As a professional historian I must point out that humanity built walkable cities from for the last 6000 years, because walking was the only form of transportation available to the 99%. It is only with the development of the horse drawn omnibus in the mid 19th century that there was a serious alternative. Omnibus is a Latin word that means “for all.” Our current term bus is a contraction.
BTW, the first tracks were laid in American and European cities for the horse drawn omnibus, to make it easier on the animals and increase the MPH slightly.
I have read that in the 19th century the average London factory worker walked four miles to their place of employment each morning. I have no way of checking the accuracy of this claim.
"A lot of people are probably unaware that Europe did flirt with car-dependence and automobility. . . ."
"Flirt" is a great choice of verb here, but the conclusion of your argument strays from it. What complicates the matter is that European cities built a few stroads before the automobile. But the engineering project never made it very far compared to North America. Many of the "before" photos of Amsterdam and Paris are not superwide stroads re-engineered to support high traffic volumes. Instead, they depict traffic CONGESTION with relatively low volumes because individuals chose to drive on narrow urban streets, and it does not take many cars to overwhelm such a street. No, not many European cities were re-engineered to create a high-volume traffic network. They started and stopped.
Of course, they STOPPED, which we have not attempted yet, even 40-50 years late.
In addition, NA planning was different conceptually from planning in Continental Europe. We were already mandating the separation of residential and retail uses in the 1920s--even earlier if you count deed restrictions.
One widespread accommodation of Europe to the automobile is the ring road. They demolished the city walls and replaced it with a multi-lane encircling loop. That doesn't get you into the city center, but it connects the inner suburbs nicely.
I agree these changes would be a good policy in cities. I love it. I think including Montreal is an important piece of the argument- Europeans have a far easier time not relying on cars simply due to scale. There are trains and planes which connect almost all population centers.
While I'm all for abandoning auto-centric infrastructure in cities, I think reversing America's suburban sprawl would be incredibly difficult simply because everything is so far apart in the US.
I've wargamed this with my own suburban American lifestyle and I can't see a way I can go without a car. There's really no efficient way to get to other cities, let alone anywhere in the countryside
Just to get to Chicago:
-Drive- ~3.5 hours, maybe $50 bucks in gas
-Find a way to get to Waterloo, IN (45 mins on I-69 North) and Amtrak to Chicago- about $70 and a 3h 20m hour train ride
-Fly. Find a ride to FWA and take a 1 hour flight for about $200.
As a professional historian I must point out that humanity built walkable cities from for the last 6000 years, because walking was the only form of transportation available to the 99%. It is only with the development of the horse drawn omnibus in the mid 19th century that there was a serious alternative. Omnibus is a Latin word that means “for all.” Our current term bus is a contraction.
BTW, the first tracks were laid in American and European cities for the horse drawn omnibus, to make it easier on the animals and increase the MPH slightly.
I have read that in the 19th century the average London factory worker walked four miles to their place of employment each morning. I have no way of checking the accuracy of this claim.
"A lot of people are probably unaware that Europe did flirt with car-dependence and automobility. . . ."
"Flirt" is a great choice of verb here, but the conclusion of your argument strays from it. What complicates the matter is that European cities built a few stroads before the automobile. But the engineering project never made it very far compared to North America. Many of the "before" photos of Amsterdam and Paris are not superwide stroads re-engineered to support high traffic volumes. Instead, they depict traffic CONGESTION with relatively low volumes because individuals chose to drive on narrow urban streets, and it does not take many cars to overwhelm such a street. No, not many European cities were re-engineered to create a high-volume traffic network. They started and stopped.
Of course, they STOPPED, which we have not attempted yet, even 40-50 years late.
In addition, NA planning was different conceptually from planning in Continental Europe. We were already mandating the separation of residential and retail uses in the 1920s--even earlier if you count deed restrictions.
One widespread accommodation of Europe to the automobile is the ring road. They demolished the city walls and replaced it with a multi-lane encircling loop. That doesn't get you into the city center, but it connects the inner suburbs nicely.
I agree these changes would be a good policy in cities. I love it. I think including Montreal is an important piece of the argument- Europeans have a far easier time not relying on cars simply due to scale. There are trains and planes which connect almost all population centers.
While I'm all for abandoning auto-centric infrastructure in cities, I think reversing America's suburban sprawl would be incredibly difficult simply because everything is so far apart in the US.
I've wargamed this with my own suburban American lifestyle and I can't see a way I can go without a car. There's really no efficient way to get to other cities, let alone anywhere in the countryside
Just to get to Chicago:
-Drive- ~3.5 hours, maybe $50 bucks in gas
-Find a way to get to Waterloo, IN (45 mins on I-69 North) and Amtrak to Chicago- about $70 and a 3h 20m hour train ride
-Fly. Find a ride to FWA and take a 1 hour flight for about $200.
Thoughts?