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Asphalt Nation: How the Automobile Took Over America and How We Can Take It Back
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Product Description
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.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #276308 in Books
- Published on: 1998-10-01
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Paperback
- 440 pages
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Commuters, here's some food for thought: collectively, Americans spend more than 8 billion hours each year stuck in traffic. This is just one of the horrifying statistics mentioned in Jane Holtz Kay's Asphalt Nation, an eye-opening look at the relationship between Americans and their cars. Kay asserts that the automobile is destroying our communities, our environment, and our economic competitiveness, and her supporting arguments are pretty persuasive. In addition to the billions of hours wasted in gridlock, Kay notes that our daily drives are becoming longer and more frequent, and that increased mileage has nullified any advances in emission controls. Asphalt Nation is comprised of three parts: the first, "Car Glut: A Nation in Lifelock," examines the impact of the automobile culture on life in the United States today. "Car Tracks: The Machine That Made the Land" traces the history of cars from Henry Ford to the present, while "Car Free: From Dead End to Exit" imagines a happier future without automobile dependency.
What makes Asphalt Nation far more interesting than the typical anti-auto diatribe is Kay's discussion of the cultural mores that helped create America's current car glut--namely, our attitudes toward land use and growth management; her comparisons between American and European practices in these areas are particularly interesting. Others have written about the American love affair with the automobile, but Holtz revisits the discussion with lively writing and a dramatic narrative.
Kenneth T. Jackson, New York Times Book Review
"Asphalt Nation largely succeeds in proving that it is possible to get where we are going without destroying where we live. . . . A well-written, even dramatic, volume that may persuade many readers to hop onto the bandwagon."
The New York Times Book Review, Kenneth T. Jackson
Although Asphalt Nation largely succeeds in proving that it is possible to get where we are going without destroying where we live, it does not offer a systematic argument, and it does not break new conceptual or methodical ground.
Customer Reviews
A Muddled Mess
Let me first say that I completely agree with Kay's main point: Our car culture has huge costs, costs which are way out of whack with their benefits.
Having said that, this book fails to convince the skeptic, which ought to be her intended audience. It's a long series of disjointed arguments and statistics and bizarre examples of planning mistakes carefully picked from history with 20/20 hindsight. Far from its other "Nation" namesakes (Suburban Nation, for example, seriously changed my outlook on how we build cities), it fails to follow some narrow trends or examples, and instead in every chapter tells the same story over and over. This book has great potential, but it feels like the sentences got all mixed up in the publisher's word processor so that no coherent story is told.
If you're a fanatic, it's worth a read, but the skeptic will walk away confused and will not be inclined to buy the downtown row house Kay might admire.
A little more of this, a little less of that...
Less a book than a book-length sort of reportage, Asphalt Nation builds the case against the automobile to almost absurd heights. After reading the first half of the book, you wonder why cars are even legal in this country! Cars pollute, pollution is toxic, OK, we get that. Enough already.
I was more taken with the second part, where Kay reports the history of how automobiles, and specifically traffic planners, conspired to create the sprawling, pedestrian-hostile multilane disaster we call the modern American city. This portion of the book was fascinating, and I would have liked twice as much of it.
At the end of the day, however, I was hoping the author would have a more nuanced and thoughtful point of view than, "Cars are bad, walking is good." I already knew that. Still and all, a great book if you're inclined to think that maybe what your city needs is NOT one or two more left-turn lanes.
A worthy thesis, well presented
I've noticed how much design caters to car traffic for some time now. Not only are bus systems left behind in plans, but it is also difficult to walk anywhere these days. I'm not crazy about her ideas like raising gas prices, or anything that raises the misery factor for low income people struggling to keep their jalopy running (like harsh smog test requirements) but the idea of making alternative transportation easier and more attractive is good.
There could have been a little more attention to using the already in place car infrastructure for alternative fuel vehicles. But that doesn't take away from the basic idea behind the book.
