Transportation Systems: Re-Shaping Urban Form Historical & Future Evolution

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Critically important to cities is the urban form that exists. The creation and support of moving people, goods, information, and services is vital to the functionality of a city. By evaluating the technological advancements in transportation and their impacts on spatial form in the United States, an interlinkage is created between the two that organized to create spatial patterns that exist today. In the context of the United States, four distinctive transportation eras and growth patterns exist. This research will critique and focus on eras of recreational automobiles (1920-1945), and the freeway era (1945-Present). Aiming to make the distinctive spatial structure that dominated each era clear. Displaying how the reorganization processes occurred after advancements in transportation were implemented, and the manipulation to the urban form that occurred as a result. This will then be used to determine how the next era of transportation will alter the existing landscapes we know today.
Keywords: transportation, urban form, spatial structure, transportation technologies

Transportation Systems: Re-Shaping Urban Form
Historical & Future Evolution
The American landscape today displays the mass consumption of space and resources of the past. These actions as a whole depict the society and cities that exist today as a result from rapid growth and industrialization. Although progress has been made, a common perception of disorder, corruption, inequality remains intact with urban form. Beginning in the early 1900’s due to the integration of rail and streetcar in the urban landscape, middle-income households were able to move out of the city to the suburbs (A migration pattern that continues over a century later). Shortly before t...

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...surrounding them. By the 1920s the development of Henry Ford assembly line had reduced the cost of ownership that made it attainable for masses. While the automobile had a strong presence in the urban core in the 1920s and 30s, infrastructure improvements were concentrated in the rural areas. Street paving and road construction would provide the farmers with greater connectivity to reach services. Where the automobile for urban residents was used for recreational activities on the weekends. By 1922, 135,00 suburban homes in 60 cities were already wholly dependent upon cars as a mode for transportation (Irrante). This increase in auto ownership resulted in a shift in mode choice, resulting in a loss of ridership. As well as residential development occurring further away from arterial rail lines; resulting in loss of revenue generation for the streetcar companies.

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