A post earlier this week about "jaywalking" raised questions about the relative priority given by society to automobiles vs. pedestrians. In that light these photos are interesting. The top one, from a photoessay at the Telegraph entitled "How cars changed England," is captioned:
Kensal Green, 1921. Not a single car to be seen. Streets such as this were built for the lower middle classes, and are now choked with parked cars.There are a dozen more relevant images at the link. The image below was in the Guardian a couple days ago -
- entitled "Manhattan, 1918":
Pedestrians, horse-drawn carriages, cars and open-top buses throng the intersection of 5th Avenue and 42nd Street in midtown Manhattan, New York City.A lot of change in a time span of just one human life. Food for thought.
Credit: Photograph: Kadel and Herbert/ National Geographic Society/Corbis [sepia removed]
These posts remind me of the proposals offered by visionary designers of the 1920s and 1930s to simplify human-vehicle relations. Invariably motor traffic was given dominion over the ground level while pedestrians were confined to elevated walkways where they wouldn't be in the way.
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