When Streetcars Ruled the Streets

Columbus, dwarfed

I love the story of China’s naval dominance early in the 15th century. It, deservedly, takes the West’s colonial and imperial past down a few pegs.

Further Reading: When China Ruled the Seas: The Treasure Fleet of the Dragon Throne, 1405-1433

General Motors’ bankruptcy makes their anti-competitive and illegal dismantling of US cities’ streetcar systems all the more rankling.

I’ve read the account in Duany’s Suburban Nation and elsewhere, but had never found it as compelling as Jacobs’ brief synopsis, noting:

An electric streetcar was more economical to maintain than a bus and lasted three times as long as a bus… “Families rigged to fail” Dark Age Ahead (p39)

Despite knowing both of these stories, I had never made the connection. China jettisoned their fleet; US cities ditched the streetcar.

Question: What does this have to do with families?

Jacobs’ answer: Dependence on private automobiles has been at the expense of community and family life.

Time is limited. I recently heard P.J. O’Rourke describe cars as “motorized cupholders.” It’s where we are, where we spend our time, where we break bread “together.”

It’s not all on GM; it’s not all because of the streetcar. Jacobs promises to detail more of the forces at work in American culture.

Jacobs on "Families Rigged to Fail"

I’ll probably spend a fair bit of time on the first threatened pillar of our culture that Jacobs tackles: family and community, despite this admission:

Most of my observations on North American community loss and other subjects are not news to anyone who takes an interest in the conundrums of our time and is reasonably well fortified against amnesia. “Families Rigged to Fail” Dark Age Ahead (p42)

It’s the narrative by which she weaves these observations together that is so compelling.

And prescient.

Families need communities. With strains on our time and our finances, we’ve rigged our families to fail. The current economic crisis is only the most recent riptide affecting our way of life. Familes are the basic economic unit. We’ve rigged them to fail.

You can’t focus on one issue to figure this out. Jacobs brings in streetcars, ancient Rome, the cost of housing, reliance on the automobile, and more. You can’t just focus on the family.

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Jacobs remains pithy in her rhetoric here, referring to anyone “reasonably well fortified against amnesia.” Who, reading that, would count themselves out?