecedented effect on our society, the magnitude of the revolution has been hard to fathom. The effect? Urban planners have started to cater to the needs of the automobile rather than that for humans. What follows are some negative social and cultural impacts that the rise of the private automobile has had on urban society.
Rise Of The Automobile
Post World War 2, American suburbs were stigmatized as ‘anti-cities’. These sprawls were socially and racially segregated by neighborhoods and lacked cultural identity of any sort. This stigmatization was just the start of how the automobile revolution would change the social complexion of a city.
Having ended the war on the winning side, the aftermath of WW2 was a prosperous one- automobiles had become the raging trend amongst US citizens. It had become synonymous to an individual, in fact, automobiles were considered even more important- the automobile population had grown over 4x as compared to the human population. Cities now had to accommodate the new element that had entered the social construct.
The very thing that had been invented as a means to provide ‘freedom’ to individuals, now made them prisoners.
The trend was worldwide with countries like Germany, France, and Japan following suit.
Environmental hazards were on the rise and so were human fatalities associated with these. Independent sectors were now set up to seize the opportunity this presented- car insurance, life insurance, and so forth.
‘Modern suburbia is a creature of the automobile and could not exist without it’ — John B. Rae
This rampant rise of the motor-driven population ushered the development of a new architectural form- interstate highways.
The New Architectural Form
In 1956, Congress passed the Interstate Highway Act under President Eisenhower. Despite strategic and economic reasons being cited for its construction, it was the start of the downward spiral of public transportation and the rise of suburb dominated by a fabric of concrete.
To understand the impact this had, consider the city of Los Angeles. Its basic shape was governed by these factors:
Single-Family Houses As A Dwelling Unit
Location Of It’s Oilfields And Refineries
Mass Transit System
What the bill passed by Congress meant was that an attempt would be made to connect different parts of the city that had different ideologies.
A lack of cohesion was certain.
The Garage
Originally a French word which means, storage space, Americans adopted it as their own.
The rise of the garage can be dated back to WW1, where it was advocated as an essential addition to the American residence. A steady rise in importance meant that by the 1960s, the house was considered an accessory to the garage rather than the other way around. The facades of residences were governed by driveways and the lavish garages and easy access to the automobile became a key aspect in residential design.
The Motel
To keep up with the rapid auto-mobilization in the country, another new element in architecture emerged- the motel. It was curated to meet the needs of the fast-moving traveler and was met with a lot of criticism in the 1920s, especially by architectural critiques. However, the works of Robert Venturi in the 1950s titled Learning From Las Vegas was instrumental in turning public opinion.
Motels were ubiquitous and were associated with the aspirations of cities’ economic growth. They became a place for informal social interaction and business, the very heart of the city — which was ironic cause it was away from the center.
Such was the success of the motel that by the year 1972, over 120,000 units were present all over America connected within a 30-hour drive.
The Drive-In Theater
Thanks to automobiles, drive-in movie theatres were looked upon as an opportunity in the 1930s. By 1958, more than 4000 thousand outdoor screens littered the American urbanscape. The dirt-cheap prices for the price of land back then meant that these theatres resorted to playing only second-rated or second-run movies.
This trend however quickly declined due to the surge in fuel prices, rocketing land prices, and the rise of commercial theatre complexes- the low prices of the drive-ins could not compete with the new theatre complexes and hence grew obsolete.
The Gasoline Service Station
It was only obvious that gasoline stations would also be on a parallel rise. A clear distinction can be made of the different epochs of transformations of the design typology of these-
1.) Filling gasoline through buckets and siphoning it into the automobile
2.) Simple maneuvers meant that the formation of an ‘assembly’ — that measured outflow along with pumping gasoline using a hose. Labeled as filling stations.
3.) The 1920s and 1950s saw them become one of the most important commercial buildings in America- providing all under one roof maintenance, service, and distribution of gasoline.
4.) Developed into a more homogenized entity with standardized features all across the country. These were subject to the mass-marketing strategies of billion-dollar oil companies.
5.) Having taken over oil companies that they now operated themselves (franchises were set up all over the country), gas stations were now fully equipped car-care centers with a bunch of unnecessary aggregations made to it.
The Shopping Center
These began to be diverted away from the urban cores due to the freedom and ease of movement that automobiles gave the people. In general, these radiated outwards towards the low-density residential areas- functionally dominating the street system.
The shopping center not only became the prototypes of the olympian malls of the 1980s and beyond, but they also became landmarks in the urbanscape.
String street or shopping strips were designed to serve vehicular rather than pedestrian traffic.
The House Trailer And Mobile Home
‘Trailers are here to stay’ — Howard O’Brien
Symbolic to the rise of the phenomenon of the automobile, trailers were initially used primarily for vacation purposes. However after the Great Depression during the 1930s, more and more Americans especially salesmen, construction workers, and farm laborers were forced into a nomadic lifestyle- seeking shelter in their 4 wheel homes.
Further advancements of trailers in the 1950s made them less mobile and more of a mobile home. Trailers were now up to 60ft long and 12ft wide.
They provided a suburban-type alternative to inner-city housing, which was a blessing for the common masses.
The Repercussions
These elements were instrumental in shifting the culture towards a drive-in society rather than one built for pedestrian movement and human interaction.
Be it a grocery store, a bank, or even a cemetery, provisions were made so as to roll up to the window and perform the required activity. Fast food franchises like that of the White Castle and McDonald's meant that the drive-through model became ingrained in the blueprint of the society.
Garish signs, large parking lots, one-way streets, and drive in windows replaced the slower-paced, neighborhood-oriented institutions of the earlier generations.
Empty tourist courts and boarded-up motels are reminders that technology plays a major role in the growth of a city. We must be wary of this and design specifically catering to human needs rather than the needs of technological advancements.
