Recent Streetsblog NYC posts about Car Culture

Nano Technology

By Sarah Goodyear | Jan 14, 2008 | 10 Comments

The much-hyped and much-criticized Tata Nano, a car that will hit the Indian market retailing for a mere 100,000 rupees — the equivalent of $2,500 — got a perplexing nod of approval from the Economist newsmagazine last week: Commuting in India’s cities can be both cosy and deadly. Children squeeze snugly between father at the […]

Lincoln: The Powerful Don’t Take Transit

By Brad Aaron | Jan 9, 2008 | 12 Comments

Last year rapper Common signed with Lincoln as the "new face" of its Navigator SUV. The first TV spot of the campaign debuted in November on NBC’s Sunday night NFL broadcast, and continues in heavy rotation during the playoffs. In the ad, shot in Chicago, Common reflects on his roots in the Windy City, his […]

When It Comes to Auto Supremacy, No Island Is an Island

By Brad Aaron | Jan 7, 2008 | 14 Comments

Through circumstances too convoluted to go into here, I found myself on a huge cruise ship over the holiday break, bound for the Eastern Caribbean. Our first port of call was San Juan, Puerto Rico, which is much the same as Aaron Naparstek left it two years ago: [Old San Juan’s] biggest assets are these […]

Disney’s Highway to Hell

By Brad Aaron | Dec 20, 2007 | 27 Comments

This scarifying nine-minute peek into an auto-enslaved Disney world of the future, as seen from 1958, is as amazing for what it gets right (like urban sprawl) as much as what is laughably off the mark (like urban sprawl = Utopia). Notice how skinny everyone is, though no one ever walks (except dad, from his […]

Hats and Top Coats: Unsung Casualties of Car Culture

By Alex Marshall | Dec 17, 2007 | 24 Comments

What we wear or don’t wear — fashion, that is — tells a lot about how we live, including how we get around. Take the hat, for example. The wonderful broad-brimmed, high-peaked bowlers, boaters, derbies and fedoras worn by men, and the even more extensive variety worn by women, some with precarious architectural acrobatics. What […]

Driving: Teenage America’s Deadliest Preventable Epidemic

By Brad Aaron | Dec 12, 2007 | 19 Comments

A 17-year-old driver killed two in this recent Queens crash. Automobile crashes are the number one killer of teenagers in the United States, with nearly 6,000 deaths a year for the past decade, and more than 300,000 injuries annually. Yet millions of parents continue to let their kids drive unsupervised, many of them counting on […]

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