When I lived in Tokyo many years ago, my street was just wide enough for two vehicles to pass within inches of one another. Parking on the street was prohibited, and none of the old houses had garages. Owning and operating a car in Japan at that time was a luxury. Fortunately, using a combination of bicycle, bus, train, or subway, one could efficiently and cheaply get anywhere one wanted to go. Every time I purchase new tires or replace a major component in one of our old cars, I think very fondly of my days in Japan.
In most cities and towns in the United States, a car is a necessity, and this results from design rather than accident. We are a car culture as David Obst points out in Saving Ourselves from Big Car (read Nick Welsh’s cover story on Obst and the book here ), and our dependence on cars is contributing to a global climate crisis that can’t be mitigated with the same ideas and inventions that created it. If you have ever sat in bumper-to-bumper traffic and wondered at all the time and money wasted, or threw up your hands after spending 45 minutes to travel less than a mile, or lamented the rudimentary state of mass transit, this book provides context and offers some solutions.
“One out of every six people in the United States,” writes Obst, “makes a living by manufacturing, distributing, or servicing our cars. A full one-quarter of America’s retail trade is car-based.” It’s both astonishing and sobering to stop and think about the many ways the automobile transformed our society, from road building to architecture to the mythical idea of the Great American Open Road to advertising. Before owning a car became commonplace, houses weren’t built with garages, and huge areas in our cities weren’t devoted to parking lots; parking meters were unknown. By the same token, there was no need for motels, motor courts, drive-in theaters, car washes, or professional auto mechanics; traffic engineers and suburbs were yet to exist.