Cars, I think, have gone from being instruments of freedom to being pests...at least for many of the younger generation. For me, driving is an evil to be tolerated. The land use philosophy that began in the 1950s has been to build cities around cars: an automobile centered city. This has meant single-family houses built out in suburbs that isolates families from other types of activities. Land uses are separated from daily neighborhood needs and errands. And, gosh,imagine if you can't afford to own a car!

So, what we've ended up with are suburban neighborhoods where people leave their house through the garage door, into their cars, and then off to do their errands or go to work/school. Neighbors rarely see each other except through car windows. I mean I only really know two people in my suburban neighborhood and that is only because I'd gone to high school with them! There have been many studies done about the decreasing civic engagement in America and researchers have connected this phenomenon to proliferation of suburbs since the 1950s.

Our suburbs are not places where we might walk to our neighborhood grocery store, or coffee shop and see our fellow neighbor. So, what is crucially lacking is social cohesion,sense of connection to the people in our neighborhoods, and some kind of public life because we're all sitting inside cars and there's nowhere to walk to. The net result? Social isolation and arguably obesity!...because our built environment requires that we never walk anywhere and sit inside cars. Here's how one author put it: "offering neither the ubranity and sophistication of the city nor the tranquility and repose of the farm, the suburb came to be regarded less as an intelligent compromise than a cultural, economic, and emotional wasteland." (Jackson, Crabgrass frontier: the suburbanization of the United States.pg:244)How true! Suburbs do pretend to be country farms! And in the process lose all integrity and vitality.