New Frames for New Ages

A (rather long) essay reflecting on the book Fighting Traffic by Peter D. Norton (MIT Press, 2008)

The street is an extremely important symbol because your whole enculturation experience is geared around keeping you out of the street.  “Just remember: Look left, look right, look left again… No ball games… Don’t talk to strangers… Keep out of the road.”   The idea is to keep everyone indoors.  So, when you come to challenge the powers that be, inevitably you find yourself on the curbstone of indifference, wondering “should I play it safe and stay on the sidewalks, or should I go into the street?”  And it is the ones who are taking the most risks that will ultimately effect the change in society.

The car system steals the street from under us and sells it back for the price of gasoline.  It privileges time over space, corrupting and reducing both to an obsession with speed or, in economic lingo, “turnover.”  It doesn’t matter who “drives” this system, for its movements are already pre-determined.

– from the website of the London advocacy group “Take Back the Streets”

* * * * *

Imagine you are a member of the majority, and a powerful minority has managed to get the laws changed in such a way as to significantly curtail one of your essential liberties.  What’s more, they then proceeded to abuse your remaining rights and make your life miserable.  As a result, a couple decades later, your majority has become a minority.

There’s no need to imagine.  This is what happened to pedestrians (and to a lesser extent bicyclists) in these United States in the 1920s.