Driving forces.(Books)(Book Review)

Car Wars: How the Car Won Our Hearts and Captured Our Cities, by Graeme Davison; Allen & Unwin, 2004, $29.95.

THERE HAS NEVER been a more rapid period of social change than the twenty-five years after the Second World War. The twin advances of the motor car and television revolutionised people's lives and generated immense social changes. The gap in values and lifestyles between Baby Boomers and their parents was, and is likely to remain, unprecedented.

The car's role as one of the agents of that social change is the key theme of this excellent new book by Monash University History Professor, Graeme Davison. His new work is, in many ways, a companion volume to his best-known previous book, The Rise and Fall of Marvellous Melbourne, which dealt with the 1880s and 1890s, another period of rapid societal change.

While the title of Marvellous Melbourne made it explicitly clear that it was about Professor Davison's home town, this new book is perhaps trying to appeal to a broader market by including the word cities in the title. Do not be fooled. This book is very much about Melbourne. However, do not be put off. Despite only occasional parallels being drawn with other Australian and overseas cities, much of the content does have general relevance and interest.

While on the subject of the book's title, it is also worth noting that the use of the word wars is certainly in vogue for historians, as Davison's book follows Melbourne University Professor Stuart Macintyre co-authoring The History Wars last year. However, despite the similar titles, the perspective of the two books is very different. The back cover of The History Wars stated that Macintyre had written an "unashamedly engaged account", which was a polite way of saying that he wrote as a partisan in, as much as a historian of, the history wars. By contrast, Davison writes as a keen observer who shows an understanding of the differing sides in the so-called "car wars" and can empathise with most positions. Indeed Davison's lack of partisanship is foreshadowed in The History Wars when he is described, by Macintyre, as "a man of such studied moderation that when colleagues in a coffee queue taxed him with failure to declare his position he ordered black with a dash".

So what are the "car wars"? Davison uses the term fairly broadly to include issues like the battle by women to be given the opportunity to drive and the debate about whether there should be parking meters installed in the CBD. To me these seem like small skirmishes within the pro-car army, rather than a real engagement in the car wars. Many issues of this type are dealt with in the early chapters of the book, which chart the largely unchecked advance of the car. It is here that we see the vast changes that the car brought in a very short period to the cityscape, to lifestyles and to social mores.

Davison shows how the growing popularity of the car not only meant crowded roads but created the need for large parts of the city and suburbs to be reserved for car parking. It changed the nature of suburban streets, with cul-de-saes replacing straight streets as desirable places to reside and house design changing to incorporate carports or garages. Many new features appeared on the landscape such as drive-in cinemas, service stations and shopping malls. The car and the new suburbs changed the nature of shopping, school and social trips.