Persistent pedestrianism: urban walking in motor age America, 1920s–1960s

Abstract

Abstract Generalizations about ‘car culture’ in the United States, and about American's ‘love affair with the automobile’, have concealed persistent values and practices among millions of Americans that do not suit such stereotypes. Car culture and the car's attractions are not denied. American society, however, is a complex of numerous subcultures, including many that resented and resisted the automobile's growing priority during the twentieth century. Such groups’ resistance to automobile domination has been neglected. Persistent advocacy for pedestrians’ interests is illustrated through numerous examples from the 1920s to the 1960s, the decades when ‘car culture’ rose to its apogee.