Originally Posted by smellincoffee

I just finished Asphalt Nation, which is an excellent book. The author first examines the consequences of the United States' car-driven, or "car-ridden", culture. She uses car-ridden to point out that we are no longer in control; the needs of automobiles now determine the shape of US cities, not those of people. The ills are many -- decentralization is particularly nefarious, as it destroys the ability of government to work efficiently, separates people from their work, and has turned our cities from bustling centers of commerce into decaying places marked by poverty and despair. The infrastructure needed to allow everyone and their cars to get everyone is hideously expensive and not recouped in taxes; automobiles have essentially gotten a free ride for the last century, which is part of the reason they destroyed public transit. The trolley lines had to support themselves. The health consequences are legion -- automobiles hurt not only directly, through wrecks and pollution, but indirectly by creating a society where everyone is so dependent on cars for transportation that they are otherwise sedentary. Not only do they think to take the car instead of walking or biking, but in many cases -- because of auto-driven decentralization -- it is impossible to walk somewhere, and not particularly advisable to attempt biking. After relating the problem, the author gives a history of America's infatuation with the automobile, and shows that while Americans did freely embrace car culture, the automobiles' dominance had help from government policies which (as mentioned) subsidized the expansion of highways and encouraged sprawl. The history section is a tad depressing given that the United States is essentially decaying over the course of a century, but the lessons are worth learning. Finally, she proposes ways to begin reining in the car and making our urban areas fit to live in once again. We have to attack on multiple fronts -- stopping road expansion, changing zoning laws, investing in transit, reinvigorating the central city, forcing cars to pay their share, and removing unnecessary infrastructure, like elevated highways which scissor up communities and create only more congestion.

I'd say it's a must read, along with books like Technopoly by Neil Postman, The Geography of Nowhere by James Howard Kunstler, and Bowling Alone: the Decline and Revival of American Community by Robert Putnam.