This article is nearly 50 years old, but it captures the futility of urban planning that includes automobiles. Yes we knew even then that any city planning that included cars was worthless. Yet, cars are an absolute necessity for life in the USA. What to do? Well, we’ve destroyed most cities by spreading them out to accommodate for the low rise architecture and segregated land uses made possible by cars and the parking lots necessary for all those cars. Suburban sprawl, in other words, is the only planning mode possible, and even now, it fails us. The places we live are ugly and disconnected and not worth caring about, and choked with traffic just the same. This explains why so many people, if they can afford to, choose to live ever further and further away from the messes that are our cities, causing ever more environmental destruction.
The author of the article was André Gorz , a philosopher, journalist, and writer. He was known as one of the first ecosocialists and political ecologists.
steve austin 