This past summer I went on a road trip with my dad. We drove from San Antonio, TX to Portland, OR. The trip took us about a week to complete. We took our time, stopped in different locations and took the opportunity to explore different parts of the country. At times we would rather just teleport to our next location, other times we would want to go back and redo the drive. For example the drive from Flagstaff to Sedona was gorgeous, Big Sur is breathtaking, and along the Oregon Coast there are many spots worth stopping by. On the trip we stopped in Sedona, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, San Francisco, Newport, and many other locations along the way. One place in particular caught my eye, and made me think about the city and it’s transportation.
Arriving in LA was a hassle, accident here, accident there, thanks to the traffic we recognized we arrived at Los Angeles. As you drive you see car lots filled, and you just wonder to ask yourself “How can they sell all of these cars?”. The city of Los Angeles is beautiful, but it is extremely dispersed, it was even planned this way. “City planners and businessmen agreed that dispersal of Los Angeles was desirable and recognized that pursuit of this objective required large capital investments in the capacity to move people between many activity centers” (Wachs, 1984). The city of Los Angeles is a low-density metropolis, and back in the 20’s the public was critical of the transit companies, and the idea of LA was to be thought of as a city that values sunlight and striking views, and in all fairness I think of LA that way. Throughout history we can understand why LA became this automobile dependent city. During my stay in LA, we spent the night at West Covina and the next morning I met with a friend in Santa Monica. It took me an hour and a 15 minutes on a sunday morning to get to Santa Monica. By transit it would take me more than 2 hours.
Edited by Asif Haque
Source:
Martin Wachs (1984) Autos, Transit, and the Sprawl of Los Angeles: The 1920s, Journal of the American Planning Association, 50:3, 297-310, DOI:10.1080/01944368408976597
By Manuel Suarez
Nice post! I like that you were able to connect your own experiences and observations to the article we read. You mentioned that the 1920s idealized version of LA as a city of "sunlight and striking views" is in line with your impression of it. As you've pointed out this vision of the city was used to lobby for car dominance but I'm interested to know if you think LA could have lived up to this ideal while investing significantly in transit, and if you think that's possible in the future?
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