Introduction xiii
THE STRUCTURE OF THE BOOK
Part 1 of this book is focused on two things. First, there’s a focus on the
problem of automobile dependency and its context, the city. Second, there’s
a focus on the central role that people’s physical mobility plays in the pro-
duction of urban life. We all have a sense of what it means to be automobile
dependent: needing a car to complete daily, necessary, and even mundane
functions. I will develop a definition of multimodality later, but for now,
know that multimodality is the opposite of automobile dependency: the
ability to complete daily life through a diversity of modes of travel through
the built environment.
Chapter 1 begins by describing our problem, and explains why addiction
is a useful metaphor for describing our present situation. I continue by ask-
ing two modest sets of questions. In chapter 2, I ask, “What are cities, and
what do they do?” and in chapter 3, “What are cars, and what do they do?”
I conclude that cars and cities are not merely at odds, but rather that they
do fundamentally opposing things.
In chapter 4, I identify one major set of social institutions that drive both
public policy and popular perceptions about society and progress, and yet
have largely escaped open examination: the social sciences. Their culpabil-
ity is long overdue for public scrutiny, and I explain some of their central
problems. I argue that in aping the natural sciences, the social sciences have
failed to convey to the public a useful understanding of power, and continue
to educate the public in a set of analytic skills that are unsuitable for inter-
rogating the social world, including issues related to the built environment
and automobile dependency.
Chapter 5 concludes part 1 by discussing how sustainability science’s
interdisciplinary and problem-based approach can help us get past some
of the inadequacies of traditional social science. However, I show that aca-
demia’s approach to sustainable development has been problematic, limiting
our progress in becoming less automobile dependent. Finally, I provide an
answer to the question of, “What is multimodality, and what does it do?”
Whereas part 1 of the book develops a useful way to think about the
problem, part 2 is focused on my method for identifying and analyzing dif-
ferences between automobile-dependent and multimodal cities.
In chapter 6, I sketch out a model of the city for use in statistical analysis.
The model is a set of elements, or measurements—such as income, college
education, and density—that capture some essential influences over urban
life. Finally, I choose a measurement of multimodality to include in the
model to represent physical mobility.
Chapter 7 focuses on the importance of choosing an appropriate
set of cities to put in the model. Most studies assume it is useful to
study the largest cities in the United States; it is not. Using the mea-
sure of multimodality, I describe one way to determine which cities are
