Street Smart: The Rise of Cities and the Fall of Cars

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		Street Smart: The Rise of Cities and the Fall of Cars
		Street Smart: The Rise of Cities and the Fall of Cars

On a Saturday morning in December 1973, a section of New York's West Side Highway collapsed under the weight of a truck full of asphalt. The road was closed, seemingly for good, and the 80,000 cars that traveled it each day had to find a new way to their destinations. It ought to have produced traffic chaos, but it didn't. The cars simply vanished. It was a moment of revelation: the highway had induced the demand for car travel. It was a classic case of “build it and they will come,” but for the first time the opposite had been shown to be true: knock it down and they will go away. Samuel I. Schwartz was inspired by the lesson. He started to reimagine cities, most of all his beloved New York, freed from their obligation to cars. Eventually, he found, he was not alone.

Since the turn of the twenty-first century, a surreptitious revolution has taken place: every year Americans are driving fewer miles. And the generation named for this new century—the Millennials—are driving least of all. Not because they can't afford to; they don't want to. They have better ideas for how to use their streets. An urban transformation is underway, and smart streets are at the heart of it. They will boost property prices and personal fitness, roll back years of congestion and smog, and offer a transformative experience of American urban life. From San Francisco to Salt Lake, Charleston to Houston, the American city is becoming a better and better place to be. Schwartz's Street Smart is a dazzling and affectionate history of the struggle for control of American cities, and an inspiring off-road map to a more vibrant, active, and vigorous urban future.

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“Street Smart doesn't read as if you were stuck on the Cross-Bronx Expressway ('the most congested corridor in the entire country,' [Scwartz] writes). Rather, it's mostly accessible, discerning and even revealing.” —Sam Roberts, New York Times

“A snappy read…[Schwartz's] account of President Eisenhower's creation of the interstate highway system is riveting, as is his informed discussion of the rise and fall of streetcars.” —Wall Street Journal

“Schwartz…chronicles in Street Smart the history of urban transportation in the U.S. (growing up in Brooklyn, he has lived through a lot of it). … He takes a strong stand, in some cases calling upon personal experiences that streets belong to communities, not cars, and that sustainable transportation planning is helping to revitalize cities.” —Chicago Tribune

网友对Street Smart: The Rise of Cities and the Fall of Cars的评论

A very accessible, easily-readable account of the past, present, and future of transit throughout the US and the rest of the world. I especially enjoyed the anecdotes surrounding New York City, an area which Schwartz, also known as "Gridlock Sam," has much personal experience as Traffic Commissioner.

The first half of the book is historical: expect to learn about the great engineering marvel and transportation failure of Robert Moses' Cross-Bronx Expressway, the political and economic reasons (as opposed to the oft-cited social reasons) behind the 50s white flight phenomenon, and other fascinating stories concerning the past 100 years of transit development. Schwartz's magic in this section is the "behind the scenes" perspective, prompting the casual reader (such as myself) to think about the issues like a transportation engineer rather than like a consumer.

The second half of the book concerns the future, and does so by describing unique aspects of transit systems and traffic planning in other cities throughout the country, peppered with anecdotes from Schwartz's work as a consultant. Although I found this portion a little weaker than the NYC historical review (though I admit I am a biased reader who purchased the book out of interest in NYC's infrastructure), it was interesting to learn about the transit systems in other cities. The section about self-driving cars was especially insightful, for the same reasons as the historical portion -- it approached the topic from the perspective of a transportation engineer rather than the perspective of a technologist or consumer.

The reasons I didn't rate the book 5 stars were: I found the section on Millenials and the benefits of walking a little bit unnecessarily long, although I understand why Schwartz would include it assuming an older target audience. I also would have appreciated more details, both historical and technical, in some sections, even if those details risk boring or alienating a more casual reader.

If you're looking for a very easy to read introduction to the broad world of transportation and its political, social, and economic state within the country (or specifically NYC), then I highly recommend this book. If you're looking for a detailed introduction to transportation engineering, this might not be the right place to begin, although it might serve as motivational material to dig deeper.

Great lessons from one of the nation's most prominant traffic engineers on congestion, sprawl and why we need to do something about them. As a Cleveland, Ohio cyclist, I found it insightful, but as a taxpayer I found it compelling. We can't afford unbridled highway expansion, when we can't maintain and repair what we already have.

He provided a well thought out, but fairly biased, approach to debunking the public's consensus on driving. I enjoyed the inclusion of drastically analyses and the narrative of his own life playing in the background. I do think he fails to point out the importance of our pre existing infrastructure in non urban areas because otherwise his argument seems to suggest they serve no purpose.

This book was an eye-opener. I think the biggest thing for me was how it addressed autonomous vehicles or driverless cars and how they are not the solution that so many people think they are, that is, without effective integrated transit systems to collaborate along side them.

A wealth of history and widom. Enjoyed it immensely.

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