I particularly liked some of what Sorkin said in his article about the dynamics of traffic in America today. I think that his critique of the system of avoidance makes a lot of sense, but I thought that he made some dubious assertions.
The problem comes from one section where he claims that public space creates public life and interaction.[1] We have, several times, discussed this in class and come up with examples where it is not true. My personal favorite is the subway or any other mass transit solution. Nothing is more public. Lots of people are packed into a small amount of space, but it does not increase the quality of life. People hate it. No one talks to each other and to do so would violate the unwritten rules society has created for that environment. It belies some of the problem with Sorkin’s reasoning. People are spread out and prefer to take their cars over other forms of transportation because they want to avoid unnecessary interaction. People prefer not to be forced to be with other people they do not know.
The best part of Sorkin’s piece is where he is basically talking about allocation of space. He thinks about the transportation system as doling out resources. Avoidance is a costly solution.[2] To prevent the different modes of mobility from interacting requires a huge amount of resources. Tunnels, elevated roads, all of that is costly and difficult to organize. The advantage is that it does make travel more efficient. The best way to have avoidance is what they did by closing down large parts of broadway. Large swaths of avoidance makes a lot more sense because that is the only way to achieve real efficiency in any area of transit. Interstates between cities, parks, and elevated trains are all efficient. They do not have problems with congestion because they avoid the other systems for long periods of time. Again, this is not available in cities. New York cannot close the entire lower half of Manhattan to cars even if that would increase foot-traffic.
[]Sorkin, Michael, “Introduction: Traffic in Democracy,” 412.
[]Sorkin, Michael, “Introduction: Traffic in Democracy,” 412.