Life After Cars: Freeing Ourselves From the Tyranny of the Automobile
by Sarah Goodyear, Doug Gordon and Aaron Naparstek · 21 Oct 2025 · 330pp · 85,349 words
happening in some communities around North America and the world. We shape our streets. Then they shape us. We can choose a human shape. The Curb-Cut Effect Not long after Sarah started classes at UC Berkeley way back in 1981, she noticed that more than a few of her fellow students used
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choice. Make infrastructure to provide access for people with disabilities, and you’ll get better infrastructure. Civil rights leader Angela Glover Blackwell calls it the “curb-cut effect.” It’s easy to see when you start looking. (Closed captions on video, developed for deaf viewers and now used by everyone, are another great
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we build our communities. And the humble curb cut can show us the way. Imagine what we could achieve if we tried to broaden the curb-cut effect. Designing for Nondrivers Helps Everyone Regardless of physical ability or wealth, absolutely everyone benefits, in the long run, when we design for people and not
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what scholar Mimi Sheller has called the “kinetic elite,” those who have the physical ability and financial resources to access our autocentric transportation system. The curb-cut effect is widely recognized in contemporary urban design circles. We know just how much better our communities can be for everyone if we build cities to
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shapes us, freeways distort and deform the human social world as surely as they do the natural world. You might postulate a corollary to the curb-cut effect, which improves the quality of life for everyone in a community: The freeway effect brings everybody down. When the Interstate Highway System was inaugurated, in
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, June 11, 2007, mcclatchydc.com/news/article24460762.html. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT calls it the “curb-cut effect”: Angela Glover Blackwell, “The Curb-Cut Effect,” Stanford Social Innovation Review, Winter 2017, ssir.org/articles/entry/the_curb_cut_effect. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT Nearly one in three: US Department of Transportation, Policy and Governmental Affairs
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, 130 C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital, 58 culture wars, 130 See also bikelash; resistance to challenging cars curb extensions, 171, 171 See also infrastructure curb-cut effect, 159–60, 162 curb-cuts, 158–60 See also infrastructure Curbing Traffic (Bruntlett and Bruntlett), 229 cyclists behavior of, 39, 40, 41–42 in bike
Apple: The First 50 Years
by David Pogue · 10 Mar 2026 · 686pp · 216,944 words
table in front of a fireplace.” Today, members of Apple’s accessibility team are involved early in the design process for every new product. The Curb-Cuts Effect The 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) mandated that cities must build ramps into the curbs at street intersections. The original idea was to accommodate
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with bikes, strollers, rolling luggage, and so on. That phenomenon—when the larger population embraces a feature originally designed for accessibility—became known as the curb-cuts effect. Soon after the Apple Watch came out, accessibility director Sarah Herrlinger began getting emails from people who had amputations or dexterity issues. “I’m using
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reading system’s search function. A4, A5, A6 chips, 503, 504 accelerometer, 480, 528, 543 accessibility, 541–44, 542 Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), 543 curb-cuts effects, 543 origins at Apple, 541 VoiceOver, 542 ACM, see Markkula, Armas Clifford, Jr. Acorn Computers, 226, 227, 323 Activation Lock, 534 Activision, 540 ADA (Americans
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fair, 5 school district, 6 Stevens Creek Blvd, 37 factory in, 59 post office, 143 see also Bandley Drive office buildings; Infinite Loop; Apple Park curb-cuts effect, 543 cursor acceleration, 72 CU-SeeMe, 192 Daisy robot, 539 daisy wheel printers, 154–55 Dalai Lama, 518 Daniels, Bruce, 78, 84 Dark Mode, 276