GEORGE A. GONZALEZ - fieldi

66THE POLITICS OF AIR POLLUTIONPreston goes on to observe that “the result of the private use of motorcars andcity decision makers’ desire for bigness was an Atlanta by 1930 whichembraced a 221.31 square-mile area” (150).While I only highlight three, albeit important, cases here, it appears thatthe politics surrounding the automobile and trolley during the 1920s and1930s in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Atlanta were replicated to one degree oranother throughout the United States. Foster (1981), in his history documentingthe concomitant rise of the automobile and demise of the trolley inthe United States, writes that the automobile, on the one hand, won “theminds of most transportation planners” (91), and, on the other, “althoughthere was some concern even in the 1920s over pollution caused by exhaustemissions, there was no crusade against” the automobile (109). Moreover,Foster contends that it was the public’s general apathy toward, and ignoranceabout, the actual financial state of the trolley that lead to the failure of mostU.S. cities to move to save urban streetcar systems:The 1930s brought the continued decline of the public transit industry ingeneral and the street railway in particular. Obviously, the most importantfactor behind this decline was the public’s preference for individualized masstransit. However, mass transit industry officials must bear some of theblame. Despite growing numbers of pessimists within the industry, too manymass transit executives still deluded the public about the health of America’strolley systems. Partly for this reason, they failed to develop a consensusabout the industry’s weaknesses and effectively dramatize their requirements.Had either public officials or transportation engineers foreseen masstransit’s bleak future, they might have taken more effective steps.Foster adds that “the country may have lost its last real chance to preserve ordevelop viable public transportation systems at reasonable cost during theDepression” (131).CONCLUSIONPolitics and public policies played central roles in the rise of the automobilein the United States. These politics and public policies have to a significantdegree been historically shaped by large land holders and land developers.Beginning with the trolley, means of rapid transportation were subservient tothe interests and preferences of real estate concerns. With the advent of theautomobile, many of the larger players in the real estate field quickly seizedupon this form of transportation as a means to further maximize the value oftheir land through low-density development on the urban periphery. Theseactors, working through such organizations as the NAREB, developed andpromoted the private and public planning methods necessary to accommodatethe automobile and provide the environs which would attract buyers to