Transportation Innovation
Between 1815-1875, however, the situation began to change in the United States. With new transportation alternatives such as the steam ferry, omnibus, the commuter railroad, the horsecar, the elevated railroad, and the cable car came “an exodus that would turn cities inside out and inaugurate a new pattern of suburban affluence and center despair.”
The steam locomotive in the mid 19th century provided the wealthy with the means to live in bucolic surroundings, to socialize in country clubs and still commute to work downtown; these were the "railroad suburbs". However, "railroad commuting was not only expensive but...the steam engine generated speed slowly that railroad suburbs were usually discontinuous and separated by ...open space."
After the U.S. Civil War came the Age of the Trolley bringing commuting to the middle class and expanding the city. The “extraordinary prosperity and vitality of most urban cores between 1890 and 1950 cannot be understood without reference to the streetcar systems...by the turn of the century, a 'new city,' segregated by class and economic function and encompassing an area triple the size of the older walking city had clearly emerged... by 1904 inventor Frank Sprague could reasonably claim: "The electric railway has become the most potent factor in our modern life.”. “In 1890, the number of passengers carried on American street railways (including cable and elevated systems) was more than two billion per year, or more than twice that of the rest of the world combined.” Tracks "radiated out from the center like spokes anyone using public transit to rely on the central business district."
The influence of the automobile was initially slow, so that even “as late as 1918 the War Industries Board could regard the shutdown of the entire industry as a mere inconvenience”. However, "of even greater significance ...was the truck could do four times the work of a horse-drawn wagon which took up the same street space." Building roads to facilitate the "removal of horses from cities was widely considered a proper object for the expenditure of public funds. Indeed, the private car was initially regarded as the very salvation of the city, a clean and efficient alternative to the old-fashioned, manure-befouled, odoriferous, space-intensive horse.". This effort was so successful that "as Sinclair Lewis' popular 1922 novel Babbitt indicated, the private car had become no longer a luxury, but a necessity of the American middle class."
Read more about this topic: Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization Of The United States
Famous quotes containing the word innovation:
“Both cultures encourage innovation and experimentation, but are likely to reject the innovator if his innovation is not accepted by audiences. High culture experiments that are rejected by audiences in the creator’s lifetime may, however, become classics in another era, whereas popular culture experiments are forgotten if not immediately successful. Even so, in both cultures innovation is rare, although in high culture it is celebrated and in popular culture it is taken for granted.”
—Herbert J. Gans (b. 1927)