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Massachusetts Institute of Technology

How Cars Took Over America

Abstract

dc:description.abstract

America has a love affair with the automobile, as the saying goes. The average American household has 1.88 cars. Songs like “Life is a Highway,” “On the Road Again,” and countless others celebrate the car. Americans have accepted endless sprawl, hours stuck in traffic, car crashes, and lung disease because they loved cars from the beginning. Or did they? I will dig into the history of how car-centrism took over the country to explore an alternative theory: what if Americans didn’t choose cars out of love, or even at all? What if a car-centric country was largely forced on Americans, and a narrative of “love” spun after the fact?

Degree

thesis:*
Name thesis:degree_name
Master
Department dc:contributor.department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Urban Studies and Planning
Grantor dc:publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Year dc:date.issued
2023

Author and committee

dc:creator, dc:contributor.*
Author dc:creator
  • Strauss, Ilana
Advisor dc:contributor.advisor
  • Sevtsuk, Andres

Rights

dc:rights
Statement dc:rights
  • In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted
  • Copyright retained by author(s)

Identifiers

dc:identifier.*
Handle dc:identifier.uri
https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/152471
OAI identifier oai:identifier
oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/152471

Chain of custody

source
Harvested from
MIT
Base URL
dspace.mit.edu/oai/request
Last updated
2026-07-22
Source record
OAI-PMH GetRecord
related terms
citation

Strauss, Ilana. How Cars Took Over America. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2023. https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/152471