Automobiles became more than a plaything for eccentrics when Henry Ford mass produced his Fords beginning with the Model T in 1908. Motorized vehicles were sold at prices that the average American family could afford. The automobile age began.

In 1956 President Dwight Eisenhower signed the Federal Aid Highway Act (FAHA). Controlled access “Interstates” soon covered the landscape. American families moved out to suburbs and the malls. The 1950’s and 60’s were the apex of the automobile age. Americans who came of age during the first decades after World War II abandoned walking, mass transit, and the shops and houses of Main Street.

Changes crept in, hardly a ripple at first. A few, mostly younger people, turned their backs on the suburban lifestyle and returned to the cities. As the twentieth century gave way to the twenty-first, their numbers increased. Access to walking and mass transit became assets for selling homes. Some workers even commuted by bicycle. The housing in newer suburbs became denser and included sidewalks and community parks.

Instead of freedom, automobiles now conjure visions of traffic jams, painful gas prices, and the use of scarce financial resources for car payments. Meanwhile, Americans who came of age during the automobile era face adjustment. Many never developed habits of physical exercise and are uneasy with walking or taking mass transit. Yet, poor eyesight and other health problems lead to inability to drive their beloved cars.

Neal Peirce in a Washington Post column suggested “multigenerational cities.” The Atlanta Regional Commission (where I used to work) promotes the concept. It encourages lifetime communities of mixed housing (including larger houses with “mother-in-law” apartments), safe walking, and access to mass transit.

Is the automobile, darling of several generations, relinquishing the throne? Perhaps the computer age and the home-office have usurped its crown.