Once upon a time, streets once belonged to everyone. They were a “commons” where people walked, biked, boarded streetcars, stopped for a conversations.  It’s where kids played and dogs napped. 

But that all changed during the second half of the 20th Century.  Streets became the exclusive property of automobiles, and everybody else had better get out of the way, or else!

An old Disney cartoon, starring Goofy, shows how this Tragedy of the Street came to pass: