American Dependence: The Carnage of American Car Culture
Much of the United States has been engineered to rely on cars, but at what cost?
Is the purchase of your first car an exciting life milestone or an unfortunate life requirement? The automobile industry markets it as the former, and that is no accident. Throughout the 1900s, the auto industry directly informed and molded car-ownership expectations in the U.S. Today, many Americans believe cars are a daily necessity, despite millions of years of humans existing successfully without them. In some parts of the U.S., owning a car is considered a status symbol that provides “freedom” in daily life, but the reality is we are often required to own personal vehicles to realistically function in our auto-dominated built environment. While United States Americans think of themselves as part of an independent nation, we have an overdependence on cars, and our car culture has contributed to many modern challenges. In this two-part series, I will focus on car culture’s impacts on: 1) the public realm, and 2) our personal lives. This article focuses on the public realm, specifically the historical impacts of highways and parking on the built environment.
Part 1: Public Realm
Why are there so many highways in the United States?
Much of the interstate highway system was built in the 1950s and 1960s, thanks to an unprecedented $425 million investment by the federal government under the Federal-Aid Highway Act.[i] Through the Act, the federal government agreed to cover approximately 90 percent of the construction costs of highways as long as local governments agreed to the federally designated routes.[ii] The Act was touted as providing “freedom” to travel the country on superhighways and reside in leafy, beautiful suburbs within a quick drive to employment centers, yet this message only applied to those who were wealthy enough to afford the lifestyle. At its core, the Act was racially motivated, with the funding seen as a tactic to fix a perception of “urban blight” by replacing it with highways.[iii] “Urban renewal” was the federal strategy used to target the removal of lower income communities, almost entirely BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color), frequently using the interstate alignment as the reason (excuse) for displacement. By routing a highway through a neighborhood, governments could justify the destruction of vibrant, diverse areas. In cities where the highway did not directly cause neighborhood displacement, it often isolated BIPOC communities from other areas, beginning their economic and cultural demise. There are dozens of examples; some of the clearest include: Southwest Washington DC, Black Bottom and Paradise Valley, Detroit, MI, and Rondo, Saint Paul, MN. In contrast, there are a few examples of local governments opposing the federal interstate alignment, including San Francisco and New York. This opposition often grew out of grassroots organizations, led by those who could be displaced. By avoiding the destruction of their urban neighborhoods, the cities that opposed the alignment tend to be regarded as some of the most beautiful and desirable American cities today.
What’s up with all of the parking lots?
Parking areas dominate our cities. Between the 1940s and 1970s, cities around the country began introducing minimum parking requirements to their zoning codes, which required a certain number of assumed parking spaces based on different land uses. At the time, planners established zoning to separate land uses and ensure that an ample supply of off-street parking is available at any given destination. We now know that minimum parking requirements unwittingly overestimate the amount of parking necessary for different land uses. This often predetermines the maximum density and intensity of new development by requiring large portions of lots to be used for parking, undercutting well-intended zoning development standards. Zoning is supposed to implement city visions, yet achieving visions for economic vibrancy, activated streetscapes, and walkable infill development, can be challenging with outdated parking minimums. The City of Saint Paul, where I work, removed minimum parking requirements in 2021. While this is an extremely positive step forward that should lead to incremental change over time, approximately 35.6 percent of Saint Paul’s land area is devoted primarily to the purpose of moving or storing automobiles, thanks to the damage done by the Federal-Aid Highway Act and decades of arbitrary requirements for minimum parking.
Before the development of the interstate highway system and adoption of minimum parking requirements, many cities, like Minneapolis and Saint Paul, had comprehensive streetcar networks, which were often privately funded. As the interstate system was constructed and cars became more popular, streetcar systems stopped making profit, leading to their demise. Many communities are now faced with the challenge of building and growing transit systems amidst auto-dominated places, some of which once had robust transit systems in place.
Over 70 years of auto-centric urban planning in America has had a profound effect in shaping the urban form and public realm of the country by reducing density and promoting sprawl. Auto-centric development patterns affect our daily routines and how we experience life in a modern American society. Fortunately, many planners across the United States have recognized historical shortcomings and have been working to re-prioritize all modes of transportation, including cycling and walking. For ENU members, the impacts of auto-oriented built environments will be felt throughout our lifetime, but there is a lot of energy to reclaim places designed for all people. Part two, focusing on the impacts of car culture on quality of personal life, will be released at a later time.
[i] Vox, https://www.vox.com/2015/5/14/8605917/highways-interstate-cities-history
[ii] Vox, https://www.vox.com/2015/5/14/8605917/highways-interstate-cities-history
[iii] Joseph DiMento, Changing Lanes: Visions and Histories of Urban Freeways
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