Guest it came to me, i thinki used the word karma; theres lots of bad puns in writing a book about automobiles, but karmy karma waswe had a working title, carbound, that nobody, including me, liked. And my editor asked me for a list of cars, kind of a brainstorming thing. I sent it to him. He called back and he said, were going to call it asphalt nation. and i said, oh, thats good. Wheredwhere did that come from . and he said, it was on your paper. so somehow in this list of playing with metaphors, that one surfaced and that was the title of the book. Cspan whats the point of your book . Guest the subtitle, how the automobile took over america and how we can take it back, which they came up with, but i thought it was kind of rinkydink. But its been very helpful. If somebody says, whats your book about . and its how the automobile took over america, how the servant became a master and how we can alter that relationship, end automobile dependency. Cspan has anybody ever been successful in stopping the automobile or stopping a road or stopping some of this Mass Transportation that youre talking about thatnot mass, but the specific transportation with the gasfed engine . Guest well, certainly, there are a lot of cases where the roads have been stopped. The macadaire in San Francisco is the classic; the highway that would have gone to jimmy carters library; there are roads that people are proposing nowcorridor h in west virginiathat are being stopped as a vehicle thats ever accelerated its milesnot yet. Cspan got a lot of statistics in the book. The first one i wrote down was that 9 percent of the nations household own no car. Guest right. Cspan explain that. Whats that mean to you . Guest it means to me, and the figures show, that the poorest segment of society, minorities and women, have least access to the things that you, in this cardependent society, need to get a job; that is, it impinges on policy right now, the welfare issue. Everybody now needs a job; theres no more welfare. The entry ticket, to use another figure, to get that job is an automobile that costs a year, in personal costs, 6,000 to 6,500. And that, i think, raises high, as they say, the barriers of race and class that already existed in this country and add to the spatial entrapment. Cspan break down that 6,000 a year. How did you get that figure . Guest well, the 6,000 was from the bureau of labor statistics; 6,500 is the more recent one from the aaa. And it is what we pay when we buy the automobile originally, spread over time, and the money that we spend on insurance and registration and gas and maintenance and parking and servicing, all the normal expenditures. Now that doesnt include social costs or environmental costs, which are between 3,000 and 5,000 or often more, but i tried to be conservative on those numbers. Cspan last year was the 100th anniversary of the car . Guest well, by some lights. Its a little bit of a mystery. I started the book in 1908, which is when the model t came out and the car took over america. And if you were deciding on the merits of invention, youd have gone back even further and taken the french, who inventedwho were the mechanical geniuses behind the automobile. But somewhereand this is my next history projectaround a hu50 years ago they had the first 50thanniversary celebration. And i have a feeling they took the duryea brothers, who turned out eight automobiles in springfieldthat was springfield, massachusettsthat was america. And it was in the heyday of the gas guzzlers and going further out. And my abstract senseand i didnt even think it was an anniversary when i wrote the bookis that theres a story there that harry truman and somehow the automakers decided this would be the time to light the candles. But thats the next book, when i find that one out. Cspan how did the automobile change us initially . Guest change us initially . Cspan as a country. Guest well, i think in the opening stages, it was perceived as an element of reform. And it would get the farmer out of the mud; it would enable the farmers children to get to the cities. It was going to be an agent of reform in the city, and it was a very positive element of the Reform Movement that started this century that the turbulent, oppressed cities andwith the masses of immigrants were going to be relieved. And, of course, they were going to get rid of the horses and the horse manure and the difficulties of movement. So it was a very positive element in the minds of many reformers of the period. Cspan you had a figure in there, something likewhat . 12 million, 14 million horses. Guest yeah, right. Right. Cspan did people ride all those horses . Is thatwas that the only reason that they were kept . Guest no, they were pulling carriages and they were pulling drays. Cspan but thats what i mean, they were being used . Guest yes. Right. Yes. Cspan did you happen to check and see how many horses there are today . Guest there are a lot now, i think, as i recall. Cspan when did the car become amass used . In other words, when wasi know in the beginning, of course, people that could only afford it. But when was itwhen were there a lot of cars in this country . Guest well, i would say it was the 1920s when the automobile took over as an. unintelligible and a means of transportation. And when you examine what happened with that absorption of the automobile in the culture and in our households, i came upon the fact that should have been known to me because ive written histories of cities and study histories. There is not a city that has evolved since 1920, when the automobile became the dominant mode of movement. You know, los angeles had pockets that looked urban. Houstonyou can see places that looked like a city as we would define it. But everything receded in terms of looking and being walkable and urban once the automobile began its soslow progression through our culture. Cspan whats the negative of the automobile . Guest the negative of the automobile today . Cspan i mean, i could say, read your book, but i mean, w. Guest chapters 1 through 6. No, no, i wont say that. Well, clearly, i came to it as an architecture and planning critic, very aware of the damage it had done to our environment, having seven Parking Spaces per automobile. And that figures out to one at the mall, one at the house, one at