The American Dream has run out of gas. The car has stopped. It no longer supplies the world with its images, its dreams, its fantasies.-J.G. Ballard

Tall Tales.  The story of the American transportation infrastructure system is one of heroic planning, but also of equally heroic rhetoric. At each stage in its evolution – be it the canals and waterways of the Gallatin Plan, the Intercontinental Railways, or the Interstate Highway system – the connection between the pragmatic realities of steel and concrete and the cultural myths which support them has been tenuous at best. Yet each is inextricably linked to the other, and in many cases essential to its success. As we embark on the next national transit planning initiatives, these myths will inevitably become wrapped around a new set of objectives; providing meaning and purpose to the practical endeavors of transit planning.

In particular, the myth of the Frontier has been widely adapted throughout American history as a means to rationalize, justify, or shore up the American psyche in tumultuous times. In a John Tirman article on Frontierism in modern politics, he writes that “The myth has been remarkably resilient. Not only did it inform American expansion globally during the presidencies of FDR and Truman, but the uncertainties posed by the Cold War, the nuclear arms race, and subsequent crises of confidence.”

If the Pacific Railway Act of 1862 presented the image of the frontier to the American psyche, the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act of 1956 gave the same means of exploration to the individual. Stories of the open road, freedom, exploration, and the romantic independence that accompanies the automobile are pervasive in art, literature, film, music, and advertising. The interstate system also transformed the physical landscape. As catalogued by architects Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, landscape architect James Corner, photographer Alex Maclean, and many others, auto-centric development created a host of new architectural types we now take for granted: roadside motels, drive-thru restaurants, shopping malls, and the notorious sprawl of suburban development.

Out of Gas.  While stories of the frontier continue to elicit dreams of exploring the untamed wilderness, in reality,  ‘The West’ was ‘won’ not by heroic individualism, but through bold planning strategies on a national scale. In his article for the Rockefeller Urban Summit, Robert Fishman describes “the greatest paradox of national planning is that Americans have practiced it so successfully while continually claiming it doesn’t exist.”  The very idea that planning can be effective at this scale runs counter to the strong undercurrents of self-determination and independence that created this country.  Yet, as Fishman points out, our history has been fundamentally defined by initiatives that were continental both in scope and support.

The Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991 proposed major changes to national transportation policy and funding, marking a shift toward what former US Deputy Secretary of Transportation Mortimer Downey calls the “Post-Interstate Era”. While we are only beginning to see the outcome of these measures, it is important to consider how the changing face of transit will affect the rest of the built environment, anticipating and encouraging progressive design strategies. After years of growing misalignment between the myth and reality, perhaps now there is an opportunity to recast the myth of rugged individualism with one of networked collaboration.

Mythical Urbanism.  A recent Brookings Institute article states that “while America is more metropolitan than ever, the Nation’s policies and structures rarely match economic reality.” In terms of economic contribution, the country can be described as the sum of its one hundred or so major metropolitan areas, often overlapping state boundaries. However, funding and policies are still being handled on a state by state basis due to bureaucratic inertia and entrenched political interests. The country continues to operate under the auspices of the same mythology that created the first layers of American transportation infrastructure.

Not only do we need a new plan for national transit, new funding mechanisms and financial distribution methods, but we also need a new cultural myth. Like Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, the possibilities for reimagining the built environment are vast. Just as Calvino continues to describe the same city in uniquely creative ways, our new planning strategies should also envision our cities not as alternatives to some bucolic idealization of wilderness, but as something completely different.

All Images Courtesy of Photographer, Alex Maclean.