My thoughts exactly
I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately. Mostly I’ve been trying to finish Lewis Mumford’s massive book The City in History. It’s something I started way back in Minneapolis but never had the time to finish. But now that I have a long bus ride to and from work every day, it’s going quite well.
It’s a book that picks up steam as it goes on. Near the end, Mumford really lays into capitalism and its ill effects on society in general and the city, specifically. I can’t say there’s a lot that I disagree with. When I get done with it, I plan on putting up a few of my favorite quotes from the book for posterity.
But I just couldn’t let this one get by. It’s from an article in the New York Times discussing public art in the city’s subway stops. Having just experienced the city for the first time, and being from the underpopulated Midwest myself, I understand her completely.
“I grew up in Kansas and fell in love with the subways on the first day of my adult life in New York. After years of untold subway time — spent watching, listening, reading — I would say that large, active systems of mass transit are the main difference between the red and the blue states of the 2000 electoral map (California excepted). People who travel only by private car — most of America — can too easily stick to their own kind and cling to their prejudices and misconceptions without the threat of contradictory experiences.”
