“It is in the nature of the automobile that the city spreads out thus and far away,” said Frank Lloyd Wright. The automobile offered a tantalizing liberation for Americans in the early twentieth century—freedom to go wherever, whenever,  with a speed never thought possible. We take it for granted today, but remember the feeling when you first rode a bike or first learned to drive? Multiply that by 58 million — that’s how many cars were sold in the US in the 1950s. With the freedom to move faster and easier, downtown housing declined and cities began to stretch and spread out. >> More