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Book Review
| Graeme Davison, Car Wars: How the Car Won our Hearts and Conquered our Cities, Allen and Unwin, Crows Nest, 2004. pp xix + 308. $29.95 paper.
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| Graeme Davison's book, Car Wars, was published a few years ago, but it is no less relevant in 2007. It focuses on Melbourne and traces the enfolding of the car into our culture and urban fabric in little less than 50 years. It was not so much a war as a great romance with a few big potholes long the way. |
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Davison places the car firmly in its post-war context with the end of austerity when only 15 per cent of journeys to work were made by car in 1951; but, by 1957, 51 per cent of Australian men drove to work (though most women still used public transport). Importantly he highlights that under Robert Menzies' Liberals,
Australians were encouraged to reorient their social identity from the traditional focus of the political parties – the relations of production – to the relations of consumption – the private world of family, home and suburb.
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The key players are comprehensively reviewed. The attraction of youth to cars, speed and their (alleged) sexual power; the battle by women to gain access to the family car, then buy one and overturn the stereotypes about 'women drivers'; the disintegration of the self-contained suburb with its variety of shops into the drive-in shopping centres, motels, petrol stations, wider streets and family trips to the bush fringes of the expanding city. The development of motorist's lobby groups are described, especially the Royal Automobile Club of Victoria (RACV), most of whose policies are still echoed today: establishing the car as the dominant form of overland transport, using road and petrol revenues for road construction, free and unfettered access to parking, and standardising and simplifying regulation. |
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The chapter, Blood on the Bitumen, gives a sober account of the battle to combat drink driving through tougher laws and breath tests; and the introduction of seat belts to reduce accident trauma. It is at this point that we are asked to curb our growing love affair with the freedom of the road. |
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The final chapters show us the orgy of politics and road building that has so much transformed our cities. In 1964 the debate got off to an emblematic start with a national conference marking the RACV's 60th anniversary. The Director of Traffic Engineering and Safety for the American Automobile Association, Burton Marsh, extolled the car and the need for unclogged arteries to carry it; while University of London's Professor of Transport, Colin Buchanan, described Los Angeles as 'the most excruciatingly unattractive place I have ever seen'. Davison reflects: 'Expansion or containment, accessibility or environmental conservation – these were the choices Melbournians faced as they stood on the threshold of mass automobilisation'. |
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The rise of the urban environmental action movement in the 1970s propelled a series of conflicts over inner city freeways and the targeting of creek line open spaces for new arterials. The battle was similarly joined in Sydney and both cities had some success in preventing destruction of inner-city communities. However, as we know from today's headlines, the push for more roads continues and still prompts popular election promises. It's only the advent of massive tunnelling technology that saved some bushland areas; but car-based transport policy remains well and truly alive. Even the introduction of tollways does not seem to have diminished our love affair. |
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There is one major gap in Davison's history. He says virtually nothing about the battle for clean air. Having lived through these campaigns I can testify that there was vociferous opposition from motor vehicle companies and motoring groups to removing lead from petrol and new emission controls. The smog that blanketed our cities was (and still is) a big health problem for tens of thousands of people. Even today our pollution controls on cars and petrol pumps lag behind overseas approaches. |
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At the end of his book, Davison tries to sound an optimistic note about the new urban ideals of inner city living and reducing the spread of urban sprawl – he does not sound very convinced – and hopes that, by knowing where we have come from, we may better navigate the road ahead. This is the role of the urban historian. |
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So does this history help us? It's a sobering message for those who want to change our cities so they become more sustainable and produce an increased public transport share of work and other trips. Surveys show that people want better and more public transport and would shift to it, having had a gutful of traffic congestion. Plans for new suburbs talk of denser development around mass transit corridors but most developers still build big houses at low density. And politicians still extol the 'right to drive' as a cherished Australian value. The campaign to 'civilise' the city must not underestimate the challenge and has to keep pushing at a metropolitan scale. It requires massive infrastructure investment in public transport so that we can achieve modern environmental ideals. |
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We're a long way from disengaging the deep roots that the car culture has sent into our society. The car won every battle and we are only starting to realise the costs of this war. |
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| Total Environment Centre, Sydney |
JEFF ANGEL | |
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