Customer Reviews

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

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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.

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.

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.

Just writing a book doesn't make a faulty argument more legitimate. The author has no vision or sense of community.
With populations (especially here in the Bay Area in California) expected to grow exponentially in the near future, and few new lanes to be added, how can the author solve the gridlock that is already aqmong the nations worst? Do the agricultural lands deserve to be suburbanized? Will people be looking for alternatives to driving when gas hits $5 or even $10 a gallon? Is there such a thing as "community?" Is there a reason so many Americans are obese and depressed?
Skip the book. Save up for a bicycle.

This book is without a doubt an abuse of speech, an assault against common sense in city planning and transportation. The other reviewer says it very well.

If the author were living in ancient Greece, he would be labeled by history a Sophist, or someone who supports the arguments of the establishment in order to protect his own position in society. Basically he kowtows to the status quo, which keeps those who currently have control, such as the highway, auto and oil lobby, in control.

I cannot say if he has any connection to the aforementioned industries, but it would seem that he did, because all he says seems to support their position of power, despite their behavior and interests being detrimental to the greater segment of society they say they are in service of.

I must confess that after getting a taste of the types of inferior arguments that he puts forth, I did not read the book all the way through. It's kind of like if you'd never seen a soap opera before, and you watched a couple of scenes and then pretty much got the idea and turned off the tv, vowing never to watch one again.

a poor contribution to the important subject of city planning.

Public transportation is more efficient, it is more economical, it is safer, it is healthier, and it brings people together to speak to one another, as should happen in a democracy. This book is a diatribe against smart growth ideas, such as bringing transit to cities to avoid the negatives of automobiles. Cars kill over 40,000 Americans each year, which is almost as many American dead in the entire Vietnam War. Cars pollute the air. They destroy community life by isolating citizens from one another. They are noisy and create more crime by having a shortage of local pedestrians on the streets. But the authors of this book seem to think that smart growth is something to be fought against.

The arguments and research in this book are shoddy and myopic at best. They claim that smart growth increases housing prices, but do not go into the reasons why. Well, if you build things with smart growth in mind, the housing prices WILL go up because people flock to that area because it is so much nicer to live in. Well, we better stop creating nice neighborhoods, because prices will go up. What the shortsighted author fails to see is that the more smart growth areas that are created, the lower the prices will become, which is econ 101. So by his reasoning, we better not make America a better place to live because it might cost us a bit in the short run.

The research is unconvincing and transparent, an insult to those with even an ounce of skepticism. It is pure manipulative hysteria that things will fall apart if we plan our cities with community and public transportation in mind.

The sad part is that streetcars used to dominate american cities until General Motors and others bought and dismantled all the streetcar lines so they could sell more cars. And the people couldn't stop it from happening because GM was too powerful, so today, to the detriment of everyone, all must drive cars to get around.

I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to see how people attempt to manipulate public opinion by promoting untruths. Smart growth has to be the wave of the future, or we will choke on all the car fumes and never get to know our neighbors.

How can anyone write a book on automobiles and not include information on the coming oil crisis?
Simply put, the world in running out of fuel for cars. By not including any information on what is to be done - alternative forms of fuel, etc. - the author paints himself as being a utopian dreamer.