"… Progressive urban planners genuinely believed, in a period of panic about the death of cities, that their renewal depended on up-to-date infrastructure. The sensibilities that, in the nineteen-seventies, tore down beautiful old Shibe Park, in North Philadelphia, and moved the Phillies to the soulless Veterans Stadium considered the move an obvious improvement. That the electric trolleys being abandoned in Philadelphia were greener and more efficient was not an insight available to that time. We need not find cloaked and sinister reasons for our ancestors' bad decisions, when ignorance and shortsightedness—the kind we, too, suffer from, invisible to us—will do just fine..."
—Adam Gopnik
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/05/22/carmageddon-daniel-knowles-book-review-paved-paradise-henry-grabar
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ReplyDeleteThis is an area where the U.S. could learn a great deal from many European cities. The smart implimentation of public transit sources (buses, subways, boats on canals, trollies, trains, etc.) has allowed many major European cities to even eliminate personal vehicles in their city centers (Vienna, Amsterdam, etc.), which makes them much more pleasant to walk and increases their attraction for tourists. And, in most cases, the stores and restaurants in these areas actually do better sales than they were when the vehicles were allowed.
ReplyDeleteI have heard that downtown Nashville was thinking of doing this as well, though I am not sure if they did.