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Persistent pedestrianism: urban walking in motor age America, 1920s–1960s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 November 2019

Peter Norton Open the ORCID record for Peter Norton [Opens in a new window]
Peter Norton*
Affiliation:
Department of Engineering and Society, University of Virginia, PO Box 400744, CharlottesvilleVA22904, USA
*
*Corresponding author. Email: norton@virginia.edu
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Abstract

Generalizations about ‘car culture’ in the United States, and about American's ‘love affair with the automobile’, have concealed persistent values and practices among millions of Americans that do not suit such stereotypes. Car culture and the car's attractions are not denied. American society, however, is a complex of numerous subcultures, including many that resented and resisted the automobile's growing priority during the twentieth century. Such groups’ resistance to automobile domination has been neglected. Persistent advocacy for pedestrians’ interests is illustrated through numerous examples from the 1920s to the 1960s, the decades when ‘car culture’ rose to its apogee.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 48 , Issue 2 , May 2021 , pp. 266 - 289
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019

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Footnotes

†

Most of the research and writing of this article were conducted while the author was a visiting faculty member at Technical University Eindhoven with the support of Stichting Historie der Technik and Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, which institutions are hereby gratefully acknowledged, with special thanks to Professor Ruth Oldenziel of TUE and to Frank Schipper. I am also deeply grateful to Colin Pooley of Lancaster University for the opportunity to contribute to this special section on pedestrians.

References

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76 ‘Funeral joins girls killed by same truck’, New York Daily News, 20 Feb. 1949, 8.

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79 ‘Battle for new stop signs won’.

80 ‘Traffic-light demand flares toward crisis’, New York Daily News, 4 Dec. 1958, Queens section, 3.

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82 ‘Blockade continues in Jamaica’, New York Amsterdam News, 7 Feb. 1959, 19.

83 ‘Bulletin’, New York Amsterdam News, 7 Feb. 1959, 19; ‘Bitter pain’, New York Amsterdam News, 21 Feb. 1959, 19.

84 ‘Blockade continues in Jamaica’, New York Amsterdam News, 7 Feb. 1959, 19.

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86 ‘The battle is won’, New York Amsterdam News, 10 Sep. 1960, 17.

87 ‘7 pickets get the stop sign’, New York Daily News, 30 Jun. 1964, 2. In 1969, black residents of a public housing project in east side Bridgeport, Connecticut, blocked traffic days after a motorist killed nine-year-old James Smith; see ‘Parents push traffic demands, plan East Side school boycott’, Bridgeport Post, 28 Oct. 1969, 1.

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