The pandemic shows what cars have done to cities

Along streets suddenly devoid of traffic, pedestrians get a fresh look at all the space that motor vehicles have commandeered...

‘The single-occupancy car itself is the original social-distancing machine. Knoflacher has likened it to a virus—a pathogen that has infiltrated its host (the city) and hijacked its molecular infrastructure to create a more welcoming environment for its own replication. “Normal human social behavior,” he writes, is transformed “into the rules of road traffic regulations in which car traffic [has] advantages in relation to all other users of public space.” We have laws to ensure sufficient parking, but no laws to ensure sufficient parks. So complete is the viral takeover that when President Donald Trump and others seek to minimize the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic, they equate its number of victims with the largely preventable death toll from traffic crashes—as if losing tens of thousands of Americans in that way every year were perfectly acceptable.’

Read here (The Atlantic, April 24, 2020)