The Triumph of Suburbia: Despite Downtown Hype, Americans Choose Sprawl

[scm53]

Originally Posted by Devout Urbanist

This from someone who gets his information from the Cato Institute.

OK, I get it. You are unable to make any cogent linkage between GM buying streetcar lines and suburban sprawl. You have chosen to ignore every other factor in the growth of suburbs post WWII - pent up demand from returning servicemen, low cost standardized housing on new land, removal of war time rationing on cars, improvements in internal combustion engines making cars more reliable. Instead you rely upon the theories of a single person - falling into the trap so well described by Guy Span, someone with broad experience in the transportation field: "Many researchers blindly quote Snell, passing his paranoid, incorrect, and misleading research off as fact."

I'll take the Cato Institute over Snell any day. Care to throw up any more leftist bête noires? How long till we get the Koch brothers in the mix? Sarah Palin?

[Devout Urbanist]

Classic straw man arguments, with a few more buzzwords thrown in for good measure, I see. Well done. I'd like to give you the benefit of the doubt and chalk it up to a reading comprehension problem, but I see that this is your MO.

[scm53]

Originally Posted by Devout Urbanist

... give you the benefit of the doubt and chalk it up to a reading comprehension problem, but I see that this is your MO.

It must be hell when you leave the echo chamber, enter the public square, and encounter someone that doesn't share your religious zeal. Sad to see you resort to the oh-so-tired leftist tactic of impugning the intellect of those who don't drink your kool aid. My reading comprehension is fine - you just haven't put out anything that can be read. Wll be happy to seriously consider any well founded study that makes the linkage that you want to make.

Just don't make it be the paranoid conspiracy theories of Bradford Snell.

[Devout Urbanist]

Originally Posted by scm53

My reading comprehension is fine

Your reading comprehension is far from "fine." You have not accurately characterized my argument or my sources. First you make the absurd claim that I reached my conclusions from watching a movie. Then you accuse me of relying solely on the work of Bradford Snell. Then you claim that I have not made a connection between sprawl and GM's dismantling of trolley systems. Then you claim that I "ignore every other factor in the growth of suburbs." All untrue.

Jane Jacobs is not Bradford Snell. She is not even simply, as you put it, "someone with broad experience in the transportation field." She is, unlike Joel Kotkin, one of the most important figures in the history of urban studies. And she also wasn't a "leftist." Maybe once you've outgrown the infantile world of American partisan politics embraced by the Cato Institute, you'll take the time to read an independent thinker and a true pioneer in urban studies. Jacobs is critical of Snell, but she reached many of the same conclusions about GM's role in the destruction of mass transit and what it meant for the growth of cities.

As for the connection between sprawl and the dismantling of rapid transit by GM and others, it is obvious, and I've already mentioned it. But since you don't like my explanation, I'll have your beloved Guy Span spell it out for you:

"While GM was engaged in what can only be described as an all out attack on transit, our government made no effort to assist traction whatsoever and streetcars began to fade in earnest after the Second World War. In 1946, the government began its Interstate Highway program, with lots of lobbying from GM, arguably the largest public works project in recorded history. In 1956, this was expanded with the National Interstate Highway and Defense Act. Gas tax funds could only be spent on more roads. More cars in service meant more gas taxes to fund more roads. And we got lots of roads.

More and better roads doomed the interurban electric railways and they fell like flies. Outstanding systems like the Chicago North Shore Line (which operated from the northern suburbs into Chicago on the elevated loop until 1962) were allowed to go bankrupt and be scrapped. The Bamburger between Salt Lake City and Ogden failed with its high-speed Brill Cars in 1952. Today, arguably only two of the vast empire of interurban systems survived: The Philadelphia and Western Suburban Railway – aka the Red Arrow Lines (now a part of SEPTA) and the Chicago South Shore and South Bend Railway (now state owned). And highways had everything to do with this extinction."

Dismantling trolley systems meant ripping up tracks and expanding and reorienting roads for cars and buses like the ones GM owned. Buses largely could not match the quality of trolley systems. People were left with choosing between a largely inferior transit system (buses) and simply driving. Once deprived of a viable, comfortable, safe, and efficient form of rapid transit, many people would understandably choose to drive, which in turn further encouraged sprawl (as Span explains, more cars = more roads). I'm not exactly sure how you could think taking away rapid transit and building highways would not play any role in people's subsequent decision to drive or own cars. Perhaps you have some pseudo-religious attachment to and unwavering faith in the so-called free market, which would explain why you get your information about these issues from the Cato Institute. But not everyone shares your love of Ayn Rand, automobiles, and suburban living. And that is as true today as it was in the 1930s and 1940s.

