Sara’s Reviews > Car Country: An Environmental History > Status Update

"Yet nature was everywhere present on city streets—albeit in a state of profound up-heaval—in the form of epidemic diseases, rotting garbage, piles of manure, smoky skies, polluted waterways, and occasional fires.¹

"The overwhelming tendency among critics, with a few important exceptions, has been to focus on cars rather than roads and on the behavior of drivers rather than the powerful forces shaping American land-use patterns."

"By 1956, when Congress funded construction of the interstate highway system, nearly all of the basic patterns underpinning the creation of car-centered landscapes—as well as nearly all of the most significant environmental problems related to heavy car use—were firmly in place. With these changes, the United States became Car Country".