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If Monderman’s ideas seem heretical to many in the United States, it’s worth considering exactly who created the American system in the first place, and why. In Fighting Traffic, a fascinating history published earlier this year, Peter D. Norton documents how the automobile industry, in concert with self-proclaimed traffic experts, helped shift the debate on urban traffic safety during the 1920s. As motorization levels soared, measures such as “speed governors” on engines, a once popular idea, fell out of favor, and the urban street was redefined from a place with various uses to a channel for moving the most vehicular traffic as quickly as possible.
Traffic engineers are rather obscure characters, though their work influences our lives every day. A geographic survey of East Lansing, Michigan, for example, once found that more than 50 percent of the retail district was dedicated to “automobile space”—parking, roads, and the like. By and large, the design and management of this space is handed over to traffic engineers, and our behavior in it is heavily influenced by their decisions.
off to Saturday night party, near College and Euclid