Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Table 4.5
Inhabitants per passenger vehicle, 1905-1970
Year
U.S.
U.K.
Germany
France
Sweden
Italy
1905
1,078
2,312
983
1,850
n.a.
n.a.
1920
13
228
1,017
247
277
1,206
1930
5
42
135
37
59
225
1940
5
32
54
22
n.a.
163
1950
4
22
116
24
28
139
1960
3
9
15
8
6
25
1970
2
5
4
4
4
5
Source:
Jackson 1985: 163.
spread out among users rather than be concentrated on producers, as with
railroads (Hugill 1993). The result was far more
fl
flexible geographies that
emerged along the interstices of
fi
fixed rail lines. Trucks, for example, of
ff
ered
unprecedented
firms, and allowed perish-
able and low-valued goods to be distributed quickly and e
fl
flexibility in the spatial decisions of
fi
ciently. Yet the
building of roads and highways is fraught with political as well as economic
predicaments. In the U.S., political pressures from the burgeoning middle class
for improved roads accompanied the widespread adoption of cars, leading to
rounds of parkways in the 1890s on the outskirts of numerous metropolitan
areas (Hugill 1982). By 1908, cross-country trips across the U.S. lasting 60
to 90 days had become feasible. With the middle class demanding greater
accessibility, the 1920s witnessed the construction of numerous parkways,
which were typically curved and allowed for only limited velocity. New York
pioneered much of this e
ff
ort; as Berman notes (1982:307):
Moses' great construction in and around New York in the 1920s and 30s
served as a rehearsal for the in
nitely greater reconstruction of the whole
fabric of America after World War Two.... This new order integrated
the whole nation into a uni
fi
flow whose lifeblood was the automobile.
It conceived of cities principally as obstructions to the
fi
ed
fl
c, and
as junkyards of substandard housing and decaying neighborhoods from
which Americans should be given every chance to escape.
fl
flow of tra
Within cities, streets changed from places of pedestrian travel and public life
to ones whose primary function was to serve as open space to arterials for
vehicles. Hugill (1993) notes that in 1930s Europe, only dictators such as
Hitler or Mussolini possessed the necessary powers to force highway systems
through the landscapes of private land ownership and impose a centralized
transportation network.
Mass automobile ownership triggered an enormous wave of time-space
compression in the form of suburbanization, the quintessential spatial
fix of
late modern capitalism and reversal of the long-standing drift of people from
fi
Search WWH ::
Custom Search