Watching the Traffic Go By: Transportation and Isolation in Urban America (review)

In this well-meaning but deeply flawed book, Paul Mason Fotsch examines what he calls “narratives that promote a reliance on the automobile.”(2) Fotsch’s Watching the Traffic Go By examines a series of different events, times, and ideas that he claims have had a hegemonic power in American popular culture. This book draws on the disciplines of cultural studies and history, and closely reads various books, movies, and events. It moves between exploring transport systems (particularly the automobile) and examining how ideas of individualism helped create isolation and suburbanism. There are some interesting ideas in this work. And, it is nice to read a book that does not assume every American has access to an automobile. Overall, however, reading Watching the Traffic Go By is a frustrating experience.

This sometimes fascinating, sometimes befuddling work is hampered by an uneven writing style. The last paragraph of the book can, perhaps, serve as an example of the tone of the work as a whole. It starts with a quote from French theorist Michel Foucault and ends with the words of rapper Chuck D. In between Fotsch claims, “. . . rather than attempting to stabilize mobility, my goal has been to destabilize it—not to create statis but to fuse movement with critical reflection” (193). After reading Fotsch’s work, and rereading this concluding paragraph a number of times, I am still not sure what Fotsch actually is trying to say to his readers.

The ways Fotsch tries to position his work within the world of cultural studies is also confusing, and, to this reader at least, seems contradictory. According to Fotsch “The texts studied here were chosen in large part for their consistency with how urban transportation evolved” (5). This statement, and the thrust of the book which heavily concentrates on narratives that naturalize how transportation systems developed over time, seems to run counter to another of the book’s claims that “changes in the social world cannot be understood apart from discursive struggles” (5). If one focuses on the works that support a hegemonic idea, then one seems to have chosen to downplay debates and counterarguments about transport systems.

This book is divided into three parts and six chapters. Part One, “Transportation as Antidote to Modern City,” explores the rise of the automobile to prominence. Fotsch’s first chapter explores the popularity of the trolley and the automobile, and compares the ways that the two technologies were perceived. He asserts trolleys and automobiles were positioned as bringing quiet, peace, and “rural values” back to the city. This chapter uses a very narrow evidence base to claim trolleys and cars were seen to bring the calm of electricity into the noisy world of steam. Chapter two explores suburban design—particularly the design of Radburn, New Jersey, and its cultural ramifications. Part Two of the book, “German Critical Theory Meets American Cartopia,” explores a much loved topic: the World’s Fair in 1939 and juxtaposes that with an examination of film noir. Part Three examines the image of the New York Subway and then studies O. J. Simpson’s infamous Bronco ride on the Los Angeles freeways.

As this very brief overview suggests, this book ranges far and wide over the landscape of transportation. This could be a strength. Juxtaposing seemingly disparate events, times, and ideas can lead to some interesting insights. But, Fotsch does notmake a convincing argument for the connections between his subject matter. Watching the Traffic Go By is not really about the city. Fotsch’s work is not a conventional history of transportation, either, and he does not mean it to be. It is about car culture’s negative social and cultural ramifications. Fotsch uses debates and discussions around car culture as a way to examine and explore and make connections between theoretical ideas and the meaning of transport systems in popular culture. As he puts it, “my...