The automobile did not clean up the streets. The personal automobile was much too expensive for that.

Buses and trams and metros and transport trucks and railways and bicycles cleaned up the streets. The average person didn't own a car and use it daily until much after the streets "cleaned up".

Do you have some references for this bold statement? The development of busses, trams, metros etc increased urban traffic (much as widening highways increases traffic, and traffic jams) including animal-drawn traffic, at least in the cities where I have read up on the history of urban transportation (in particular London, Paris, and New York).

The GP mentioned Mumbai, which only recently banned animal traffic. It was packed before the automobile was developed.

The automobile simply did not do it.

Until the late 50s, most households in the US did not have a car : https://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2013/02/was-rise-of-car-own...

Without a car, the only solution is public transport. And public transport in early 20th century America was the dominant source of the use of animals in personal transport.

The confounding factor here is transport, hence why I mentioned trucks. Go to for example Tiznit in Morocco and observe how animals are used. They're not used for personal transport - they're not efficient for that in city environment - their use is moving merchandise.

Are you two equivocating between different kinds of "clean?" Animal waste vs. exhaust, metal, and brake and tire particles?

Assuming that “equivocating” was a typo:

I’m not defending the automobile as some paragon. I’m pointing out the lack of historical perspective, without which it’s hard to evaluate both the impact/value of the automobile and the impact/value of alternatives. A post hoc ergo propter hoc argument rarely leads to insight, much less useful decision.

The animal waste was a huge public health and economic issue, one almost inconceivable today. The automobile unlocked huge human rights and economic values. So you can’t shift modes of transport (people have tried!) without addressing those as well.

And I recognize this even though I prefer a non-automobile lifestyle and have lived in cities with functioning public transport (Melbourne, Paris, Berlin, Tokyo, NYC).

Definitely not a typo -- I understood "equivocating" to mean "switching between two meanings of a word." Do I have that wrong? Either way, I hear you on the historical argumentation here: a lot of the complaints people have today may have some validity, but are often wholly ahistorical: they are blind to just how much progress we have made in many areas, and how hard fought that progress is.

"Equivocate" does mean that a single speaker/writer/entity uses multiple meanings of a term, but the point is that use is to deceive or make a false argument.

Two people can't equivocate (unless they are working together). In this case sudosysgen and I are using the terms the same way and arguing a point.

And yes, I am arguing that even though I myself live the public/personal transport life being advocated in this thread, I am well aware of the institutional (car companies, traffic departments, etc), social (personal desires and habits) and structural (physical layout) barriers to transforming the transit system in that regard, even if we exclude the constraint "in the lifetime of anyone today". It's hard to make concrete, actionable decisions on the basis of utopianism.

Is it equivocation to call both a puddle and a downpour wet? No.

Same for clean here. These are not different definitions of the same word. They are different members of the same category.

Still, there's an important distinction between a fine mist of Alzheimer's inducing particles, and a puddle of horse piss.

You comment misses the point of the parent... They are saying that cars at the size they are are a bad design for our world and cities. We'd still have clean streets, but we don't need something with two easy chairs and a couch built into it and weighing 3000 pounds.