the office, and all those spaces that turn around in. Plus, 30 percent of our good citys devoted to the car and 50 percent of our notsogood city so we had an architecture of the exit ramp, and as i broadened of the exit ramp, and as i broadened the argument, because i think it needed broadening, to the way of life that we live because of the automobile, and charted the people who were suffering or abused by having this dependence on the car, it was that 9 percent of households you mentioned. But it was the elderly, our fastestgrowing age skew, soccer moms, shopanddrop lives spent behind the wheel. And it was compellingly, to me, an environmental and economic argument of the damage done by the car. Cspan when wouldwhen did you have your first car . Guest i had my first car with my first child. I went to work. Cspan had you not had a car up until that point . Guest no, no. I took a somewhat onerous trip to my first newspaper job. Cspan where was that . Guest patriot ledger, south shore of quincy. And. Cspan massachusetts . Guest massachusetts, sorry. And they demanded going by bus to one stop, train to another stop and bus again. Later, i got a ride. And today, actually, that route is done very nicely by a mass transit system. But that was how i went. Cspan how many cars have you owned in your life . Guest i think this was my third car that i sold. Cspan did you ever like the car . Guest did i ever like the car . Yes, i was kind ofthoughtit was red, andand it was pretty and it enabled me to do some things in my life. Im not, like, this awful, awful artifactinmygarage kind of person. But i also like my life a lot better without the automobile. Cspan whats your life like now without a car . How do you travel around . Guest i travel on foot and i travel on mass transit. And i have all sorts of alternatives that ive developed betweentaxis. I mean, for openers, i know that of that money ive discussed, i had 20 a day that i could spend. And thatll take you in a cab, and thatll get you a messenger or a delivery. And its been very freeing. Theres a little arranging here and there, but i dont have to take care of this very large, very expensive piece of machinery. Cspan were you ever around people that just loved the car and it was theirthe most important thing in their lives . Guest oh, yes. There are a lot of car lovers, and ive heard from them on the radio and ive heard from them since the book came out. And there are those who say, any politician who takes away my car will never get elected, which is a little megalomaniacal to think that that one person would happen. But i try to say that there are 200 million vehicles and more vehicles than people. Im not trying to take everybodys car away because that would make me havehave a problem as a human being or change agent, if you will. Im just saying that we dont need two and three automobiles per household; that we can live better if we learn to decide for ourselves200 million cars, 200 million decisions in the naked citythat we can reduce our driving 10 percent, carshare, find trafficcalming means to make our streets pleasant and safe so our kids can walk, reduce six trips. You know, theres 100 pages of very small, personal decisions and also larger political ones to address whats happening now in congress with our transportation bill thats trying to maintain our capacity to have Flexible Funding half our funding go to nonmotorized vehicles. So we can act in many ways, bofubond or fund mass transit, on and on and on. Cspan if you were to pick a spot in the United States where they have the bestthoughtout urban area for the kind of things that you think are important, where would you go . Guest again, its what wewhat i would prefer, because i love where i livenew york has 30 percent of the countrys Mass Transportation and oyou know, quite a miraculous subway system. Portland is taken as a place that was very creative. Cspan oregon . Guest portland, oregonin terms of stopping a highway and then installing a na new system that enabled people to build up the city and to conduct their lives not on wheels. But there are 12 new lines of Mass Transportation, and there are a lot of placesthe best places we have in this country in terms of livability and also not just aestheticsthe most expensive Residential Housing we have is pare places where you dont really need a car the georgetowns, the back bays, the San Franciscos, where you can walk around without an automobile. Cspan what haveor what has the walmarts done to the country, to the cato the automobile . Guest well, i think the superstore is really the enemy of main streets. This is an argument that has at its root a kind of notion that distance is dollars and distance is destroying our lives and that we should be concentrated on cores and main streets, walkable ones. It doesnt have to be manhattan, super density, but it can be a way ofof Walking Around and conducting. Twothirds of ourthe miles we travel on our cars, 10,000 to 12,000 miles, are spent shopping and dropping, you know, a third doing purchases with a ton of steel to buy a quart of milk, another third chauffeuring parents and kids. And it seems to me that theres a better way of doing that. And thats what this argument is all predicated on. Cspan you wrote what seemed to me to be kind of your philosophy on page 51. You say, the pubs, the coffee shops, the communal collage vanish. Cordoning us from community life, the car accentuates an environment of exclusion. The mall cafe is our vacuous symbol. Its umbrellas lack breeze or sun, its security guards manning the escalators to handcuff spirited teens. Its architectural island walled by the automobile offers access only to the licensed shopper. No public realm here. what did you mean by that . Guest it means that we are basically deprived of accessibility. The issue we all talk about is mobility, but how do we get the goods of life . How do we make them accessible . Do we have to wrap the superstore, as we were discussing, or the mall in concrete where the price of admission is 6,500 a year or a 20,000 vehicle . Cant we live in a better way . And cant we stop funding the superstore and the mall . And when i say funding, i meani dont talk about the automobile, per se; i talk about the car culture. And we have been funding a drift from the cities to these evermore distant fringes sinceespecially since world war ii when we gave 500 apiece in mortgage down money to our 10 million vetto our 10 million veterans and we started building the interstate highway system. And that goes on and on today, and not only with highways, where the culture aspect comes in that we are building highways out to the fringes, but we are also putting in sewage and pipes and electric lines. And the inner suburbs or the inner city or the city are paying for all that. And i dont even just mean the older ones. If you have a home that was built in 97, you are now paying for the dispersion of two million houses a year, by and large. Cspan you had a statistic that the federal Highway Administration says that 7. 