Would You Fall for It? [ST08]
2,127,712
Published 2023-01-09
In the 1950s, the US automobile industry was lobbying hard to get more funding for roads and highways. Part of this effort included propaganda targeted to the general public.
In this video, I look back at one of these automobile industry propaganda videos, "Give Yourself the Green Light" by General Motors, and show what was promised versus what the reality is today for American cities. The automobile industry got everything they wanted, but the problems they were trying to solve only got worse.
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References & Further Reading
If you'd like to watch the whole film, you can watch my cleaned-up/upscaled version here:
• Give Yourself the Green Light - 1950s...
Or watch the original on archive.org:
Give Yourself the Green Light
General Motors Corporation, Department of Public Relations
archive.org/details/0542_Give_Yourself_the_Green_L…
To learn more about Strong Towns, visit strongtowns.org/ or watch my Strong Towns series of videos here:
• Strong Towns
nebula.tv/videos/not-just-bikes-the-truth-about-am…
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nebula.tv/videos/not-just-bikes-the-ugly-dangerous…
nebula.tv/videos/not-just-bikes-the-wrong-way-to-s…
nebula.tv/videos/notjustbikes-suburbia-is-subsidiz…
Segregation by Design:
www.segregationbydesign.com/
www.instagram.com/segregation_by_design/
twitter.com/SegByDesign
State Motor Vehicle Registrations, by years, 1900
www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/summary95/mv200.pdf
The gas tax chart was sourced from this classic article by Strong Towns:
Some Perspective on the Gas Tax
www.strongtowns.org/journal/2014/7/24/some-perspec…
This video contains content licensed from Getty Images
All Comments (21)
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Sign-up to Nebula here: nebula.tv/videos/notjustbikes-would-you-fall-for-i… If you'd like to see the full "Give Yourself the Green Light" documentary, check out my cleaned-up/upscaled version here: https://youtu.be/eXQayNKrj_Y
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the “city” with 3 highrises 2 buildings and 100000 parking spaces always gets me
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Living in Poland, where it's unthinable, I showed this photo with lots of parking lots to my grandmother. Initially she thought it's a picture of flooding. I think that mistaking this design for an actual disaster speaks for itself.
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I love how they realised the problem and did their best to make it so much worse
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As a Houstonian, 1960 is the bane of my existence. That road is 50 miles long and the entire length of it looks like it does in this video, it brings me joy to see it be internationally hated and not just locally hated
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It's fascinating that the movie sounds so much like an urbanist explanation of the problems of a car heavy approach.
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It's one thing to notice that something is wrong with the trillions of dollars spent on highway maintenance and parking within North American cities- but to see it as it happened, watch the propaganda that our predecessors fell for, and watch it happen in "real-time" is painful. Bravo, this video was a great watch. It's way past time to stop expanding highways.
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Government in the 50s: car dependency! Government now: ✨ electric car dependency ✨ Gotta love how they don't solve the problem of American towns and cities, but replace it with another one
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One of my favourite scenes from The Simpsons is when Homer gets accepted into the Stonecutters but still has his parking spot miles from the entrance which is then shown to be on the other side of his back garden! Sat in traffic just to wind up the other side of the fence!
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As a European, it's not just the stroads, but also the almost empty enormous car parks 5:45 , just unbelievable.
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It's important to note that the 1950s propaganda was at least "and in exchange you can buy a house and retire," which is largely true for the boomers of today. This is why they always respond "X Problem doesn't matter, I'll be dead by then." They are the last generation for whom the social contract was intact.
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Honestly, if I were living in the 50s I would have fallen for this 100 percent. Hindsight is powerful, too bad we are often to aroused by what could be to use it.
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I used to work in a design agency working mainly on mobility topic. The agency literally crumbled from the fight between the employees whom wanted to work on alternative mobility solutions and the ones (mainly management) wanting to work for automotive brands because it was a sign of success (yes, I work in Germany). To this day, I cringe at the memories of some people speaking from their heart on how self driving electric cars are going to save the world...
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I love how first they were arguing that we need more parking in cities for small businesses, and then they argued that we need large spacious highways bypassing blocks where shops are. They contradict themselves even in the video
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it's so amazing how they knew about and forecasted every single problem we still have today but instead of realizing their mistake they doubled down on cars. from a modern lens, the film actually makes a good case for reducing car dependency!
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This film is presented in a 4:3 format to preserve the integrity of Not Just Bikes’ creative vision.
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I remember Bugs Bunny cartoons where highways get built at rapid pace, and disturbing his home, and stuff like that. And speeding cars bumper to bumper. The impression I always got from those cartoons was that highways are loud, ugly, chaotic eyesores that displaced people's homes and nature.
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In the 1960s, this American way of thinking was seen as the future. The Netherlands was eager to join the modern world. and had imported American traffic engineers to redesign their transportation systems. Their highway plan would have destroyed Amsterdam. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vI5pbDFDZyI These plans were voted down by the narrowest of margins, and only happened due to public backlash and the fact that the government couldn't really afford it at the time (the Dutch weren't buying a bunch of highways on debt in the 60s).
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Knowing what we all (should) know now, I about fell out of my chair when Robert Moses won that contest! Wouldn’t it be fun to remake and update this video but the solution is more walkability, transit with less parking and roads.
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I just love how this movie literally talked about how cars will make life worse for people while encouraging people to drive cars. It’s almost as if they completely saw it coming
