Article
From one American hell to another
As a part of a class about the history of technology, I’ve been reading Life Under A Cloud, by Allan M. Winkler. In this book, which talks about public controversy surrounding atomic energy and weapons, chpater five is devoted to civil defense.
Throughout much of the Cold War, two theories about civil defense dominated the government’s actions. The first (which most people are familiar with) is good old fashioned protection. A much-debated fear about atomic fallout led to the construction of underground shelters in every town nationwide. Old buildings still bear the stamped metal sign proudly — in fact, today I spotted one on a Main Street warehouse.
Fewer people know of America’s grand plans for evacuation and urban decentralization. After realizing that many home-built shelters were totally inadequate (and awakening to a fear that the Russians might think we were hiding), the administration changed its tune. Two major programs were begun to protect our cities and citizens during a nuclear attack.
Urban decentralization became a priority toward the end of the Truman administration. The National Industrial Dispersion Policy of 1951 required that federal aid for industry (of which there was plenty) be given only to businesses that promised to build factories away from the dense, high-risk city centers. The new direction was picked up by city planners, who considered the need for dispersion when guiding new construction.
Fast forward 50 years, and you arrive in a world where the majority of manufacturing and other business operations are centralized in suburban office and industrial parks. As the jobs moved out of the cities, so did the workers — and today’s suburban landscape sprawls far beyond the originally imagined bounds of our cities. In Suburban Nation, Duany, Plater-Zyberk, and Speck bemoan this trend, citing the strict zoning policies that forced work, home, and shopping apart as they grew out.
Linked to decentralization is the government policy of evacuation that came into favor during the Eisenhower administration. “Duck and cover” gave way to “run like hell” as government leaders began to recommend evacuation as the best way to avoid nuclear destruction.
But evacuation required an adequate system of roads. The 1956 act creating an interstate highway system provided easier automobile access to the suburbs [to which Americans had been forced in the push toward urban decentralization] and, at the same time, an expeditious means of exit from the cities in case of nuclear war.
So, the building of suburbia was not the only detriment the atomic scare contributed to our nation’s landscape. “Civil defense” is also to blame for all those damn roads! While our interstate system, which stretches grandly from coast to coast, has a certain element of romantic appeal (the open road and such), it also reflects an American fixation on automobile transport that has spread us out, destroyed our communities and poisoned our air.
Duany and company lay poor transportation planning to blame for ruining notions of what a neighborhood (or town, or city) should be:
Highways were routed directly through the centers of our cities, enviscerating entire neighborhoods and splitting downtowns into pieces. Meanwhile, the commercial strip attached itself like a parasite to the highway between cities, impeding through traffic and blighting the countryside in the process.
It’s not as if we lacked the knowledge to do roads right — even Norman Bel Geddes, a highway planning visionary said, “Motorways must not be allowed to infringe upon the city” — but that seemed to be lost in the frenzied push to cover the continent in concrete. Eisenhower was particularly excited with his achievement, and best of all, it was all in the name of protecting America from the persistent communist threat.
Certainly, more than the government’s Cold War policies are to blame for modern suburban America. But they are part of a post-war atmosphere that motivated action — sometimes against the better judgement that hindsight allows us to see — which shaped our country in the most powerful of ways.