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One of the most remarkable demonstrations of how difficult it can be to convince human beings of the laws of geometry and physics has come from the major battles that have been waged over congestion pricing for urban roadways. In congestion pricing schemes, drivers who enter certain parts of a traffic-choked city during peak hours are required to pay a stiff surcharge. London, England, so far the largest city to have adopted congestion pricing, charges £8 to vehicles entering the city during peak times. When it was introduced, the scheme was enormously controversial, with central businesses claiming that they would suffer devastating losses and commuters arguing that in spite of a comprehensive mass transit system, they would have great difficulty getting to work on time. In practice, the effects of congestion pricing in London seem to have been milder and mostly positive. Though some central businesses have experienced significant sales losses, the decrease in the number of cars that visit central London on any given day has been much greater than the decrease in the total number of visitors to the city, suggesting that many more people are opting to use mass transit systems. There is also no denying the health benefits of the reduction in cars in the city. Levels of carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide, two emissions products of car exhaust, are measurably lower.
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Mental distortions of space and time may also explain some of these strangely irrational preferences. Driving a car is more active
than sitting on a bus, so time can seem to pass more quickly, hence contracting perceived distances. People have many other reasons for preferring private car travel over public transit. In New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been an ardent advocate of congestion pricing, but has had to face enormous resistance to an idea that not only makes sense but is supported by the London experience. Results from an extensive telephone survey conducted on behalf of the Partnership for New York City, a group that supports congestion pricing, showed that many people chose not to use mass transit because they believed that it would increase their travel time (which is almost certainly not true), they preferred to be in control of their own movements, and they wished to avoid contact with other people. There is some irony here: the same feature that draws people into public spaces (the desire to be near and to observe others) seems to actually repel them from mass transit systems. The reason may be the type of space involved in each case—the interior of a bus or subway car is very different from a bench in Rockefeller Square.
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In our own cars, we travel while enclosed in a small portable space that we feel we own. A car provides a sense of continuity from the private spaces of home all the way to the spatial threshold of the workplace. On a more pragmatic level, the car gives us more flexible mobility—if we choose to make a detour on our way home, this is much easier to manage in a car than when using public transport.

Savvy urban planners know that in spite of our intrinsic bias toward private car travel, there are many ways to encourage people to forgo their cars in favor of other means of transport, all of which rely in some way on bringing the spatiotemporal advantages and disadvantages of car transport and public transport into closer alignment. Narrower roads, limited access to freeways, and even the timing of traffic lights can tweak the times taken to travel between common destinations in cities, and there is much evidence to show that these
measures work to shift the balance of how people move about in cities. Indeed, the early battles of Jane Jacobs that did so much to establish her reputation as one of the few voices of reason in a wilderness of howling insanity among those who built cities had much to do with such arguments. When cars are diverted from prized pedestrian areas within a city, they do not simply show up in other areas like leaking fluids seeking the quickest route to lower ground. When life is made more difficult for cars in an area of the city, the cars simply disappear. More people opt to ride buses and trains or to walk.
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Why is there a need to control traffic in cities? The main reason is that if there were no impediments to car travel, and public transport were not readily available, then our urban centers would become choked with traffic and the noise and pollution that accompany it. In addition, the numbers of cars traveling the streets would far exceed the available parking spaces in the city. Especially in North America, cities have tended to sprawl outward, thus exacerbating considerably the problem of coping with city scale. Because, in terms of total population in relation to geographic area, cities tend to be larger than they need to be, population density on the ground is thin. This low density contributes to the difficulty of providing proper public transit and makes it difficult for residents of a sprawling city to meet the ordinary needs of their lives without using private cars. Though this trend toward sprawl in cities has accelerated tremendously in the latter half of the twentieth century, it has its roots in the very beginnings of colonization of the North American continent by Europeans in the seventeenth century.

In his seminal account of the origins of suburban sprawl,
The Geography of Nowhere
, Howard Kunstler points out that from its inception, the concept of property ownership in North America departed
from some important European traditions. In Europe, ownership of land was deemed to be a public trust. A part of the trust was an understanding that one would undertake proper stewardship of the land for the common good. In America, on the other hand, land was considered much more strictly an economic resource. The main point of land ownership was that it could be leveraged into financial success. Because of this tendency to see land as a form of currency, much less attention was paid to the relationship between the topography of an area and its conceptual value in economic units. So land was subdivided in straightforward grids of regular geometric units, a pattern easily seen in many cities (New York is the classic example, with its regular and monotonous layout of city blocks). This manner of land subdivision, as we now know, not only ignores the importance of geographic features but also neglects the important contributions of our mental topography to the ways that we view, understand, and use city spaces.
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This way of thinking about land also nurtured fierce defense of individual jurisdiction over land use. If land is money, then nobody would want to be told how they should use their currency. These two factors—jealously guarded rights over land and a tendency to parcel it out without regard for the hills, dales, rivers, and streams of real geography and their influence on the human psyche and how we deal with space—conspired to produce rapidly industrialized cities, so that real estate could generate as much income as possible. As a consequence, urban areas became horrible places to live. Streets were packed with factories spewing all manner of noise, heat, and toxic wastes. Workers were packed cheek by jowl into tenements owned by slumlords who felt they possessed a divine right to treat their tenants to any amount of physical deprivation.

In light of the degeneration of the urban environment, those who could afford to do so looked for ways to flee from the city.

