Written By: Aaron Cuellar, Staff Writer
HOPEFUL: How the auto industry destroyed the great American city, and what we can do to save it.
When I think of the word history, I think of dusty textbooks. I think of snooty lecturers wearing ugly cardigans; of vacant, stuffy museums. Despite all that, I am occasionally reminded that this is not the true significance of history. History is made every day; we live it every day. This remains true even though very little of it is recorded, at least, not traditionally. Every word written, every piece of art, and in the modern day, every photo or video taken is a snapshot of exactly what people are thinking and feeling at a given moment in a given place. It is in a moment of appreciation for this fact that I found what is quite possibly one of the single greatest pieces of propaganda the American people have ever been subjected to.
“Give Yourself the Green Light” was released in 1954 by General Motors, which remains one of the largest automobile manufacturers in the world to this day. It is very much a product of the time in which it was released, featuring a disembodied narrator and a sweeping orchestral score. What sets it apart from any other corporate film made at the time is what it is advocating for, that being the mass development of “superhighways” across the nation. This interested me because while the freeway network of the early 50s was not nearly as comprehensive as the one that exists today, it was still very highly developed, especially near major cities. Additionally, the tone utilized by the film when referring to these is borderline laudatory, calling them “futurama’s free flowing channels of concrete and steel.” They are treated as a sort of silver bullet – an instant, perfect way to solve traffic and transportation problems forever, which is clearly not the case today, after almost 70 years of development. The film follows this up with its thesis statement: “though we [in the US] have the greatest highway system in all the world, it can’t carry the traffic of our growing greatness…we didn’t dream big enough.” Unfounded American exceptionalism aside, this is the biggest issue with the film. We did not dream too small; it’s that the “dream” proposed in the film is a nightmare.
Los Angeles used to have one of the most extensive public transportation systems in the world. The Pacific-Electric Railroad extended from central LA to Redlands in the east, the San Fernando Valley in the north, and Balboa in the south. Then, it was all torn out in the interest of making traffic flow better. Due to a phenomenon called induced demand, traffic actually got worse. Induced demand is a principle that dictates that as more capacity is added to a method of transportation, more people will choose to use it. This affects public transportation, pedestrian infrastructure, bicycle infrastructure, and private car infrastructure, though not in the same way. The capacity of bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure is theoretically infinite, and to increase the capacity of public transportation, simply run more frequent service or larger vehicles. For private cars, the only way to add more capacity is to add more lanes, which is ridiculously space inefficient, expensive, and decreases quality of life in the surrounding area. This is not to say that we should not be improving car infrastructure, but rather that we should exercise restraint when allocating resources for it. There is a benefit to making improvements, but the return on investment exponentially decreases. Not forgetting, of course, that the superhighways proposed in the film many times were built through communities which were low-income, disadvantaged, or neighborhoods of people of color.
The film also advocates for building more parking in downtown city centers using a very obviously fake testimonial from a shopkeeper. Even without the unsavoriness of the fabricated statement, the claim being made is outright false. “What brings up store sales today is parking spaces…best investment a town can make!” This is very easily proven mathematically incorrect. If a city converts an off-street space into a surface parking lot, it loses out on massive amounts of revenue due to the opportunity cost of an absence of a taxable tenant. On-street parking is only marginally better, with a recent study from Strong Towns, an international urbanism advocacy group, showing that in the city of Toronto, $181 million were generated for local businesses over a period of 13 weeks when curbside parking was converted to outdoor patio space. For reference, the same amount of space dedicated to parking would only have generated $3.7 million in the same amount of time. That’s 49 times less than the amount generated when businesses were allowed to use the space in front of their storefronts for something other than car storage. Removing parking, in tandem with improved infrastructure for other modes of transportation, is extremely economically and environmentally beneficial for a city, in addition to being the only way to reduce downtown congestion. Adding another lane of traffic or extra parking spaces will never fix these issues. Building our cities in a way that prioritizes people over cars will reduce the cost of living for all residents, as road construction and maintenance are very expensive relative to other modes, and funding is primarily sourced from the local government’s general income. Even the people who don’t drive are forced to subsidize car owners, and it makes our cities worse for everybody.
There is hope for the future, however. We have the power to change our cities for the better and undo decades of mismanagement and car dependency. Advocacy groups such as Strong Towns have made massive strides towards reversing policies that are harmful to cities. Many candidates for regional elections have begun to realize the importance of these issues, and have begun campaigning on a platform of fixing or at least mitigating them. Electing pro-urban politicians is a surefire way to create positive change. Write letters to local newspaper editors, mayors, or city council members, and ask them to help change the way things are to create a safer, more prosperous city. General Motors and other auto manufacturers got everything they wanted in “Give Yourself the Green Light”. Lanes were widened, cities were leveled to make way for freeways and free parking, and suburbanization exploded, but none of the problems they bring up are actually addressed. It’s time to take back our cities and fight for real change, lest our legacy be reduced to nothing more than a dusty old history textbook.