Probably the most visible consequence of our over-dependence on the vehicle is traffic congestion. And while population is booming in the West, it's not simply the extra people causing all this traffic. It hasn't always been this way, of course. We decided as a group that we were going to create a drive-in utopia. Kunstler is a former journalist who has written extensively about the aesthetic and social consequences of our love affair with the automobile.
Children grow up in unwalkable neighborhoods, alienated and unfamiliar with their surroundings.
Evidence of change is cropping up. In Boulder, Colorado, the high-frequency Hop and Skip bus program, improved bike and pedestrian routes, and aggressive marketing have boosted public transit ridership and apparently slowed traffic growth. Similar programs are starting in Seattle, San Francisco, and Boston. New Urbanist architects are building high-density housing in cities, where people can walk or ride public transit to work, to buy groceries, and to go to school. Some of these modern forms of urban renewal pose the danger of displacing lower-income families, which disproportionately include African Americans and other ethnic minorities.