Jay Walljasper, Senior Fellow at On the Commons and editor of OnTheCommons.org, created OTC’s book All That We Share: A Field Guide to the Commons. A speaker, communications strategist and writer and editor, he chronicles stories from around the world that point us toward a more equitable, sustainable and enjoyable future. He is author of The Great Neighborhood Book and a senior associate at the urban affairs consortium Citiscope. Walljasper also writes a column about city life for Shareable.net and is a Senior Fellow at Project for Public Spaces and Augsburg College’s Sabo Center for Citizenship and Learning. For more of his work, see JayWalljasper....
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A Goofy Way to Design Our Cities
A Disney cartoon from 1950 shows how streets were transformed from a commons for everyone into the exclusive property of motorists
By Jay Walljasper
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As wild as it might seem today, streets were once a commons used by everyone. People walked there, biked there, boarded streetcars there, even stopped there to have conversations with their neighbors.
But in the second half of the 20th Century, that all changed. Streets became the exclusive property of automobiles, and everybody else had better get out of the way— or else!
An old Disney cartoon, starring a character looking likes very much like Goofy, shows how this Tragedy of the Streets came to pass. It can be watched on the website of Bike Walk Twin Cities , one of many organizations that have popped up recently to reclaim the streets for pedestrians.
p(photo-credits). photo by photojordi.com under a Creative Commons license with no commercial use or adaptions
Posted June 30, 2009
