We propose banning private cars from Manhattan Island. Permitted motor vehicles would be busses, small taxis, vehicles for essential services (doctor, police, sanitation, vans, etc.), and the trucking used in light industry. Present congestion and parking are unworkable, and other proposed solutions are uneconomic, disruptive, unhealthy, nonurban, or impractical. It is hardly necessary to prove that the actual situation is intolerable. “Motor trucks average less than six miles per hour in traffic, as against eleven miles per hour for horse drawn vehicles in 1911.” “During the ban on nonessential vehicles during the heavy snowstorm of February 1961, air pollution dropped 66 percent.” (New York Times, March 13, 1961.) The ... (From : bopsecrets.org.)
FLEETWOOD; or, THE NEW MAN OF FEELING. by WILLIAM GODWIN. CHAPTER VII I was in Paris, and I did as people of fashion in Paris were accustomed to do. I consoled myself for the infidelity of one mistress, by devoting my attentions to another. The qualities of the countess de B. were exceedingly unlike those of the marchioness; perhaps, led by a sentiment to which I was unconscious, I selected her for that very reason. The marchioness I have compared to the sleek and glossy-coated eel: forever restless, never contented with the thing, or the circumstances under which she was, you could never hold her to one certain mode of proceeding. the only way in which for her lover to become satisfied with her, was to persuade himself that her external demeanor was merely a guise put on, which belied her heart, and that, when she seemed mos...
Our Synthetic Environment Murray Bookchin CHAPTER THREE: URBAN LIFE AND HEALTH The Changing Urban Scene Man's environment attains a high degree of simplification in the modern metropolis. At first this may seem surprising: We normally associate metropolitan life with a diversity of individual types and with variety and subtlety in human relations. But diversity among men and complexity in human relations are social and cultural phenomena. From a biological point of view, the drab, severe metropolitan world of mortar, steel, and machines constitutes a relatively simple environment, and the sharp division of labor developed by the modern urban economy imposes extremely limited, monotonous occupational activities on many of the individuals who make their livelihood in a large city. These have not always been the characteristics of urban life. The metropolitan milieu represents a sharp departure from the forms and styles of...