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Kahn on cars

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Stiffened surfaces for mobility

The circumstantial demands of the car, of parking and so forth, will eat away all the spaces that exist now and pretty soon you have no identifying traces of what I call loyalties -- the landmarks. Remember, when you think of your city, you think immediately of certain places which identify the city, as you enter it. If they're gone, your feeling for the city is lost and gone. . . . If because of the demands of the motorcar, we stiffen and harden the city -- omitting water, omitting the green world -- the city will be destroyed. Therefore the car, because of its destructive value, must start us rethinking the city in terms of the green world, in terms of the world of water, and of air, and of locomotion. Frampton 1995, 223, quoting Kahn 1961