by Daniel E. Walsh Author of Our Sunday "History & Reflections" Series
A favorite memory from my distant youth was the rides on the streetcars that ran near my home. When I stared up at the passing trees and lampposts, I thought the trees were moving—not the streetcar.
My family did not have an automobile. We were dependent on those rickety conveyances for all our transportation. They were just there. The whole neighborhood was built around them. We saw our neighbors at street level and we spoke to them. We didn’t know that this had been the plan of city designers. And we sure didn’t know that in the future this life would be the great desire of forward or progressive thinking urban architects.
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A chorus of disparate voices has sung the refrain that the removal of the streetcar from the urban landscape was a giant mistake. I feel this way from a visceral level.
The early planners of the late 19th century factored in many aspects of urban life when they built around the lines. Houses were tight up to the curb. Automobiles weren’t invented yet; so conveniences for them were not an issue. Stores and shops clustered near the stops. Houses were concentrated and were on small lots. We carted things home for just a couple of blocks. Pedestrian life fostered sociability.
An example of a streetcar suburb, as these sections are called, is Brighton - a place that still benefits from one of the four remaining streetcar/light rail lines extant in the Boston metro. Urbanologists can illustrate the more quaint aspects of neighborhoods of this ilk. They can identify the arcane elements.
Sure is nice though to have the freedom of owning and operating a car. Makes those 2-hour a day commutes worth it. To many, that freedom is beginning to reveal itself as a yoke. As Thoreau pointed out in Walden Pond, the property owners in town were just as enslaved as the slaves they purported to be in favor of freeing. He showed how they are just nominally owners; they pay a heavy price in labor and are forced by their ownership to extend a huge effort to keep their property afloat.
Aren’t car owners in the same fix? A significant portion of income is given over to the maintenance and payment of the vehicle. And that time factor; just add those wasted hours spent in the car to your workweek hours and the value diminishes. Unless talking back to talk radio windbags is your thing, there isn’t much social contact not involving a raised middle finger to be had in traffic.
Of course, road rage is an interaction of sorts. As Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk and Jeff Speck wrote in Suburban Nation, people in cars are isolated and made strangely bold. They act out in ways you just wouldn’t see pedestrians do. Think about it: while walking like an old lady is fine, with most folks driving like one can make your road mate apoplectic with anger. More time in the car and road rage to boot—thanks, mid-century urban designers - good job!
I’m not advocating the abandonment of the automobile. I’m just gratified that some who design these things are planning places for us to live that aren’t so dependent on them. If you choose to—you can limit your use of the car. I like being carted around by someone else! No worries about that guy who wants to get a better piece of asphalt than me; I hate that guy!
In these conservational times - when dependence on foreign oil is unpalatable and when folks are assessing their carbon use - symbiotic planning across the centuries has great resonance. The blending of old proven ideas with new technology is an exciting prospect – except when a conductor is texting—of course.
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