@santaclausdeadindian "What the fuck were those streets before cars, fucking playgrounds?"
[description: a black-and-white photo from the 1900s of a group of girls in pinafores standing in the middle of the street; according to the website I found it on, this is a 'street dance'. The girls are talking to each other in small groups. end description.]
Children used to play in the street all the time. And for most of recorded history, that was relatively safe. Running into someone on foot is not going to kill a child, and horses - let alone carriages- were relatively rare.
Streets used to be public spaces. People would hang out and talk in the middle of the road, or set up shop with a little cart at the side of the road. "Right of way" used to mean "your right to take up space on the street, because you are a free citizen and free citizens get to use the road."
[description: a black-and-white historical photo of two children in the middle of a mostly empty street. One child is sitting in a wagon, and the other child is standing, ready to pull it. End description.]
It wasn't until the 19th century that it became common enough for your average joe to own horses that it was unsafe for kids to play in the street (and they still did anyway!). And it wasn't until the early 20th century that people got cleared off of the street in favour of cars- before then, people and horses and carriages had to share the road, and carriages had to go at the same pace as whatever was around them.
We laugh at the insanely low speed limits of the 1910s and 1920s - really, cars can only go at 3 mph?- but they were there for a reason, and that reason was "to keep the roads safe for horses and pedestrians". If cars could go at top speeds on city roads, they'd only be safe for cars, and people couldn't use their public spaces anymore. But thanks to lobbying by the auto industry and a whoooole lot of PR spin, that's exactly what happened.
I'm going to leave you with two pictures. The first is Mulberry Street in NYC, according to wikipedia, in 1900. The second is Mulberry Street today.
[Description: two photos of city streets. The first photo is sepia-toned, from the 1900s. It shows a city street full of people and carriages. The foreground of the photo is taken up by a group of vegetable sellers, and a group of men and young children standing beside them looking at the camera. The second photo is a modern photo of the same street. It is a heavily decorated tourist district, but most of the street is taken up by cars. The sidewalks are crowded with pedestrians, but they're shoved off to the side. End description.]
Little Italy is a tourist district. It is meant to be walkable so that tourists can browse and look at all the little restaurants and window-shop. And yet 75% of this picture is taken up by a fucking car canal, and people- the people this street was built for - are shoved off to the side, so as not to get in the way.
People got forced off the road in favour of cars. People got forced out of public space in favour of cars.
And if that doesn't piss you off...
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