I’m very happy to report this crazy spring semester is nearly over. I just have two exams left and one last paper to turn in. That paper has been an interesting project. I have already turned in two drafts, so it is pretty much complete. In it, I deal with suburban sprawl in the United States as it has related to transportation, tracing its beginnings to the advent of commuter railways and exploring how highways and the automobile came to rule the day and explode the process of sprawl.

I mention the paper here because I want to pick on a certain essay from a book titled Cars in America I stumbled upon in my research. The essay, written by Sam Kazman, is titled “Car Culture Gives Americans Freedom.” Kazman basically argues that the automobile has “liberated mankind” more than perhaps any other technology because of the unprecedented level of individual mobility and privacy it has offered. Naturally, I don’t believe anyone is arguing the automobile has not brought such benefits. The real arguments, however, come down to opinions surrounding the various costs of “car culture”.

And that is exactly where this essay goes wrong right from the start. Very early on, in order to argue against criticisms that the automobile is a pollutant and dangerous, Kazman bids us to remember that the car was the far better replacement of horses as a form of transportation. He writes,

For all of the car’s problems, what it replaced [the horse] was a very dangerous, very dirty type of transportation, which made cities, and especially the high-density cores of cities, incredibly filthy places.”

Does he really think this is a serious argument, as if anyone is actually suggesting that we should go back to riding around in carriages and horsecars now that we have built our lives around motored-transportation? Talk about a straw man! I also find the assertion that horse transportation was more dangerous than the automobile highly questionable.

What’s more, though, his point isn’t entirely accurate, or is, at least, conveniently oversimplified. I guess Kazman was hoping no one would bother to point out or consider that the car was not the first nor the only thing to replace the horse. During a sizable part of the nineteenth century, horse-drawn streetcars (horsecars) were a vital form of transportation in most U.S. cities, but by the 1880s and 1890s, they had largely been replaced by electric streetcars, which I would suggest were cleaner than both horses or automobiles and at least no more dangerous than either could be. The simple fact that there is no mention of this in the essay reveals a major flaw in Kazman’s argument: he doesn’t give a fair shake to decent alternate transportation options we can have even in coexistence with the automobile. Hell, he writes as though such alternatives do not even exist. And he does so because he is writing in defense of low-density, decentralized, suburban living that, in many areas, is only possible in its present state because of the automobile.

But therein lies a big part of the problem. Kazman’s exclusive favoritism for the car and negative attitude toward city cores and high-density living mirrors decades of similar attitudes and policies which have led to shortsighted, poor planning and decentralization causing widespread city decline. And all of that has, in turn, necessitated automobile dependence while simultaneously leaving many Americans without a diverse set of transportation options, except in the largest cities.

For me the argument is all wrong. It need not be posed in a car / anti-car dichotomy. We should be talking about having options and sustainability; in other words, living and building in ways that make sense in other ways than merely because a car can get there. Unfortunately, the domination of car culture in America has often resulted in little of either. Apparently, Kazman thinks that is a good thing, and that individual choice in the matter is much more important than good community planning, as he writes,

Nothing ruins a central-planner’s vision more than a technology that lets individuals go where they want, when they want. Nothing destroys their plans the way a car does.

Out of context, it is hard to tell, but he was definitely suggesting that is a great thing. But it is exactly the thing that troubles me. Of course I am not suggesting that there shouldn’t be free choice, car-driving or suburban living at all. If that is how one prefers to live, that is fine, but not everyone wishes to see the American landscape continue to go quite the way it has. So I am suggesting we can make better choices which will give us more options of mobility and make living more sensible, more efficient and better connect us with others. Kazman’s argument in favor of exclusive car culture – because of the greater mobility and privacy it can bring – calls for a myopic individualism with little to no concern for communities of people that, nonetheless, affects and even dictates the way the majority of people live.

In my book, that is not a good thing for anyone in the long run. Sure, living has been seemingly good for a relatively large amount of people in the way of mobility and peace and quiet, but at the burdening cost of almost total automobile dependency and an often unattractive, uninspired, and unnecessarily spread out landscape. It might be difficult to see it completely now (though ever-rising gas prices make it easier), but I have a feeling time will tell us in full just how poor our lifestyle choices under allegiance to the automobile have been.