We must, also, examine the world around us and think through our lives and landscape. We must probe why we put the pedal to the metal in our two- and three-car households to get from our marooned homes to our stranded offices. We must question why we travel at all, why we run – or rather drive – in circles. One doesn’t have to adopt a Luddite mentality or the “voluntary simplicity” of environmental purists to consider our restless lives and to wonder what accounts for America’s belief scheme based on hypermobility. It is time to question the dream of mobility that has set us on an odyssey to nowhere. Where is it written that dwellers in the next century will find more contentment in an asphalt nation than in 'a greened and pleasant land'?


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. 357