The first suburbs in North America took advantage of the advent of railroad lines that made it possible for the affluent to make the daily commute to a city workplace, but in many other respects these suburbs resembled some of those we might find in modern North American cities. Building lots were huge by city standards (an acre or more) and roads built for horse and cart were wide and winding; both features provided privacy for residents and helped to complete the illusion that they were living in the country. From the beginning such suburbs were designed to be free of mixed use. Any goods required by the wealthy suburbanites could be delivered to their door by courier. Meeting halls, gathering places, markets, or any form of public space was entirely absent.

The advent of the automobile changed much about the suburbs. For one thing, affordable transit for the masses served to democratize these areas by bringing them within easy reach of the middle class. Because of this, suburban areas have grown to enormous proportions around just about all major and midsized North American cities. Though much has changed in the way we think about life in cities, the main features of suburbs have not changed at all. They are replete with winding roads that enhance privacy but discourage pedestrians. The byzantine layout of streets, often named after the trees, plants, and animals that were uprooted to build them, is unintelligible in Hillier’s sense. A more critical problem is that there is little to do in monofunctional areas devoid of public places. Houses in suburbs are designed explicitly to facilitate an automobile-centered style of life, so the streets are empty of pedestrians. The most prominent part of the house facade is usually the garage door, complete with a remote-controlled power door opener so that commuting homeowners can drive directly from the office parking lot to the interior of their living space without once making contact with the outside
world. Those who dare to venture onto the streets on foot often face some peril, simply because pedestrians are so rare (not to mention difficult to see as drivers negotiate one sinuous turn after another) that they risk being run over.

Some years ago, my wife and I, having tired of running up and down the creaky, narrow stairs of our old urban house with many armfuls of children, decided to give life a try in an “upscale executive suburban home” as the realtors called it. The living was easy, comfortable, quiet, and ultimately soul destroying for us. The turning point came at a neighborhood meeting that was called to address the increasing traffic density in our neighborhood caused by drivers speeding past our houses to shave a few seconds off their commute to an adjoining new subdivision. The problem became so severe that we had to ban our children from playing in front of our house on the corner for fear that an out-of-control car would mount the curb and kill someone. When we suggested that the situation could be solved easily and cheaply by closing the crucial shortcut street at no detriment to any of the residents of the affected areas, a city official told us that such a solution would split the neighborhood. Residents on each side of the closed road would no longer be able to visit each other. When we suggested that those so affected could simply walk to one another’s houses, the traffic engineer curtly replied, “They won’t.” The issue was closed. We put our house on the market a few days later.

In the second half of the twentieth century, urban sprawl accelerated dramatically. The urban area of Atlanta ballooned to over 160 kilometers when measured from north to south. Detroit’s population actually decreased by 2 percent while its land area increased by 45 percent. And urban sprawl is not just a North American phenomenon. Brussels, Frankfurt, Munich, and Zurich all showed decreases in population density in the late twentieth century. Even
Copenhagen, a showpiece city for improving pedestrian access to the urban core, had a net decrease in population density.
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There is much to enjoy in the suburbs. Houses and building lots are often gigantic. Quiet cul-de-sacs can serve as safe play areas for children or even, if conditions are ideal, gathering places for adults. Provided one has access to a car, it can be easy to manage the great distances involved in meeting the day-to-day needs of life, such as finding groceries, health care, recreation, and entertainment. Wayfinding can present some challenges, but as such challenges are usually confronted while behind the wheel of a car, little real effort is expended when one becomes lost. Because of the lack of public spaces, making social contacts in suburban settings can be difficult. As one is less likely to make chance encounters with neighbors on the street, building local social networks can involve knocking on doors and making explicit invitations to share time in the private spaces of homes. Only the most gregarious individuals in such neighborhoods are interested or able to cross such thresholds.

There are many significant reasons for us to be concerned about the sustainability of this type of suburban development. Sprawl consumes vast amounts of agricultural land on the edges of cities, and disturbs watersheds, disrupting both ecologies and supplies of potable water. The horizontal expansion of cities encourages the use of cars. Apart from the links between carbon dioxide emissions and climate change, smog has deleterious effects on health. Smog-related deaths are on the rise in many major cities, and some estimates suggest that smog kills more people annually than do car accidents. Many believe that the time of cheap oil is coming to an end. Globally, we are beginning to demand oil more rapidly than it can be supplied. Whether or not one agrees with the doomsayers who suggest that we are at or just beyond the crest of oil production and are now poised for a downward slide into indescribable
economic and social collapse, there can be no denying that fossil fuels will eventually run out. In the long run, a way of life that is built on the assumption that the supply of cheap fuel is endless is not sustainable.
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In response to this broad constellation of factors—a degenerating environment, research showing that our failing air is not only killing the plants and animals that we share a home with but killing us as well, and heightened awareness that the economic meaning of physical distance is strongly tied to the cost of the fuel required to get from one place to another—many regions are considering or have already adopted so-called smart growth agendas that call for limits to sprawl, urban intensification, enticements for mixed use in urban cores, and measures meant to lure people out of their cars and onto the streets. Can what we know of human spatial cognition and wayfinding contribute to such agendas?

A pioneering legislative scheme for decreasing sprawl was the State of Oregon’s imposition of rules for urban growth boundaries in 1973. This incredibly forward-thinking act has had the effect of combating sprawl in, for example, the city of Portland, where population density has increased, the downtown core has remained vibrant and interesting, and watersheds and agricultural lands surrounding the city have been preserved.
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This is not to suggest that there’s paradise in Portland, however. In spite of the regulations, Portland’s urban boundary has slowly stretched outward and there is still traffic congestion. In addition, Portland, like other cities that have encouraged urban intensification such as Vancouver and Melbourne, has seen exponential growth in property valuations.