Originally Posted by
Robert Foster
[FONT=Verdana]Sometimes we see comments repeated so often someone might start to believe they are based in fact. But there is no proof that cars started the suburbs. They may have made them easier to access but the trolley car suburbs came well before the car.
What is never addressed is why people moved in the first place.
http://www.ecospeakers.com/speakers/goddards.html
The author of "Getting There", Stephen Goddard, is a friend of mine from Hartford, CT. As a former member of my Town Council and as an advocate for transportation options other than the automobile I have been involved with this issue for decades. It is actually true that publicly financed road building allowed access to cheap land and, at the very least, provided an incentive for people to move out of the cities. People moved out of the cities for the same reason people always move from one place to another......to find a "better" life (as they saw it). They didn't move out for jobs because unless you were working the land there were none. Roads made it possible to live out of the city on cheap land (and made cars necessary) and still work in the city. Thus....suburbs.