Straphanger
Saving Our Cities and Ourselves from the Automobile
Grescoe, Taras
Date Written: 2012-04-24
Publisher: Times Books
Year Published: 2012
Pages: 336pp ISBN: 978-0805091731
Resource Type: Book
Cx Number: CX14867
A discussion of the major modern urban transport systems of the world.
Abstract:
In the 20th century, writes Taras Grescoe, our greatest cities were almost ruined by the automobile. Only a global revolution in transportation, he says, can bring them back from the brink. The automobile has encouraged obesity and social isolation, destroyed public space, encouraged fossil-fuel driven foreign wars, and undone the fabric of once great cities. On a journey that takes him to New York, Moscow, Paris, Copenhagen, Tokyo, Bogotá, Phoenix, Portland, Vancouver, and Philadelphia, Grescoe gets the inside story on the world's great transit systems, going beneath the streets to see subway tunnels being dug, boarding state-of-the-art streetcars, and hopping on high-speed trains, along the way uncovering new ideas that will help undo the damage a century of car-centric planning has done to our cities. Ultimately he envisions a future with convenient, affordable, and sustainable urban transportation-and better city living-for all.
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