5

...the invention of the private automobile is one of the great disasters to have befallen the human race. Given the absence of controls, the growth of population and its increased wealth and urbanization would, in any case, have produced overgrown cities. Commercial and municipal greed, coupled with architectural apathy, share the responsibility for a litter of shabby buildings. But it needed the motor-car to consummate these developments, to fill our days with clamor and fumes, to suburbanize the countryside and to subtopianize suburbia, and to ensure that any resort which became accessible should simultaneously become unattractive. The motor industry has come to dominate the economy as brazenly as its products dominate our physical environment, and our psychology. The common sight today, of street after street strewn thick with lay-about cars, no longer dismays us.