Deliberate infrastructure choices, not inevitability, locked the New York region into car dependence.

Evidence

By building his highways, Moses flooded the city with cars. By systematically starving the subways and the suburban commuter railroads, he swelled that flood to city-destroying dimensions. By making sure that the vast suburbs, rural and empty when he came to power, were filled on a sprawling, low-density development pattern relying primarily on roads instead of mass transportation, he insured that that flood would continue for generations if not centuries, that the New York metropolitan area would be—perhaps forever—an area in which transportation—getting from one place to another—would be an irritating, life-consuming concern for its 14,000,000 residents. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 101

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the trees-as-infrastructure essay and to Grafting & Growth themes: infrastructure choices as path-dependent worldbuilding.
• SEED: Angle: how one man’s transport decisions locked a region’s mobility pattern for generations — a case study in long-horizon path dependence.
• ADDENDUM: Directly parallels the trees-as-infrastructure framing: physical infrastructure decisions that shape a region for centuries.