(Canastota, NY – Feb. 2014) The second 2014 Canalside Talk “How Cars Conquered Our Cities” will take place on Monday, Feb. 10, at 7 p.m. at the Canastota Public Library.
Historian Dr. Brian Ladd will present a visual PowerPoint program that is sponsored by the Canal Town Museum and the Library, with the support of the NY Council for the Humanities, and is free to the public.
Cars are part of the larger history of transportation moving from canal to rail to highway. The automobile permitted motorists to go more places, more quickly and comfortably. The motorist’s gain was not always a benefit to the community. Cars brought noise, fumes, and mortal danger, and they led us to rebuild our towns, which are now organized around highway strips and expressways and parking lots, rather than main streets and town squares and neighborhood sidewalks.
This illustrated talk charts a century of reactions to the intrusion of cars into cities. It shows how the goal of traffic flow led to suburbs, neighborhoods, and entire cities being rebuilt around motor travel. The lecture permits listeners to consider what has been gained and lost in our freeway-centered life.
Ladd is an Adjunct Research Associate at SUNY Albany.
He has written two books plus a documentary film on Berlin. His newest book, Autophobia: Love and Hate in the Automotive Age, has an American and international focus. He has taught history at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Union College, and the University at Albany (SUNY), and has been a Fellow of the American Academy in Berlin.