Denied the right or place of assembly in a car-filled landscape, shunted from car-dominated privatized spaces, citizens allow political life to wither. The call to community formed by an intimacy with one’s surroundings and neighbors dwindles, and civic values fade.


Jane Holtz Kay, an author, journalist and architecture critic for The Nation, has written widely on the built and natural environment. Asphalt Nation: How the Automobile Took Over America, and How We Can Take It Back. New York: Crown, 1997. p. 31