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University of California Press

About the Book

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.

About the Author

Jane Holtz Kay is the architecture and planning critic for The Nation and the author of Lost Boston (1980) and Preserving New England (1986).

Table 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 

Reviews

"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 Cities