Capitalism, Underlying Selfishness of Companies and The Nature Of Urban Centers

Critical Analysis
Name;
Instructor;
Institution;
Date;
Overview
Critical analysis is simply the procedural and systematic dissection of a literary piece. The main aim of critical analysis is to increase a reader's extent of understanding the content of a given publication, be it a book or an article. Through the evaluation of the different arguments in a literary piece, critical analysis increases the breadth and realm of the mind's interpretation of the same. The growth and development of the current infrastructure are to a great extent, the work of the government in collaboration with the private sector. The growth of cities and the entire concept of urbanization are a culmination of the successes of extreme levels of selfishness coated in the ideals of capitalism. Urban planning has been a great field of study that has enabled the responsible and sensible growth of cities on the available natural resources, whether in the present or the future.
There is the other artistic view that augurs well with general planning and perception of the cities; the ability to look at an urban plan as an orderly conglomeration of different entities, both stationary, and moving. On the other hand, however, it is the changing aspects of the city that significantly determine not only its aesthetics but also the rate of economic activity and lifestyle of the people therein. The concept of capitalism and the underlying selfishness of the companies involved is what are discussed in Jonathan Kwitny's article, the great transportation conspiracy: A juggernaut named desire. On the other hand, the visual nature of urban centers is well encompassed in The Image of the Environment by Kevin Lynch. This paper will critically analyze the arguments proposed by these authors in their respective publications.
Critical Analysis of The Great Transportation Conspiracy: A Juggernaut Named Desire.
The main argument of this article is that there is a great danger when the government entrusts public interests to private corporations. The author takes the case of General Motors as a perfect illustration of this argument. He states that before the emergence of oil as the primary source of energy, the country and most of its cities fully depended on electricity for transportation. It was the real embodiment of the concept of clean energy, from the railroads, to the automobiles in the transit system that formed the backbone of urban transport. The different modes of transport powered by electricity ensured that there was very little to no traffic snarl-up in the cities.
While this was happening, the country obliviously then decided to entrust the policies on automobiles to General Motors in collaboration with other allied firms. This was the beginning of problems in the transportation sector of the nation's economy. General Motors steadily shifted the energy utilization from electricity to oil and the machine usage from public to private. The company indeed continued manufacturing buses and cars in equal measure, in the efforts to uphold the central transit system. The public was delighted with the events.
However, the real rot lied under all this. The conspiracy was well covered beneath all this façade of development and local production. General Motors and other allied companies slowly carved out a market oligopoly for their products and took pride in the internal combustion engine that utilized oil or coal. With this control over the market, these companies decided to buy out a particular bus company and then continued manufacturing these buses in large scale. These buses slowly replaced the electric transit system. Gradually, the electric transit system was dismantled.
There are some assumptions made by the author in piecing together this article, which help in advancing his argument but then shed some doubt on the validity of the same as well. There is a case in point that the author totally generalizes without much proof of it. The author claims that the reason for increased usage of gasoline among American urban dwellers is due to the absence of the electric transit system that was there in the 30s and early 40s.The transit system would have obviously been more energy saving today, considering that gasoline is one of the biggest contributors to the greenhouse effect. However, the government's policies have also dictated much of the shift. This was mainly down to the increased value of ownership.
There is an increasing embracement of property ownership by the Americans. As the economy has continued growing from the early years, there has been an increased wealth distribution. According to Clayton (2012), gasoline constitutes two-thirds of the total fuel economy of the United States. Increased cash flow has pushed people towards financial freedom and flexibility. The growing middle and higher class would have slowly bought more and more personal cars, thereby discarding the transit system. This would bring about more use of gasoline as the source of fuel.
Even if the electric transit system were to be in existence today, there would still be an increased affinity towards personal cars, by the American citizens with the financial power to purchase one. People are now doing what they didn't use to do, for example driving to distant places for holidays and leisure. This wouldn't have been possible in the early days when the economy was trying to struggle off the Great Depression. Presently, there is the development of the hybrid cars, such as the Nissan Leaf, which is environmentally friendly. Henricks (2010) also contends that the shift towards personal cars was down to personal preferences and not what happened to the rail transit.
The second part of the conspiracy is that these manufacturing companies made these buses less alluring to the public compared to the original transit systems. This was an intentional plan to increase and finally shift the preferences of the public to private cars. The whole conspiracy paints the real picture of what capitalism is all about. In the present age, companies are growing more and more focused on profit-making at the expense of anything else. The increased awareness of the effects of human activities on the environment headlines this new-found craze for profits.
This second argument, however, seems to be far-fetched. Considering the earlier argument to refute the holistic importance and value of the electric transit system, the replacement of the system by buses isn't purely out of selfish reasons. When looking at it from an economic point of view, it suddenly makes sense to have the old transit system replaced by the buses. This is because the buses are cheaper both in manufacture and maintenance compared to the transit system. The transit system was more expensive to maintain and lay out, considering it requires rails.
According to Henricks (2010), economists argued that building some bus ...