Asphalt Nation is a powerful examination of how the automobile has ravaged America's cities and landscape over the past 100 years together with a compelling strategy for reversing our automobile dependency. Jane Holtz Kay provides a history of the rapid spread of the automobile and documents the huge subsidies commanded by the highway lobby, to the detriment of once-efficient forms of mass transportation. Demonstrating that there are economic, political, architectural, and personal solutions to the problem, she shows that radical change is entirely possible. This book is essential reading for everyone interested in the history of our relationship with the car, and in the prospect of returning to a world of human mobility.
Asphalt Nation How the Automobile Took Over America and How We Can Take It Back
About the Book
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"Jane Holtz Kay's book has given us a profound way of seeing the automobile's ruinous impact on American life. Asphalt Nation is terrific."—Jane Jacobs, author of The Death and Life of Great American CitiesTable of Contents
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INTRODUCTION
The Late Motor Age: A Defining Decade
Part I-Car Glut: A Nation in Lifelock
1 Bumper to Bumper
2 The Geography of Inequity
3 The Landscape of the Exit Ramp
4 The Road to Environmental Ruin
5 Harm to Health and Breath
6 The Cost of the Car Culture
Part II-Car Tracks: The Machine that Made the Land
7 Model T, Model City
8 From Front Porch to Front Seat
9 Driving Through the Depression
1 0 The Asphalt Exodus
11 Braking the Juggernaut
12 The Three-Car Culture
Part Ill-Car Free: From Dead End to Exit
13 None for the Road
14 Zoning for Life
15 Putting Transit on Track
16 The Centering of America
17 The De-Paving of America
18 Righting the Price
NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX