ENGR 101HUM 200: Technology and Society

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ENGR 101/HUM 200 Technology and Society

• October 20, 2005

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Agenda

• Exam review session reminder 6-730 pm today
• More on cars!
• Traffic as an international problem

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America and Car Culture

• Automotive industry as culture industry (Volti)
• Automotive developments as cultural developments
  (Roth)

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A Century of Automobility

• Growth of industry required enthusiasm and
  financial capital (cf. alternative energy
  research)
• Stanley Steamer (too many guages, too dangerous),
  Electric cars (womens cars), internal
  combustion

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Automobiles and

• Mobility
• Privacy
• Power
• Mechanisms that insulated people from the outside
  world.

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Automobiles and Style

• More than any other industrially produced item,
  the automobile has succeeded in capturing the
  fancy of potential customers through appeals that
  go well beyond the utilitarian. Since
  technological novelty or even technological
  sophistication has seldom been of much interest
  to American drivers, the commercial success of
  the American automobile has been driven by
  styling. Volti, page 673

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The American Car Market

• Early 20th C, 45 tariff on foreign cars
• Domestic petroleum
• Oil companies, automobile manufacturers ensured
  gas taxes in US would be kept low compared to
  other countries
• vast, open country
• Linked with suburbanization

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Whittier Boulevard

• Is geography destiny?
• Transportation planning is technical engineering
  as well as social engineering
• Robert Moses and the overpasses
• Whittier Boulevard and path dependencies (page
  732) remember the qwerty keyboard?

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Who Played a Role in the 6th St Bridge-Building?

• City of LA council
• Ceded land without reserving easements
• Union Pacific RR
• Contributed 7 million of 9 million needed
• LA City Engineers
• Suggested bond issue
• State of CA
• Initiated a gas tax

• W.F. Ault, Chamber of Commerce
• Wanted Whittier for small businesses
• John Prince, city engineer
• State Division of Highways
• City of LA Streets Division
• Edward Roybal, City Council

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Automobiles and Urban Geography

• Wrong side of the tracks
• Where do the sidewalks end?
• Uneven, cracked pavement
• Streetlights
• Crosswalks

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Building Infrastructure

• If youre an engineer, its sure easier if you
  can have a conversation with the other
  stakeholders
• If youre a city planner, its sure easier if you
  can have a conversation with the other
  stakeholders
• If youre a city resident, its sure easier if
  you can have a conversation with the other
  stakeholders

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Vocabulary

• Take-away from this course be able to have a
  conversation with people in other fields
• Values, assumptions, priorities
• Creosote-soaked wood. Cheaper? More attractive?
  Recycled? Who would say yes to this proposal and
  why?

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Traffic The Global Pandemic
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If Congestion isnt going to go away

• How have cities with the worst problems dealt
  with them?
• Mexico City, London, Manila

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London
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Mayors Proposal

• Pay to drive into the city

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Mexico City

• Serious pollution problem

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Next class

• Exam 1. Bring scantron sheet!
• Extra credit paper due before end of exam
• Next unit schedule will be handed out