Same as it ever was. (Once in a Lifetime, Talking Heads, 1980)

And you may ask yourself
Where is that large automobile?
And you may tell yourself
This is not my beautiful house!
And you may tell yourself
This is not my beautiful wife!

The main portion of the lyric is said to be based on a preacher heard on the radio by Byrne and Eno while they were DRIVING through New York!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Once_in_a_Lifetime_(Talking_Heads_song)

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1132/is_n3_v46/ai_15608012
http://www.streetsblog.org/2007/02/26/a-weekend-subway-ride-with-robert-moses/#comment-29436
http://www.versobooks.com/books/cdef/ef-titles/fitch_r_new_york_2e.shtml

It reads as if Robert Moses had the power to singlehandedly foist the shift to auto dependence on an unwilling public. And that shift to auto dependence was the sole cause of NYC neighborhoods previously occupied by the middle class becoming occupied by the poor.

I think Moses had power because he did what many people wanted, not people did what he wanted because he had power over them. At the time there were rich people who had cars and aspirational people who wanted them.

When the consequences kicked in, highway building virtually stopped in this country. People still wanted more and bigger cars, but not highways in their neighborhood. Now other consequences have come along.

Moreover, NY stopped building transit lines because it started rebuilding the existing system, something that is still not finished. Until the 1970s, when infrastructure investment in the NY area stopped entirely, road and transit.

And neighborhoods with no highways anywhere near them became poorer, such as Bushwick, Bedford Stuyvesant and Browsville, while those with highways sometimes did not, like Windsor Terrace. His argument that highways caused neighborhood change is based on the timing of white flight in one location -- East Tremont.

Moses was important, and did many things that turned out to be good and many things that turned out to be bad. But let's not ignore the individual decisions of millions of people and tens of thousands of business and other organizations when discussing what caused change.

I think the most destructive part of Robert Moses' legacy, even more than what he did, is what he didn't do. He effectively stopped federal and other money from flowing into mass transit for generations. Imagine how history might have been different if this brilliant man had been interested in multimodal transport instead of just cars and roads. It practically makes me cry.

I was once given (and unfortunately threw away) some old Life magazines from the same era. What struck me was a bunch of two-page ads from the Ford Motor Company, presenting the automobile (and the suburbs) as an escape to a new, better way of life.

You weren't just buying a means of transportation. You were buying a way of life and a dream.

One of them was titled "escape to the greenbelt" which talked about how kids in the cities went bad, until the first automobiles changed things by allowing families to escape to a more natural environment (which looked nothing like Hempstead Turnpike).

Would make a great project for some young, artistically capable folk to collect and duplicate -- with a different message. Our values are shaped on Madison Avenue, not in our churches, schools and homes I'm afraid.

Actually, two of the four or five significant crimes in Windsor Terrace in the past two decades have been just that -- attacks after being followed home from the subway, one rape at 4 am, one push-in murder. I tell my daughers to beware of people following them, and push-in attacks.

On the other hand, there have been at least two widely publicized auto accident deaths in my hood that time as well, in addition to someone struck by lightning nearby in Prospect Park and some 9/11 deaths.

provides mobile shelter for rakes intent on seducing his daughters

Maybe I should see if it works at the next Community Board meeting, though!

Actually, at a 1998 hearing I attended on a proposal to expand the bus system in Albuquerque, one City Council member - who probably wasn't much older than I am now - said that he was concerned that if his teenage daughter could ride a bus home from the mall, then some creep could get off the bus behind her and attack her.