The Mismeasure of the American Street

The urban ground floor of the typical American city is comparatively privatized, exclusive, and unconducive to diverse local purposes. Proponents of more versatile and inviting urban environments are likely to hear that their proposals face insuperable cultural obstacles. In fact, these obstacles themselves began as contested, heterodox, and farfetched innovations. In the twentieth century, the typical American city street was radically transformed. Novel standards, initially controversial, legitimized and ostensibly necessitated the changes. The new measures were prescriptive, mandating vehicular storage, speed, and throughput over other important urban functions. Valuable street uses that were inconsistent with these criteria were either redefined as nuisances or, more often, omitted from calculations entirely, thereby mismeasuring their value at zero. The effects included privatization of public space and public services, the erosion of proximity and its practical benefits, the neglect of local needs in favour of regional demands, burdensome expenses for those seeking to retain practical mobility, and mobility impairment for the rest. More inclusive measures remain marginalized as heterodox ‘alternatives’, and are therefore often thwarted. Their ultimate success will require demystifying the predominant standards by revealing their contested origins as the original heterodox and farfetched alternatives. Inclusive histories of the authoritative measures of the American street reveal them to be unscientific mismeasures, historically anomalous and therefore unworthy of the authority they still hold.