Would You Fall for It? [ST08]

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Published 2023-01-09
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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  

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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)
  • @timchi2688
    the “city” with 3 highrises 2 buildings and 100000 parking spaces always gets me
  • 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.
  • @leonpaelinck
    I love how they realised the problem and did their best to make it so much worse
  • 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
  • @strongtowns
    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.
  • It's fascinating that the movie sounds so much like an urbanist explanation of the problems of a car heavy approach.
  • @robhunt8682
    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!
  • @Ferrichrome
    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!
  • @SkaN2412
    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
  • @JThompson_VI
    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.
  • @greham
    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...
  • @KnowingBetter
    This film is presented in a 4:3 format to preserve the integrity of Not Just Bikes’ creative vision.
  • As a European, it's not just the stroads, but also the almost empty enormous car parks 5:45 , just unbelievable.
  • Discovering this channel and Strong Towns has been very influential as a civil engineer about to turn 30. Just the other month I fought hard with a city engineer to not put A SLIP LANE IN AN INTERSECTION IN A RESIDENTIAL NEIGHBORHOOD. It’s amazing how fast you can get stupid infrastructure if you allow yourself to. I want to believe that things are slowly changing for the better. I don’t want America in 20 years to still look like a bunch of Suburbans waiting in 20-vehicle long drive thru queues and pedestrians being asked to cross 120’ intersections.
  • @Zinervawyrm
    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.
  • 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
  • @mnsegler1
    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.
  • @Chrisz0rrr0
    9:31 This intersection of streets is the weirdest cityscape: there's car lanes, sidewalks, trees for shade, lighting fixtures, traffic lights, even a cycle path. Only one thing that is missing.... the actual buildings that make up a city!
  • @gemmachaos
    When watching your videos, I keep thinking about my mother. My mother, who ran marathons in her fifties, still goes hiking every week and now, at 65, is in better physical health than I've ever been. She is hardly disabled, but she's got one bad eye and she can't drive, ever. It's just not safe. Thankfully, we live in the Netherlands and living a car-free life was no problem at all for us growing up. I can't imagine what life in North America would have been like for us. With no one to drive us anywhere, would we have been stuck at home? Would she have been treated as disabled, or as a second-class citizen? In a car-centric world, it's hard to imagine her being able to enjoy all the freedom she has now.