Suburbia

Cultural microevolutionary factors can in some cases create macroevolutionary forces. For instance, the cultural preferences of influential leaders (e.g., wanting to enrich themselves and their friends) sometimes put powerful macroevolutionary constraints on a society. One example is the change in the transportation and settlement patterns that occurred in the United States in the decades before and after World War II. The most dramatic instance was the removal of the interurban rail network in Los Angeles County and its later replacement with freeways, a move promoted by automobile manufacturers and oil and rubber companies. This change was soon emulated in cities around the country, reinforced by housing developers who built suburban subdivisions connected to city centers by freeways. This process has produced the leapfrog developments we see today around most large American cities. Suburban sprawl, with its wastefulness of both energy and productive land, virtually forces people to own cars and spend hours weekly driving to and from workplaces and to shop for food and other necessities, whatever their individual proclivities. The suburban lifestyle is a microevolutionary cultural influence, originating the decisions by a relatively small number of politicians and businessmen, that became macroevolutionary because the cultural trend is unleashed greatly altered the physical (external) options of millions of Americans as well as of future generations. The spread of suburbia, for example, limited people’s movement patterns and opportunities for social contact and helped, through increasing greenhouse gas emissions from automobile use, to alter the climate, which puts external constraints of many human activities. ~ Page 160 (The Dominant Animal)