28 February 2014

Pedestrians vs. vehicles


A post earlier this week about "jaywalking" raised questions about the relative priority given by society to automobiles vs. pedestrians.  In that light these photos are interesting.  The top one, from a photoessay at the Telegraph entitled "How cars changed England," is captioned:
Kensal Green, 1921.  Not a single car to be seen. Streets such as this were built for the lower middle classes, and are now choked with parked cars.
There are a dozen more relevant images at the link.  The image below was in the Guardian a couple days ago -


- entitled "Manhattan, 1918":
Pedestrians, horse-drawn carriages, cars and open-top buses throng the intersection of 5th Avenue and 42nd Street in midtown Manhattan, New York City.
A lot of change in a time span of just one human life.  Food for thought.

Credit: Photograph: Kadel and Herbert/ National Geographic Society/Corbis [sepia removed]

1 comment:

  1. These posts remind me of the proposals offered by visionary designers of the 1920s and 1930s to simplify human-vehicle relations. Invariably motor traffic was given dominion over the ground level while pedestrians were confined to elevated walkways where they wouldn't be in the way.

    ReplyDelete

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...