Don't wake up in a roadside ditch

Commercial photographers and location scouts know that most things have an established meaning even if we’re not consciously aware of what that meaning is. Their job is to put people and products into scenes that clearly, if subconsciously, convey the values of the brand or the feelings of the person shown.

You can learn a lot about American culture by searching through stock photography websites. I once designed a showroom for a wood flooring manufacturer, and by searching for stock images that had been tagged by their photographers with “wood floor,” I learned that wood flooring means authenticity. When you want to convey that a couple having breakfast together are really in love and not just sleeping together, you show them sprawled out on an old wood floor. If you want people who come to your restaurant to know there’s someone in the kitchen who really cares about them, you need to have a wood floor.

What do trains mean? What does “rail” mean?

There’s a TV commercial that warns people to give up cable and switch to satellite television, because otherwise you’ll get frustrated, hurt yourself, get an eye patch, get chased by thugs, and be left lying in a roadside ditch. What is the appropriate scene for getting chased by thugs? Where would they attack you and leave you in a ditch?

"Don't wake up in a roadside ditch."

It would have to be someplace where there are no people around. An abandoned industrial zone with no apartments, no offices, and no shops. How do we know for sure that no one will be coming by anytime soon? Because of the train, of course.

Trains go where people don’t. No one wants to be where trains are. Trains ruin every place they go, so they have to be segregated out away from where people want to live and work and shop.

Trains have this meaning in America because our experience of them is limited to freight trains, long-distance passenger trains (Amtrak), commuter trains (Metra), and heavy-rail elevated and subway trains (CTA). Until the 1950s, though, Chicago had the largest network of streetcars that has ever existed anywhere: practically every street in the city was designed and developed around the streetcar. When I talk about reintroducing electric streetcars to Chicago, sometimes someone will say, “What—right in the street? Where the people are?”

In many German cities, they never completely abandoned the streetcar lines, and in recent decades they’ve been making a huge comeback all over Europe. Modern streetcars are long, low-floor electric trains that carry something like 288 passengers and run on renewable energy. They run like wind-powered bullet trains connecting suburbs and satellite communities with the urban core. Once downtown they serve as “pedestrian facilitators,” gliding safely and predictably on rails down car-free pedestrian shopping streets. Even in smaller, low-density towns, there’s a “shopping street” with lots of people, outdoor cafes, and a tram running down the middle of it. Like Americans—we love our malls—Europeans prefer to stroll in a car-free environment while shopping and dining.

Streetcars and people go together.

The streetcar goes where the people want to be, and people gather where the streetcar goes.

Here in the States we have a number of examples of streetcars bringing people together, especially tourists in shopping and sightseeing areas, in places like San Francisco and New Orleans. And all over America, cities are investing in new streetcar lines—not as transit initiatives, but as a catalyst for economic development and renewed urban life.

Chicago was born a city of streetcars and pedestrians. We fell asleep for fifty years or so and woke up to find ourselves in a roadside ditch. But at least we’re awake now, and if we’re willing to pick our heads up and look around a little, the way out of that ditch—and back to a city of life—is as clear as day.