2 percent of americans are walkers. Guest yes. Cspan what does that mean . What kind of walker . Guest well, i think we have to walk from our car to our mall as well as anything else. But i think thats a lowball figure. Actually, we could be what i like to use is that 30 percent of our trips are under a mile. So, potentially, we could all be walking 30 percent of our trips and we dodo many of them, but the reason we dont do that mile, which is 15, 20 minutes itd be nice not to be car potatoesis because its such a grim landscape; thatin order to do it, you have to cross the highway, you have to cross the mall, you have to do acres of parking. So thats basically why the walker is the key, and the walker is the person who takes mass transit, takes a car also. But if we manage to live in a little closer fashion and not, you know, continue to sprawl, withinif were within seven minutes of mass transit, we can expand our lives and live in a ma carfree, less cardependent environment. Cspan how much do you walk . Guest i walk a lot. Im not a triathlon walker. I take mass transit to work. I try to get off at a stop or so before my house. But i would say i do a mile or two a day. Cspan where do. Guest . But casually. Cspan where do you live now . Guest i live in the back bay. Cspan in boston . Guest i work downtown. Mmhmm. Back bay of boston. Cspan and whatswhat would you call your fulltime job . Guest writing. Cspan writing . Guest writing. Cspan how many books have you written . Guest this is only my third book. So im basically a journalist or an architect critic for the nation and for other publications, professional some of them. But this has been the consuming one. Cspan and what were your other two books . Guest the first book was called lost boston, and it was a history of the city illustrated with photographs of buildings that came down. And it was a pave paradise, put up a parking lot kind of book then, even though i didnt quite realize that that was some of the motivation. And my second book was a bit more expansive, both geographically and in terms of the landscape it was describing it was called preserving new england, and it was about preserving not only our urban environments, but our farm and wilderness or what passes for wilderness in new england. Cspan what year did you write the first book . Guest the first book came out in 1980, and its still arounddidnt get out of date because the buildings were already flattened. The second book was 86, preserving new england. And then in the interim i did a lot of writing and tried to find a subject that was compelling, and it was five years ago it came to me. Cspan where were you born . Guest i was born in boston. Cspan so its. Guest im native. Cspan its everything. Now whered you go to college . Guest radcliffe. Cspan right there in boston . Guest right. I didnt travel very far. Cspan what do you think those that grew up in boston see that sthose that, say, maybe out in the midwest or in the far west dont see . Guest well, i think its an older attitude towards the landscape and cityscape. We can walk around. But theres a defining quality about living in new england, despite the malls and the sthe strips and everything else. And that was the message of preserving new england, a message that cities and inner suburbs are cities and inner suburbs and country is country, and that onethere were two ways of life. It was the old henry adamswinter was city and summer was country. And the kind of mindless scattering in this green countryside not only messes up the environment and takes two million acres of farmland a year, but destroys the sense of abandoning on the one hand and a true link with the Natural Environment on the other hand. Cspan you say that there are 12 million bicycles bought a year in this country . Guest right. Cspan sameroughly the same number of cars bought . Guest yeah, 15 million cars, 12 million bicycles. Cspan is that number going up or down . Guest its been static. The automobileboth cars and bicycles have been pretty static. Cspan what do people buy the bikes for . I mean, how many of them commute with it . Do you know . Guest not a large percentage. Its very difficult. Cspan how does that compare with other countries . Guest oh, way down. I mean, we dont provide a place where bicycles can go. A lot of it is recreation. Weve been building, with this transportation bill i was telling you about, some bike paths. Theres plans for them to go across the country in several directions, like the lincoln highway was the road of choice. So thats what were doing with the bicycles. But we dont tend to our sidewalks and we dont tend to our bike paths. The figure i like to usepeople always say its impossible to bicycle in much of the country because its snowy, a lot of inches just recently inin boston and the midwest and everyplace else. In finland, its 90 percent or 95 percent of the year; the bicycle paths are open. I mean, all this is an attitude towards the public realm, if you will, and the public sector. And i think thats why the European Countries and japan have such vastly superior Transportation Systems and cheaper. Cspan two hundred million automobiles, but 80 million commuters by car. Guest mm. Cspan whats happening to that figure . Guest that figure seems to be about the same. The length of time we travel has stayed the same since the 19th century, interestingly enough, when it used to take a half an hour to get to work and people were doing it on foot or mass transit. So thats staying somewhat the same, but its basically growing. Every fall the car statistics are growing,