Now, obviously, other factors played a role in the growth of car-dependent suburbs, such as government-subsidized highways and new government policies that favored suburban home ownership, all of which is explained in the work of Kenneth T. Jackson. I mentioned both factors in my initial post, but you conveniently overlooked them so that you could in turn falsely accuse me of choosing to "ignore every other factor" in the rise of suburban sprawl and paint me as a "conspiracy theorist." Whether you have a reading comprehension problem or simply a love of straw man arguments, doesn't matter to me at this point, since I think we're done here.

[scm53]

Originally Posted by Devout Urbanist

Your reading comprehension is far from "fine." You have not accurately characterized my argument or my sources....

TL almost DR. It's Sunday. Guess I should have expected a sermon.

Let's cherry pick a few:

#1. Certainly understand why you want to distance yourself from the father of the GM Streetcar Conspiracy, Bradford Snell. But wrapping yourself in the respectable cloak of Jane Jacobs doesn't do it. There is no record of Jacobs' negative critique of Snell. I'd love to see it. I'm sure you have it readily available. But as much as you want to throw around emotion laded words like "illegal" and "immoral", GM did nothing that was either by investing in National City Lines - a company which was specifically created to buy up streetcar lines and replacing them with buses. You can write it all you want. I comprehended it - I just don't agree.

#2. This fascination with trying to pant me with whatever brush you find dispicable. Never said a word about the dreaded Cato Institute, never swore a fealty to Ayn Rand. It may surprise you, but I have lived in both urban and suburban settings. Didn't own a car for a year and a half while I rode transit - and that was within the last ten years. In fact, today, if I had 100% of the vote in our household, we'd live downtown. While we were deciding where to live, and while we were building, we lived in an apartment in a local town center. I understand the appeal, but that gets to the final point.

#3. Unlike you, I am not "devoted" to any way of living. I've done both, for what made sense at that time. But the biggest difference is that, again, unlike you, I place freedom of families to make that decision ahead of any "devotion". I'm not devoted to anything other than the preservation of that freedom. That means a balancing of difficult competing interests without allowing my desire to control others first. Nothing works at every stage of your life. One thing I've learned is that people do things for reasons that make sense to them - not to you. And the desire to restrict those choices, limit those options, control others, is very dangerous - no matter how well intentioned.

[Devout Urbanist]

Originally Posted by scm53

There is no record of Jacobs' negative critique of Snell. I'd love to see it. I'm sure you have it readily available.

Yes, I do. The following is from Jacobs' final book, Dark Age Ahead (pp. 186-187):

"The best-known essay on these events is by Bradford Snell, who in 1974 was a young lawyer for U.S. senate investigators and subsequently for the antitrust division of the U.S. Department of Justice. Snell gives a broad and basically true account, but he slipped up on some details and these have been seized on by defenders of General Motors to discredit his report."

I would suggest you read the whole book for a smart and sobering account of the problems facing cities and communities in the twenty-first century.

Originally Posted by scm53

Never said a word about the dreaded Cato Institute, never swore a fealty to Ayn Rand.

In my book anyone who draws on or writes for publications affiliated with the Cato Institute or City Journal, like Joel Kotkin, does not deserve to be taken seriously. Period.

Originally Posted by scm53

One thing I've learned is that people do things for reasons that make sense to them - not to you. And the desire to restrict those choices, limit those options, control others, is very dangerous - no matter how well intentioned.

I also support giving people options (as well as access to accurate information). GM and the government limited the options of city-dwellers by doing away with rapid transit systems. That's the point here.

[scm53]

Originally Posted by Devout Urbanist

Yes, I do. The following is from Jacobs' final book: "Snell gives a broad and basically true account..."

Holy cow, dude, if that is your idea of a negative critique, then who is the one with a reading comprehension problem?

Originally Posted by Devout Urbanist

In my book anyone who draws on or writes for publications affiliated with the Cato Institute or City Journal, like Joel Kotkin, does not deserve to be taken seriously. Period.

And that makes me "someone who gets his information from the Cato Institute" exactly how? And frankly, you are free to block out any view point you like. Me, I make it a point of listening to all sorts of people I disagree with. But do what you like.

Originally Posted by Devout Urbanist

GM and the government limited the options of city-dwellers by doing away with rapid transit systems. That's the point here.

Have you ever considered that perhaps people, given the choice between mass transit and their own reliable personal vehicle, chose that? That market forces were what replaced street cars with buses? We don't have dial telephones any more either, but it wasn't because of a conspiracy by Southwestern Bell.

[ImOnFiya]

...And the battle goes to Devout Urbanist > scm53. Slamdunk! (Sorry!)