In the 1950s the United States (Eisenhower) Federal Government passed the United States Interstate Highway Bill. This bill came with the tantalizing promise of federally funds (90% of the budget) for state and local governments to pursue highway and road building projects on a massive scale never before seen or imagined (47,000 miles of super highways). This Bill transformed the United States dramatically from a nation of prairies, remote valleys and rural country roads to a nation increasingly epitomized by its highways and suburban developments.
This policy direction was based on the assumption that efficient road and highway networks were a critical component of a healthy economy in the 1950s. Highways and efficient road networks were seen as essential elements of a competitive post-war society. The automobile was to be the cornerstone of a new consumption based economy and the development of an interconnected road and highway system would facilitate the development of the Levittowns of the United States. At the same time the Bill would also have a significant impact on the urban areas of major metropolitan centres, with urban highway development projects coupled with massive slum clearance and urban renewal projects that fractured the urban form and its associated social networks of major cities across the continent. In the decades after the Bill, local and state governments increasingly saw the future of their cities through the lens of roads and highways in response to the federal leadership on the topic.
Previously state and local governments were not building roads and highways on the scale that they exist today. The automobile was not a ubiquitous mode of transportation for much of the first half of the twentieth century. The combination of the Bill, a shift in societal norms and the fucking hand of the market resulted in the paradigm shift that created an automobile oriented and dependent culture. Over the next several decades all levels of government would cooperate to build all scale of road and highway projects forking out hundreds of millions of dollars annually to ensure there city had the efficient road network and necessary infrastructure to be open for business in the 20th century.This approach produced a new car oriented metropolitan city that was increasingly supporting suburban expansion at the cost of the inner city, a form of city we are continuing to deal with even today.
I think this era of history has considerable relevance for today’s cities and the current threshold that our communities are facing. Our society is increasingly facing a choice of path dependence or trans-formative change. The era described illustrates the significant influence wielded by federal governments to make significant societal change happen. This scale of change and transformation was not conceived or understood by the conventional wisdom of society at the time (well apart from Le Corbusier maybe). Instead it took a salesmen that represented the interests of the era to push our society and its cities in a dramatic new direction. Although this direction may have represented the interests of many flawed 20th century capitalist ideals, it is instructive. I think increasingly the focus of the conversation must be to understand how we can inspire, facilitate and create incentives for change (large-scale change even if it happens at a grassroots scale) to take us away from the status-quo and its dangerously complacent whereabouts.
Given the tremendous scale of our cities, structures and institutions it seems we require leadership from the formal and in-formal avenues of our communities.
I welcome and support further posts that speak to the bottom up approach to change. In fact I increasingly believe this is one of the true avenues for advancing meaningful shifts within our culture, behaviours, practices and economies. But it seems this shift may also require a significant push.
