"Is Your Commute Killing You?"

[algernonsidney]

http://www.slate.com/id/2295603/pagenum/all/#p2

Here's an article about studies which have shown that a long commute can create a lot of problems for you. Is the insane commute worth it?

[Reidy]

Long commutes are largely a result of government land-use planning. In the 40s and 50s the notion prevailed that cities were bad and the right kind of people want to live close to nature (whereas in Europe the slums are out in the suburbs). Zoning, FHA policy and the interstate highway program all fed this. Later, open-space preservation came into vogue. Building restrictions made close-in housing unaffordable and forced new development even further out of town. This is especially evident in the LA area, where middle-income workers routinely commute from Riverside and San Bernardino counties. A classic case of unintended consequences.

The anti-city thinking was in large part the invention of L. Q. Mumford, who was one of Rand's sources for Ellsworth Toohey (and the Librarian of Congress who wrote her in the 60s to ask her to donate her manuscripts). Another influence (intellectual, not political) was his friend Frank Lloyd Wright, who was one of her sources for Roark.

Edited May 31, 2011 by Reidy

[Brant Gaede]

Long commutes are largely a result of government land-use planning. In the 40s and 50s the notion prevailed that cities were bad and the right kind of people want to live close to nature (whereas in Europe the slums are out in the suburbs). Zoning, FHA policy and the interstate highway program all fed this. Later, open-space preservation came into vogue. Building restrictions made close-in housing unaffordable and forced new development even further out of town. This is especially evident in the LA area, where middle-income workers routinely commute from Riverside and San Bernardino counties. A classic case of unintended consequences.

The anti-city thinking was in large part the invention of L. Q. Mumford, who was one of Rand's sources for Ellsworth Toohey (and the Librarian of Congress who wrote her in the 60s to ask her to donate her manuscripts). Another influence (intellectual, not political) was his friend Frank Lloyd Wright, who was one of her sources for Roark.

I was once told, not very authoritatively, that on each bridge of the Interstate Highway System was a commemorative Eisenhower bronze plaque. If you removed it there was a hollow space that could be packed with high explosives if you were retreating from an invading army and needed to blow it up.

The only thing in common between Wright and Roark seemed to be their individualistic streak. I suspect that the Time magazine cover in the 1930s featuring his masterpiece Fallingwater influenced Rand's idea of a lost home in the wilderness for her novelette Anthem.

--Brant

[Reidy]

Another story is that one of the selling points for the program was that the roads would be useful for evacuation in the event of a nuclear attack. Perhaps that's the origin of the explosives story. The latter would be easy enough to check out.

I think you're right about the house in Anthem and even more so about the Wynand country house. Numerous small-to-midsize details in The Fountainhead, plus the evidence of Rand's letters and journals, establish that the two mens' individualistic streak was not the only tip she got from Wright. Franklin Toker's Fallingwater Rising reports, on the authority of the ARI archivist, that she kept the 1938 Time cover issue for the rest of her life.