As James Flink points out in The Automobile Age, the village shop and local banks were the businesses most vulnerable to the new competition (47). Robert E. Wood, former vice president of Sears, explains how businesses moved to the suburbs: "When the automobile reached the masses, it changed this [the funneling of consumers to the city center] and made shopping mobile. In the large city ​​Sears located its stores well outside the main shopping districts, on cheap land, usually on major thoroughfares, with ample parking (Wollen 13).” Thus urban centers began to be seen as places of congestion, while the surrounding areas were considered accessible and convenient. The rapid proliferation of shopping complexes outside the city center in the 1950s left the city center a crime-ridden, abandoned storefront wasteland. Urban centers no longer featured traditional shops; instead they contained gas stations, parking lots, and inns whose focus was on travelers and their cars (Wollen 13). Car culture had caused serious headaches for city planners in the 1950s. They had not anticipated the additional traffic when building the cities and were forced to adjust their plans with mixed results. There were many side effects to the city's redevelopment, and most of them were not good for the city center. Business and customers were no longer channeled into the now crowded city center in favor of the more spacious and convenient suburbs. Community life and business in the city center have suffered greatly due to suburbanization caused by the automobile. Jane Jacobs says in her chapter titled "Erosion of Cities or Wear and Tear of Automobiles" in the book Autopia, "Today all who value cities are bothered by automobiles (259... middle of paper... freedom to explore the new interstate highways American Although the car offered many advantages, there were many disadvantages as far as the city was concerned. As suburbanization took hold of the middle class, the city tried to accommodate millions of new cars on the road they shrank and the city center became crowded, congested and perceived as dirty. The negative aspects of car culture did nothing to diminish the massive influence it had on the popular culture of the era to which the emerging car culture of the 1950s became closely linked. thanks to their shared attitudes of freedom, relaxed fun and life in the fast lane The car culture of the 1950s influenced every aspect of the lives of the American people, including the media they consume, the media. the places they live, the music they listen to and, of course, the cars they drive.