Prior to WWII, towns and cities were designed the old-fashioned way. The city founder or leadership laid out the streets and, increasingly after the early 1900s, created zoning to control what was built where. Even suburbs started in the same way, as small, self-contained, towns on the outskirts of a city.
After WWII, with the development of the Interstate Highway System, the process changed drastically. Before, as a town or city grew, the new residential and commercial districts were an extension of the existing infrastructure network, with everything centered on the city center and local neighborhoods. Now, with new highways to and out of cities, the surrounding countryside was opened up to large-scale development geared to commuters, separated from the city's infrastructure..
These new developments, plopped down most often in what used to be a farm field, had no direct connection with any existing town or city, nor was such a connection needed since now everyone used a car for all transportation. Whether it was getting to work, going shopping, going out to eat, or any daily task, no one outside of the old cities or towns used public transport, let alone walked. If a family had 3 adults and children of driving age, it became the norm for the family to have 3 cars, since each person needed a car to get about.
Long gone were the days when I was a child living in a small suburb of Reading, Pennsylvania. I walked to school and everything within a mile or so. To get downtown, I took the bus. My mother did the same; she used the bus for all her shopping downtown, food and otherwise. And she continued that till her early 90s.
The question is, why didn't post-WWII developers develop new towns in the old manner, with a core of shopping with residential areas surrounding, all connected with sidewalks as well as streets? Or if a smaller development, walkable with at least a real general store (not a convenience store) and public transportation into the town?
The answer, I fear, is a very simple one. It is much more economical and simpler to build a Levittown or modern-style development consisting solely of housing duplicated over and over again, rather than planning a town with all of its infrastructure and commercial needs. Commercial development became a specialty of its own with shopping malls totally separated from housing development, again geared to the automobile.
The answer in other words is money. Developers are not interested in what is best for a community, they are only interested in making the most money as quickly as possible. And since there seemed to be no hesitation on the part of city-dwellers to move to these new isolated and sterile developments with their spanking-new homes and lawns, they could do as they wanted,
And so we have ended up with a nation of smaller or larger developments, all dependent on the car, all with no or virtually no services contained within them and disconnected from the towns or cities in the area except by highway. When you look at Google Earth, not just in the NE megalopolis, but everywhere, even the Florida Keys, this is what you see.
In the process we have not only allowed the destruction of precious nature and good farmland, but we have changed the way Americans live, the way they buy food and shop, the way they get to school, and the exercise they got naturally just by going about their daily tasks.
We also have created sensory impoverishment. The sensory vitality of local diversity and being part of nature, has been replaced by the technology driven homogeneity of people and the numbing sameness of chain stores and big box stores with their constantly intrusive music and the mega-parking lots that surround them.
Let me give you an example of the sensory vitality that used to exist. When I was growing up in the 50s, while there were two smaller chain grocery stores downtown there was a locally owned grocery that harked back to a previous age. They roasted their own coffee and so when you walked into the shop your senses were greeted by that wonderful smell, as well as the sight of all the wonderful home-made things they were selling.
But most of all, there was the year-round farmers market where my mother did most of her food shopping. At its peak in the 50s the market had hundred of stalls, with your choice of green grocers, butchers, poulterers, fish purveyors, and specialty foods. My mother over time found her favorites and they always greeted her by name with a smile.
Accompanying my mother to the market was a treat because of all the people milling about, the different stalls with their beautifully displayed goods, and all the different types of people who manned the stalls – different ethnicities, different religions (the Amish and Methodists were present) with accompanying different clothing and speech patterns.
In addition to the food markets, there was an abundance of locally-owned stores downtown that provided just about any product that one could possibly need. And they were usually staffed by the owner(s) who provided a very different ambiance and social interaction than one gets in a modern chain store.
And then there was the nearness of nature everywhere. We were no longer of the land, we did not work it, but farms were all around us, and hills and other forested areas were there within walking distance for us to explore. We were walkers; or we used public transportation; the automobile was only used when necessary. For example, my father was a salesman who covered the county, so a car was a necessity for his business.
It was a real, enriching, sensory experience. What does a child have today? A bland sameness in his environment and only his screen to stimulate his senses.
All of these modern ways of development, together with the omnipresence of technology, has resulted in a debasement of the human experience. While we are not yet automatons, we are fast approaching that state, cogs in a vast machine that is our economic and social system.
Not only is this not the way things were as recently as 60-70 years ago, this is not the way things had to develop with modernity. Nothing about modern improvements necessitated the removal of so much quality from our lives
But almost no one, neither local officials nor consumers, seem to care..
