Peter Norton | University of Virginia (original) (raw)
Papers by Peter Norton
Technology and Culture, 2020
Since the 1960s, research on urban transport and mobilities has evolved within the pages of Techn... more Since the 1960s, research on urban transport and mobilities has evolved within the pages of Technology and Culture. The work reviewed is of growing significance amid the necessity of a transition to more sustainable and inclusive mobilities.
A U-Turn to the Future, 2020
The first historians of the automobile in the United States were engaged in a public relations ex... more The first historians of the automobile in the United States were engaged in a public relations exercise on behalf of motordom, as U.S. automotive interest groups collectively called themselves. Their accounts of history served to normalize and legitimize car-dependent passenger transport, and still do so today. Three major efforts to promote such histories are examined. Though these accounts are historically unreliable and unbalanced, their essential messages still predominate. Car dependency, Americans learn, is the product of popular preferences and cultural values; the place of corporate efforts to influence social norms, legal principles, and engineering standards are neglected. The effect is to legitimize and perpetuate car dependency and to marginalize efforts to promote more sustainable, inclusive, and affordable mobility.
Urban History, 2019
Generalizations about 'car culture' in the United States, and about American's 'love affair with ... more 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.
The essay is a contribution to First Year 2017, a project of the nonpartisan Miller Center at the... more The essay is a contribution to First Year 2017, a project of the nonpartisan Miller Center at the University of Virginia. It shows how Eisenhower developed a White House strategy that led to the interstate highways act of 1956.
and Keywords By serving travelers and commerce, roads and streets unite people and foster economi... more and Keywords By serving travelers and commerce, roads and streets unite people and foster economic growth. But as they develop, roads and streets also disrupt old patterns, upset balances of power, and isolate some as they serve others. The consequent disagreements leave historical records documenting social struggles that might otherwise be overlooked. For long-distance travel in America before the middle of the 20th century, roads were generally poor alternatives, resorted to when superior means of travel, such as river and coastal vessels, canal boats, or railroads were unavailable. Most roads were unpaved, unmarked, and vulnerable to the effects of weather. Before the railroads, for travelers willing to pay the toll, rare turnpikes and plank roads could be much better. Even in towns, unpaved streets were common until the late 19th century, and persisted into the 20th. In the late 19th century, rapid urban growth, rural free delivery of the mails, and finally the proliferation of electric railways and bicycling contributed to growing pressure for better roads and streets. After 1910, the spread of the automobile accelerated the trend, but only with great controversy, especially in cities. Partly in response to the controversy, advocates of the automobile organized to promote state and county motor highways funded substantially by gasoline taxes; such roads were intended primarily for motor vehicles. In the 1950s, massive federal funds accelerated the trend; by then, motor vehicles were the primary transportation mode for both long and short distances. The consequences have been controversial, and alternatives have been attracting growing interest. The social processes of which history is made depend on roads, streets, and other infrastructure. They sustain trade and travel, and their development imperfectly reflects and shapes the growth of the society that builds them. Yet roads and streets also disrupt balances of power and favor some at the expense of others, and thereby divide as well as
Driverless cars and other innovations promise extraordinary improvements in transportation effici... more Driverless cars and other innovations promise extraordinary improvements in transportation efficiency. But in the ignorance of history, they also risk compounding the errors of car-centric urban planning. An overlooked history alerts us to the risks.
Traffic safety, once neglected within the larger history of the automobile in the United States, ... more Traffic safety, once neglected within the larger history of the automobile in the United States, has finally been getting the attention it always deserved. Nevertheless historians still sometimes misappraise traffic safety in one era by the standards of another. Ahistorical assumptions have contributed to misinterpretations—for example, that Americans of the 1920s were extraordinarily tolerant of traffic casualties because they did not respond to them as more recent traffic safety paradigms would prescribe. As a corrective, four paradigms, approximately sequential, are proposed: Safety First, Control, Crashworthiness, and Responsibility. Historians are invited to borrow, modify, or replace them, and to consider their applicability to other countries. Whether these particular paradigms survive review or not, historians who are alert to safety paradigms will produce more reliable scholarship on the history of traffic safety.
from Incomplete Streets: Processes, Practices, and Possibilities, edited Stephen Zavestoski and J... more from Incomplete Streets: Processes, Practices, and Possibilities, edited Stephen Zavestoski and Julian Agyeman (Routledge 2015), ch. 2 (pp. 17-35).
The history of streets is inseparable from the stories about them. Stories about streets secure the status quo, make streets hard to change, and constrain imaginations. Yet within the past century, well told new stories have legitimized new possibilities, overcoming older mental models and fostering a collective forgetting of previous conditions. Recovery of this forgotten past discloses lost possibilities. This requires not just reexamining the factual historical record but also the stories by which street users and others understood streets, promoted their own values and interests, defended the status quo, or advocated change. Twentieth-century American streets stories are considered in this light, with particular attention to the famous story known as "Americans' Love Affair with the Automobile."
Autonomous vehicles may improve American cities or degrade them. Getting this right will demand r... more Autonomous vehicles may improve American cities or degrade them. Getting this right will demand recovering a history we’ve lost, and escaping a history written for us by those with a stake in it.
What's wrong with functional classification—the Federal Highway Administration's technique for de... more What's wrong with functional classification—the Federal Highway Administration's technique for designing roads and streets?
