Carmageddon: How Cars Make Life Worse and What to Do About It

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.)