F E A T U R E
The Auto Drives the Growth Machine
By Aaron Golub
Nothing defines and shapes post-war urban transportation in the United States more than the automobile. The strong links between transportation, land use, and urban development affect nearly every aspect of the urban environment. Planners now find that providing for the circulation and storage of automobiles is an integral part of their jobs. How did the automobile become so central to urban America, and what does this mean for the urban development process referred to as the Urban Growth Machine? The Auto as Commodity
The automobile
is a commodity, and its production and sale are motivated and historically
constrained by the social and economic framework of the capitalist
order. The economy in the United States changed into a form of monopoly
capitalism with the post-Depression concentration of industrial,
banking, and insurance assets, along with the ballooning federal
expenditures associated with the New Deal's Keynesianism. This transition
to monopoly in many key industries ushered in a new set of demands
on society as a whole. In the automobile industry monopolization
meant an explosion in production technology, a growth in the size
of firms needed to manage such complexity, and an increase in the
amount of capital demanded and risked.
As the automobile industry grew and arrived at the apex of interlocking
industrial monopolies, its needs shifted from battling competition
to careful planning, controlling markets, preventing consumption
from stagnating, eliminating competition from other transportation
modes, and deterring city planning alternatives which infringed
on automobile usage. This transformation played a major role in
the development of the Urban Growth Machine.
The Auto and the Growth Machine
The industry
nourished the Urban Growth Machine as an integrated system of land
development and auto consumption. This nexus was necessary for the
auto manufacturers and their related suppliers, for whom the Growth
Machine was a national "car buying" machine guaranteeing
return on their increasingly expensive investments. Urban public
transit systems were torn up, in part because of direct intervention
by the automobile industry and in part because cars clogged narrow
streets and there was no longer enough street
capacity for at-grade trolley systems. Pedestrian areas were taken
over by more and wider streets and movement became more difficult
in the growing traffic. The growth of automobile usage also meant
that each car needed space to park, thus favoring lower density
development. This spurred strip, big box and mall type commercial
development with ample parking and more streets and freeways. The
auto also facilitated commuting longer distances to more remote
and sprawling developments built along a highway system supposedly
designed for interstate travel in the event of a national emergency
or foreign invasion. In short, the traditional dominance of public
space over circulation space was inverted. Many cite the "conspiracies"
that were revealed in the anti-trust suits against General Motors.
But these suits were the more obvious expressions of the complex
process in which the industry steered the country's development
through:
By the fifties, the question became not whether to build urban freeways, but how to displace thousands of families for freeway construction in existing cities, how to spend many hundreds of billions, and how large to construct the new freeway system. The prior federal and state transportation commissions became "highway" commissions and were typically made up of representatives from the automobile, construction, and engineering industries. Decision-making moved out of the hands of local bodies and into ones comprised of professionals and experts. There are even reports of hired hecklers putting down dissent in those rare public meetings held during planning processes.• Public policy making and investment
• Private investments
• Mass consumer culture
• Engineering and science education
Through the Urban Growth Machine the automobile industry helped support the post war economy. In Keynesian fashion, public investment facilitated production and nurtured consumption by subsidizing home mortgages and highway construction. It would directly or indirectly consume millions of acres of land, pollute countless ecosystems, devastate communities, mine countless hillsides, and pump billions of gallons of oil from the ground. Most importantly, it would sustain the post war economy for 30 years, employ millions of engineers and auto workers, and keep developers, auto makers, and oil producers wealthy and powerful.
The Costs of Growth
This growth
could only last so long, and since 1975 the bottom began to fall
out. Congestion costs urban regions billions every year, air pollution
and runoff have grown to unacceptable levels, and inner cities have
become cash-strapped wastelands. Efforts to stop highway construction,
encourage mass transit, pedestrian and bicycle modes are meeting
with some success and growing. Furthermore, there are profound international
political and economic implications because the stability of oil
imports, the potential for war, and the role of oil-based corporate
profits are ever more important and problematic for capital. The
changing global economy makes fresh demands on industries worldwide,
and has placed the automobile industry in a new role. Just as the
emergence of monopoly altered the development of urban areas, these
new changes within capitalism will be felt as well. As centers of
capitalist growth and activity, redesigned forms of the Urban Growth
Machine will take on new roles in response to traffic congestion,
pollution, and the global politics and economics of petroleum. This
next stage is now unfolding, and we can count on the automobile
industry to play a powerful but modified role in both economic development
and related planning efforts.
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