The automobile has not merely taken over the street, it has dissolved the living tissue of the city. Its appetite for space is absolutely insatiable; moving and parked, it devours urban land, leaving the buildings as mere islands of habitable space in a sea of dangerous and ugly traffic. – James Marston Fitch, New York Times, 1 May 1960

The car has become the carapace, the protective and aggressive shell, of urban and suburban man. – Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media