Thanks for sharing that essay, it was fun a fun read! I think a lot of the issues he writes about are even more salient today, and it’s tragic that it took another 30 years after the writing of that essay for the American lust for the automobile to start to decline. Even in 2021, most people genuinely love their cars here. People will eagerly work hundreds of extra hours just to pay the finance charges on a nicer, newer vehicle.

I also love this quote from the essay describing urban sprawl, I found it pretty relatable:

These splintered cities are strung out along empty streets lined with identical developments; and their urban landscape (a desert) says, “These streets are made for driving as quickly as possible from work to home and vice versa. You go through here, you don’t live here. At the end of the workday everyone ought to stay at home, and anyone found on the street after nightfall should be considered suspect of plotting evil.”

Since the 1980s New Urbanism has slowly gained popularity, but it is difficult because people want to live in proper urban settings without cars at the same time that they can not give up their cars because they don’t live in a proper urban setting. It’s a chicken and egg situation!

If only a critical mass of people could have come to their senses 50 years ago as the author did, especially considering the essay was written in 1973 during the “first shock” oil crisis. That, to me, speaks volumes of the American infatuation with cars and consumerism. Opinions are changing, though. Now, we are about 25 years into the “great inversion”, and I think the momentum is unstoppable, but for 100 years our lives have been centered around cars, and the next 100 will be a journey to return life to our cities and communities.