GEORGE A. GONZALEZ - fieldi

112THE POLITICS OF AIR POLLUTION6. An example of token, but high profile, enforcement occurred in Chicagowhen “over ... several years the [Pennsylvania] railroad accumulated $10 fines inseven cases.” Stradling and Tarr (1999) explain that while these “fines were small, thepublicity accompanying them was strongly negative” (688).7. Both Grinder (1980) and Stradling (1999) offer engineers as an autonomousinterest group in the air pollution debate. At times such professionals did advocate forgovernment regulation of air pollution emissions. As Dewey (2000, 8) argues, however,given their dependence on industrial firms for employment, it is difficult to seesuch professionals as politically autonomous. He points out that such professionalsregularly offered the technical rationale for industry opposition to government mandatedsmoke controls. Moreover, David Noble (1977) demonstrates that the engineeringprofession, virtually from its inception, was shaped politically by corporatefirms and economic elites. Reflective of this, to the extent that engineers and theirprofessional organizations argued for the reduction of smoke emissions, they exclusivelyproposed technological solutions (Grinder 1980; Stradling 1999; Dewey 2000),as opposed to questioning the practice of locating factories and investments in alreadyhighly polluted areas.CHAPTER FOURREAL ESTATE AND THE RISE OF THE AUTOMOBILE1. In addition to real estate interests advocacy for the suburbanization of urbanpopulations, progressive activists and government officials argued that urban congestionwas a central cause of crime, poverty, and maladies. As a result, these actorsencouraged trolley firms to expand their lines into sparsely populated zones in orderto ease congestion. Moreover, urban middle-class elements often agitated for theintroduction of trolley cars into undeveloped land so they could escape the overcrowdingand pollution that characterized city centers.2. Leading the political fight against fare increases were real estate interests andthe owners of retail outlets. Real estate concerns saw inexpensive transportation askey in the sale of outlying subdivisions. Retail firms viewed inexpensive trolley transportationas central to bringing in customers from affluent suburbs (McShane 1974,31–32; Crump 1988, 200–201).3. In London, for example, the city government recently instituted a heavy taxfor those drivers who take their automobiles into the central city district during businesshours (Kennedy 2003).4. The one business group in Chicago, and other urban areas, that looked negativelyupon urban sprawl were downtown interests, who saw sprawl as underminingtheir position as the center of commerce for the city (Fogelson 2001).5. The one major exception to this trend occurred in Toronto, where the trolleycontinued to thrive into the 1960s (Davis 1979).6. Foster (1981) explains that “Chicago spent the staggering sum of $340 millionover a thirty-year period on street widening alone. ... That was more than twice theestimated cost of a comprehensive subway system at 1923 prices” (93).