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of the safe “unsafe” intersection is Confusion Corner in Stuart, Florida, where seven streets and an at-grade railroad track all meet at odd angles. The state D.O.T. was prepared to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to reconfigure the entire area because their manuals suggested that it must be dangerous. Local citizens, however, defended their notorious intersection, the community’s prime postcard-worthy location. Despite the intersection’s reputation, studies revealed that it was among the region’s safest major intersections, with only one accident in its multidecade history. The deadliest local intersections were all the standard D.O.T. models.

The safety of perceived danger: older, difficult intersections are actually safer than their carefully engineered counterparts because they cause drivers to slow down

Those readers who are skeptical that unusual intersections are actually safer will be surprised to learn that traffic accidents in Sweden dropped by 17 percent when the country switched from driving on the left side of the street to the right. As motorists slowly became accustomed to the new rule, accidents returned to their earlier rate. t

The practice of using roadway geometry to improve safety has come to be known as traffic calming, which is developing into a fairly elaborate discipline with many tools at its disposal. Speed bumps, rumble strips, hammerheads, flare-outs, doglegs, and other combinations of geometry, landscape, and street furniture can be effective in lowering drivers’ speed on local streets. Following successes in Europe, American communities have begun to install these devices, with good results. While this development is encouraging, it is important to note that traffic calming is often necessary only because streets have been built the wrong way to begin with, unnecessarily wide and with too much distance between intersections. Rather than continuing to build local roads like highways and subsequently hobbling them with speed bumps, municipalities could instead control their traffic by once again allowing narrow roads and artful intersections. This would be an important first step toward creating public spaces worthy of habitation.

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THE HOUSE THAT SPRAWL BUILT

THE ODDITY OF AMERICAN HOUSING; PRIVATE REALM VERSUS

PUBLIC REALM; THE SEGREGATION OF SOCIETY BY INCOME; TWO

ILLEGAL TYPES OF AFFORDABLE HOUSING; TWO FORGOTTEN RULES

OF AFFORDABLE HOUSING; THE MIDDLE-CLASS HOUSING CRISIS

Does anyone suppose that, in real life, answers to any of the great questions that worry us today are going to come out of homogeneous settlements?

—JANE JACOBS, THE DEATH AND LIFE

OF GREAT AMERICAN CITIES (1961)

THE ODDITY OF AMERICAN HOUSING

Sprawl is made up mostly of housing. Its ubiquity alone makes it an important subject to study, but there are other reasons to consider the way America provides housing. While the current suburban model may seem natural enough to most Americans, it appears quite odd when viewed in a global context. There is not another nation on earth that houses its citizens as we do, and few could afford to. Nevertheless, the proliferation of large-lot single-family housing has begun around the world, despite our awareness of its negative social and environmental consequences. The fact that other nations, enamored of American culture and commercial methods, are beginning to emulate these practices should not validate them for us. Indeed, the frightening prospect of worldwide suburbia makes it all the more essential that we examine the ways that contemporary American housing deviates from its global and historical counterparts. It will become clear that there are powerful implications to the unprecedented way that we choose to locate and design our homes.

Today’s suburban reality finds its origins in the pastoral dream of the autonomous homestead in the countryside. Articulated throughout U.S. history, from Jefferson through Limbaugh, this vision has been equated with a democratic economy, in which homeownership equals participation. However, this equation