My Redacted Life: Chapter Fourteen (Cont._2)

Things were simpler for an urban planner back in 1972. In some ways, that is. For example, there were still youngsters who didn’t get a new car upon turning 16. Thus, there weren’t too many families with five or six vehicles and no place to park them. There were even interurban bus systems still operating between most cities.

Transportation, as a concept, was changing, though. Cities were captives of a transportation planning mania that eschewed the traditional grid system of streets, blocks and lots. While it was true that this method of street layout often failed to respect topographical conditions, it was a marvel of handling traffic efficiently in many cases.

It also provided multiple routes for both motorists and emergency service providers. Oh, and it came in handy during evacuation needs created by natural disaster. In all, it worked pretty well, if fitted to the lay of the land.

But we had developed an obsession with crooked streets, the crookeder the better. The Urban Planning Bible said it best, “Blessed is the crooked way, but evil abounds in the straight.” If a person knew her or his way around their subdivision, the planners had failed. In later years, there would be longtime residents of large developments that still carried street maps of their community while driving.

Then we developed that most insidious traffic monster, the so-called “one-way” couplet. This involved three parallel streets. The middle would remain open to two-way traffic. The outer two would allow one-way traffic moving in opposite directions.

The thought processes that created them has been lost in the dustbins of urban history.

It had something to do with the personal vehicle. That was becoming the ultimate ruler of urban planning. No neighborhood, historic district, commercial district, or park system was safe as long as the efficiency of automobile movement was suffering the slightest impairment. And, of course, the ultimate goal of the transportation planners was to allow interurban commuting by personal vehicle.

The provision of new commuter lanes would become the raison d'être not only of our highway department, but those of many other states as well. So, we built them, commuter lanes that is.

And lo, the effect this would have on the cities of our country. Remember the mention of a case, Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, that had wound its way through the Supreme Court in 1971? In 1972, few were thinking of it. What effect could an order effecting the busing of school kids in North Carolina have on the urban development patterns of America?

Stay tuned.

Why would you not want
to live where you work?