I have a piece in the latest issue of the American Prospect called “This Is How You’ll Get There.” It’s a review of two books: Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us), by journalist Tom Vanderbilt, and Reinventing the Automobile: Personal Urban Mobility for the 21st Century, by three brilliant supergeeks (two from GM’s advanced auto division; one from MIT’s Smart Cities program).
I know book reviews aren’t the most exciting genre in the world, but I quite like this one, mainly because the books kind of blew my mind. The first is about the quirks and dysfunctions of our current transportation system; the second is about the transportation system of the future. Though Reinventing the Automobile is written in dry, wonky engineer-speak, it adds up to something fairly radical. The message: building 21st century transportation means building 21st century cities.
Anyway, go read it!
