Decentralization and Technology essays

Decentralization and Technology essays I am going to discuss how transportation has caused the decentralization of cities and what the social consequences have been. First the definition of decentralization is to bring about the redistribution of urban population and industry to suburban areas. Decentralization can be viewed as a direct result of increases in transportation. Transportation includes cars, buses, trains or any other types of mass transit. And with that you get the need for subway systems, highway systems, and rail systems. A Metropolis is defined as a large city or urbanized area, including adjacent suburbs and towns. Our current metropolitan areas have been created by the invention of mass transit, automobiles and also the federal funding for interstate highways. The history of mass transportation is intimately connected to industrialization, urbanization, and the separation of residence from workplace. By the beginning of the 20th cent., London, New York, Boston, Paris, Budapest, and other major cities had fixed-rail subway systems by the 1920s buses were being used. In the 1920s the Bureau of Public Roads was authorized by the Federal Highway Act of 1921 to provide funding to help state highway agencies construct a paved system of two-lane interstate highways. During the 1930s, BPR helped state and local governments create Depression-era road projects that would employ as many workers as possible. When America entered World War II in 1941, the focus turned toward providing roads that the military needed. After the war, the nation's roads were in disrepair, and congestion had become a problem in major cities. In 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had signed legislation authorizing a network of rural and urban express highways called the "National System of Interstate Highways." And this turned into the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956. From the start, the Interstate System was hailed as the "Greatest Public Works Project in History"...