The Vanishing Automobile and Other Urban Myths: How Smart Growth Will Harm American Cities [Paperback]

Randal O'Toole (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Thoreau Inst (December 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 097064390X
• ISBN-13: 978-0970643902
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,557,758 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Randal O'Toole is a senior fellow with the Cato Institute specializing in public lands, urban growth, and transportation issues. O'Toole spent 15 years working with environmental groups helping them understand the perils of big government planning and 15 years working with libertarian groups helping them find ways to protect the environment without big government.

O'Toole is an active cyclist who rides thousands of miles a year and a rail fan who loves riding passenger trains. But he is also an economist who recognizes that government spending must be cost-effective if it is to accomplish anything other than transferring money from taxpayers to special interests. This makes him skeptical of proposals to, for example, spend billions of dollars on urban rail transit or high-speed rail.

A native Oregonian, O'Toole was Yale University's McCluskey Conservation Fellow in 1998 and the Merrill Visiting Professor at Utah State University in 2000. He also taught at the University of California (Berkeley) College of Natural Resources in 1999 and 2001. He currently resides in Camp Sherman, Oregon.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The facts from San Jose regarding Smart Growth, January 13, 2005

By 

Lowell E. Grattan (San Jose) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Vanishing Automobile and Other Urban Myths: How Smart Growth Will Harm American Cities (Paperback)

San Jose is the number two city to institute Smart Growth Planning after Portland. Our housing prices are up 10 times in the last 25 years because of the Urban Growth Boundary. We spend 80% of transportaion funds on transit which provides 1.1% of passenger miles and roads are planned to come to a stop. Our transportation plan reports that 90,000 auto trips will not be possible to be made because of road congestion. Our industrial and office buildings are 20% vacant. We are #2 behind Portland in Urban Joblesness.

In regard to running out of Oil. As a student at SJSU 50 years ago we were taught that the world had a 10 year supply of oil. Now it is reported that is some where between 50 and 100 years. I use the book almost every week for references.

11 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Citizen's Survival Book, January 14, 2005

By 

C. Heath - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Vanishing Automobile and Other Urban Myths: How Smart Growth Will Harm American Cities (Paperback)

This book should be in the hands of every citizen who has been upset by development and planning issues in their Cities & Towns. It is an education and an invaluable resource that levels the playing field somewhat when you have to deal with Planning staffs that don't seem to be listening and zoning decisions that aren't making any sense. It's eye-opening and a long overdue revelation for the average citizen.

The two negative reviewers of this book sound like they are more than likely city planners themselves and, of course, would not like this book. Interesting that they resort to fear-mongering and conspiracy theories to discredit it.

I have read this book and highly recommend it. It was written for all of us who don't have a degree in city planning.

11 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars reviewers are using the non-sequitor arguments of the author, August 18, 2005

By 

pdx lover (Portland, Oregon) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Vanishing Automobile and Other Urban Myths: How Smart Growth Will Harm American Cities (Paperback)

The latest reveiws for this book are using that faulty logic of the author of the book himself. Take the statements about transportation policy and unemployment and housing prices and look at this fictional analogy:

There are 200 more cafes that have opened in Lyon, France this year, and the teen pregnancy rate has gone down by 20% this same year in Lyon, so the more cafes we open up, the lower our teen pregnancy rate will be.

Does that make sense? Of course not, but the author uses this same breed of false logic to scare people into thinking that higher housing density and less dependence on the personal automobile will be the end of the so-called American Dream. It's all total nonsense. Moreover, rather than just paying attention to common sense, the author attempts to drag people into statistical quagmires to win his bogus arguments. Statistics are important, but not when they are used to draw false conclusions or, worse still, manipulate people by leaving important things out of the equation.

As for the running out of oil, you can read the industy service magazine, Petrolium Review, and you'll find many answers there about oil scarcity and peak oil. Moreover, this periodical has no reason to distort or manipulate because it is the primary publication that the oil industy uses to make decisions. If it were ever innacurate, the industry would discard it as being dysfunctional to its interests, and it has not discarded it, instead the industy waits on tip-toes for every forthcoming issue to make decisions. Thus the war in Iraq, the world's 2nd largest producer of oil. To fuel our cars. But of course the American Dream does not consider the Arabs, because Arabs don't matter so long as we can take their oil from them.

This book is all just utter nonsense aimed at keeping things exactly the same as they are now, which isn't possible even if that's what everyone wanted.