Carmageddon How cars make life worse and what to do about it

Journalist Knowles offers a fresh look at the impact of the automobile. The book opens in Chicago, where a neighborhood-centric, walkable city with public transportation was slowly demolished to build roads and make way for cars. Knowles says it's that kind of thinking that has caused sprawl and the inability to navigate without automobiles. Other viable options have been overlooked, and cars have become a detriment to humans and the environment. He notes that cars cause what economists call "externalities," costs imposed on others by one's decisions. Some of these costs include overuse of natural resources, illness caused by air pollution, and traffic accidents. Another challenge is to get people to think differently about transportation, because the default is that "it's easy to drive." Knowles points out better ways to live without cars, such as in New York, Copenhagen, and Tokyo, all cities which rely on mass transit, walking, and biking. Readers will find this perspective enlightening and maybe they'll think twice the next time they think of hopping in their cars.

Car culture comes under furious attack in this high-spirited jeremiad. Revisiting the early 20th century, when "cars were seen as dangerous 'pleasure' machines that killed children, while taking the road away from ordinary folk," journalist Knowles contends that the first "jaywalking" ordinance--passed in L.A. in 1925--signaled that "the street was not for people, but for vehicles." As cars gained popularity, cities and suburbs were designed to accommodate them and it became difficult to travel in other ways. Knowles details how the frenzy of road-building often came at the expense of Black Americans, whose neighborhoods were razed, and spotlights Jane Jacobs's successful fight to save Greenwich Village as a case study in fighting back. Knowles casts a skeptical eye on electric cars and self-driving cars, but finds hope for reducing climate change and congestion in cities like Paris, Amsterdam, and Copenhagen, where investments in bicycling infrastructure have paid off, and in Tokyo's mass transit system, an exemplar of a city that puts the interests of people before cars. Unfortunately, Knowles's case is somewhat undermined by his lack of focus on alternatives to driving in rural communities, and by a handful of broad and overly antagonistic statements ("Driving seems to bring out people's deepest racial hatreds"). Though it's sharply argued and solidly supported, this sermon is best suited for the choir. (Mar.)