How the Car Came to LA

So how did we become a country where cars are the defining feature of urban life? What did that transformation look like?

Answering this question for the entire country would be an enormous undertaking. But the book “Los Angeles and the Automobile” by Scott Bottles tries to answer it for LA, one of the most car-centric cities in the US. Over a period of less than 30 years, Los Angeles was transformed from a city with streetcar and train-based transportation to one where the car reigned supreme. And though Los Angeles had some unique features that made it a quicker adopter of cars than other US cities, in many ways the transformation of LA simply preceded similar transformations in the rest of the country.