Technology and culture, Jan 1, 2007
Technology and Culture, 2020
Since the 1960s, research on urban transport and mobilities has evolved within the pages of Techn... more Since the 1960s, research on urban transport and mobilities has evolved within the pages of Technology and Culture. The work reviewed is of growing significance amid the necessity of a transition to more sustainable and inclusive mobilities.
A U-Turn to the Future, 2020
The first historians of the automobile in the United States were engaged in a public relations ex... more The first historians of the automobile in the United States were engaged in a public relations exercise on behalf of motordom, as U.S. automotive interest groups collectively called themselves. Their accounts of history served to normalize and legitimize car-dependent passenger transport, and still do so today. Three major efforts to promote such histories are examined. Though these accounts are historically unreliable and unbalanced, their essential messages still predominate. Car dependency, Americans learn, is the product of popular preferences and cultural values; the place of corporate efforts to influence social norms, legal principles, and engineering standards are neglected. The effect is to legitimize and perpetuate car dependency and to marginalize efforts to promote more sustainable, inclusive, and affordable mobility.
Urban History, 2019
Generalizations about 'car culture' in the United States, and about American's 'love affair with ... more 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.
The essay is a contribution to First Year 2017, a project of the nonpartisan Miller Center at the... more The essay is a contribution to First Year 2017, a project of the nonpartisan Miller Center at the University of Virginia. It shows how Eisenhower developed a White House strategy that led to the interstate highways act of 1956.
and Keywords By serving travelers and commerce, roads and streets unite people and foster economi... more and Keywords By serving travelers and commerce, roads and streets unite people and foster economic growth. But as they develop, roads and streets also disrupt old patterns, upset balances of power, and isolate some as they serve others. The consequent disagreements leave historical records documenting social struggles that might otherwise be overlooked. For long-distance travel in America before the middle of the 20th century, roads were generally poor alternatives, resorted to when superior means of travel, such as river and coastal vessels, canal boats, or railroads were unavailable. Most roads were unpaved, unmarked, and vulnerable to the effects of weather. Before the railroads, for travelers willing to pay the toll, rare turnpikes and plank roads could be much better. Even in towns, unpaved streets were common until the late 19th century, and persisted into the 20th. In the late 19th century, rapid urban growth, rural free delivery of the mails, and finally the proliferation of electric railways and bicycling contributed to growing pressure for better roads and streets. After 1910, the spread of the automobile accelerated the trend, but only with great controversy, especially in cities. Partly in response to the controversy, advocates of the automobile organized to promote state and county motor highways funded substantially by gasoline taxes; such roads were intended primarily for motor vehicles. In the 1950s, massive federal funds accelerated the trend; by then, motor vehicles were the primary transportation mode for both long and short distances. The consequences have been controversial, and alternatives have been attracting growing interest. The social processes of which history is made depend on roads, streets, and other infrastructure. They sustain trade and travel, and their development imperfectly reflects and shapes the growth of the society that builds them. Yet roads and streets also disrupt balances of power and favor some at the expense of others, and thereby divide as well as
Driverless cars and other innovations promise extraordinary improvements in transportation effici... more Driverless cars and other innovations promise extraordinary improvements in transportation efficiency. But in the ignorance of history, they also risk compounding the errors of car-centric urban planning. An overlooked history alerts us to the risks.
Traffic safety, once neglected within the larger history of the automobile in the United States, ... more Traffic safety, once neglected within the larger history of the automobile in the United States, has finally been getting the attention it always deserved. Nevertheless historians still sometimes misappraise traffic safety in one era by the standards of another. Ahistorical assumptions have contributed to misinterpretations—for example, that Americans of the 1920s were extraordinarily tolerant of traffic casualties because they did not respond to them as more recent traffic safety paradigms would prescribe. As a corrective, four paradigms, approximately sequential, are proposed: Safety First, Control, Crashworthiness, and Responsibility. Historians are invited to borrow, modify, or replace them, and to consider their applicability to other countries. Whether these particular paradigms survive review or not, historians who are alert to safety paradigms will produce more reliable scholarship on the history of traffic safety.
from Incomplete Streets: Processes, Practices, and Possibilities, edited Stephen Zavestoski and J... more from Incomplete Streets: Processes, Practices, and Possibilities, edited Stephen Zavestoski and Julian Agyeman (Routledge 2015), ch. 2 (pp. 17-35).
The history of streets is inseparable from the stories about them. Stories about streets secure the status quo, make streets hard to change, and constrain imaginations. Yet within the past century, well told new stories have legitimized new possibilities, overcoming older mental models and fostering a collective forgetting of previous conditions. Recovery of this forgotten past discloses lost possibilities. This requires not just reexamining the factual historical record but also the stories by which street users and others understood streets, promoted their own values and interests, defended the status quo, or advocated change. Twentieth-century American streets stories are considered in this light, with particular attention to the famous story known as "Americans' Love Affair with the Automobile."
Autonomous vehicles may improve American cities or degrade them. Getting this right will demand r... more Autonomous vehicles may improve American cities or degrade them. Getting this right will demand recovering a history we’ve lost, and escaping a history written for us by those with a stake in it.
What's wrong with functional classification—the Federal Highway Administration's technique for de... more What's wrong with functional classification—the Federal Highway Administration's technique for designing roads and streets?
Technology and culture, Jan 1, 2007