How jaywalking became a crime

The Washington Post: "This wasn’t a matter of chance. Before streets could be physically reconstructed, allowing more room for vehicles, there needed to be social reconstruction. Streets had to become places where cars belonged. Automotive interests and engineers consciously shaped this vision of the city streets; today this image is so rooted that it’s hard to imagine a city otherwise. The history of this process, as well-described by Peter Norton and Clay McShane, suggests, though, that these transformations were less about safety and order than we might guess and more about transforming the way we think about public space."