Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: laurenvogelbaumb here with another classic from the podcast's archives. This
Speaker 1: one goes into the history of suburbs in the United States,
Speaker 1: specifically why they were all built seemingly to discourage anyone
Speaker 1: from walking anywhere. Hey brain Stuff, I'm Lauren Vogelbaum. And
Speaker 1: if you've ever driven through the sprawl of an American suburb,
Speaker 1: you know that the streets twist and turn, even in
Speaker 1: the absence of hills. Rarely are they set up like
Speaker 1: a grid. Take one wrong turn and you could end
Speaker 1: up looping around a cul de sac forever. It can
Speaker 1: feel like. But how did these winding streets become so
Speaker 1: ubiquitous with the suburbs. The answer lies in the days
Speaker 1: following the Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Speaker 1: Though the period led to all of the modern technologies
Speaker 1: and food ways we currently enjoy at the time, it
Speaker 1: seriously worsened living conditions for many city dwellers. We spoke
Speaker 1: with Paul Knight, an architectural and urban designer here in
Speaker 1: Atlanta and the executive director of the Douglas C. Allen
Speaker 1: Institute for the Study of cities. He said, at any
Speaker 1: time before the early twentieth century, you really did not
Speaker 1: want to live in the cities, especially after the Industrial
Speaker 1: Revolution in places like London and New York. They were filthy,
Speaker 1: they were truly dangerous. Along came British urban planner Ebenezer Howard.
Speaker 1: In eighteen ninety eight, he published the book Tomorrow, A
Speaker 1: Peaceful Path to Social Reform, which was reissued in nineteen
Speaker 1: oh two as Garden Cities of Tomorrow. Knight said of
Speaker 1: the book, one of the ideas that came out of
Speaker 1: Ebenezer's work was this idea of living in the country
Speaker 1: and then working in the city, so that you could
Speaker 1: get the best of both worlds. Sound familiar. Thus what
Speaker 1: we know today as these suburbs were born around the
Speaker 1: turn of the twentieth century, but their early success depended
Speaker 1: on street cars, which allowed many people to travel to
Speaker 1: their jobs in the cities, and Henry foully Ward automating
Speaker 1: the assembly line and introducing the Model T car really
Speaker 1: helped the suburbs boom. But the biggest move to suburbia
Speaker 1: came after World War Two ended in nineteen forty five,
Speaker 1: millions of American gis returned for war with housing benefits,
Speaker 1: and the suburbs became the place to be for us families.
Speaker 1: So what does all this have to do with the
Speaker 1: curving streets we know today? While many big cities during
Speaker 1: the Industrial Revolution had terrible living conditions for the working class,
Speaker 1: they did have something desirable, the grid network. A look
Speaker 1: at New York City planners laid out the streets in
Speaker 1: a right angle rectangular formation, as opposed to the spoken
Speaker 1: wheel layouts of cities like Paris, and that's no accident.
Speaker 1: A grid network is efficient and it promotes walkability. The
Speaker 1: typical suburban street network spurned this layout in favor of
Speaker 1: wide roads with sweeping curves. One reason why was to
Speaker 1: make the suburbs appear closer to nature and to Ebenezer
Speaker 1: Howard's idea of living in the country. Knight said, the
Speaker 1: reason that people wanting to leave the city is that
Speaker 1: idea of a return to nature and to provide a
Speaker 1: yard for their children, and to get out of the
Speaker 1: unsafe environment of the city. It's just this bucolic idea.
Speaker 1: If you want to promote this idea of nature and
Speaker 1: natural topography, then you can't have this rigid grid iron
Speaker 1: on your landscape. You've got to curve the streets in
Speaker 1: order to allow people to experience the curvilinear nature of nature.
Speaker 1: Another reason for winding streets stems from that giver of
Speaker 1: suburban life, the car. The grid network is built around
Speaker 1: the idea of people walking from place to place, but
Speaker 1: the suburbs rely on cars, and curved streets allow cars
Speaker 1: to travel faster than the grid network, which has constant
Speaker 1: stops at intersections. But curving streets have a cost. They
Speaker 1: are less walkable, precisely because they make four longer roads
Speaker 1: with fewer intersections. The road network also has fewer streets
Speaker 1: than a grid pattern, which means less street frontage and
Speaker 1: therefore less space for retail offices and other mixed use developments.
Speaker 1: Having less walkable streets with less development forces people to
Speaker 1: drive more often. That leads to another cost of curved streets,
Speaker 1: more car accidents. Urban driving can feel chaotic because of
Speaker 1: the increase in walkers and bikers, but it also creates
Speaker 1: slower speeds and therefore fewer fatal accidents. Data from the
Speaker 1: US Census Bureau backs this up. In twenty fifteen, about
Speaker 1: nineteen percent of the US population lived in rural areas,
Speaker 1: but rural fatalities accounted for forty nine percent of all
Speaker 1: traffic fatalities. The US continues to become more suburbanized, so
Speaker 1: it's unlikely that these winding streets will go away anytime soon.
Speaker 1: Knight says infill building, the development of spare land and
Speaker 1: otherwise largely settled areas, provides opportunities to change the face
Speaker 1: of these neighborhoods. The challenge to achieving the grid network
Speaker 1: in the suburbs is both political and legal. Though right
Speaker 1: now most suburbs require developers to clear hurdles in order
Speaker 1: to make a pedestrian friendly grid pattern, while those who
Speaker 1: create car centric called sac subdivisions are on easy street,
Speaker 1: Knight said the law is not in walk of favorite.
Speaker 1: Today's episode is based on the article why aren't modern
Speaker 1: suburbs built on a walkable grid? On HowStuffWorks dot Com,
Speaker 1: written by Adina Solomon. Brain Stuff is production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio in partnership with HowStuffWorks dot Com, and is
Speaker 1: produced by Tyler Plang. Four more podcasts my heart Radio,
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