Car Culture

Last week, a bunch of bigwigs gathered to talk infrastructure in one of Washington’s most historic and prestigious sites, the Hay-Adams Hotel across the street from the White House. I was offered an opportunity to interview former Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, and a host of other VIPs. But -- no offense to those guys -- the person I wanted to talk to was Peter Norton, listed as the “lead scholar” of the Miller Center’s new commission to “develop innovative, bipartisan ideas on how to create and sustain middle-class jobs through infrastructure policy.”

Don't you just hate going to a really lively city with a pulsing street life? Where there's a lot going on and people can walk from one place to the next? You might if you're trying to drive there. And once again, NerdWallet has delivered the windshield perspective on America's cities.

Last week, the Pew Research Center came out with a massive poll on political polarization in the United States. As Angie reported here, one of the main conclusions was that there is a stark divide between liberals and conservatives when it comes to the type of community in which they want to live. Conservative Americans, by and large, prefer living in spread-out rural areas and small towns, while liberals tend to prefer cities.

Kevin Roper, the Walmart trucker who reportedly slammed into a limo bus carrying several comedians early Saturday morning, is having his say on Twitter. He wants the world to know that the crash that killed James “Uncle Jimmy Mack” McNair and critically injured Tracy Morgan and three others was an "accident."

This PSA, produced by the Norwegian government, does a brilliant job reminding people that the way you act behind the wheel affects everyone around you. Wouldn't it be nice if people observed the same decorum driving a car on city streets as they do pushing a cart in the grocery store aisles?

Today’s Times devotes two pieces to the “suburbs are out, cities are in” phenomenon that has taken root in much of the country over the past few decades -- the great inversion, urbanologist Alan Ehrenhalt has dubbed this reversal of the suburbanization wave that swept through the U.S. in the last century. Though both pieces will pretty much be old hat to Streetsblog readers, they’re interesting nonetheless, both as signposts and for what they leave out.

It's the last thing you would expect to hear at the Detroit Auto Show from the CEO of Ford Motor Company. But last week, Ford's Alan Mulally showed some ambivalence about the role of cars in major cities.

Have we reached peak car in America? Research from the University of Michigan suggests the answer is "yes."

Via Shane Phillips at Planetizen: A new study published in the Transportation Research Record confirms that windshield perspective is all-too real. Observing the world from behind the wheel, it turns out, has a powerful influence on our judgments about places and even people.