We take them for granted when we drive miles to the nearest mall. We are not aware of their usefulness when we travel by car to see a distant relative. We cannot take a moment to stop and admire their beauty and usefulness; the architectural wonders that are motorways and their interchanges; that have such a rich history rooted in today's American suburbs. Let's go back to the early 1900s, when the automobile was beginning to become a dominant part of American life (Morton, 2014). In this period; a shift towards private versus public transport began to occur, influencing policies in their favor (Nicolaides and Wiese, 2006). One such policy was created by the Federal Aid Highway of 1925; the United States Highway System which substantially expanded the highways across the United States by connecting them together, creating new growth opportunities in many areas (Weingroff, 1996). This has had many effects on several factors of the American lifestyle; particularly the suburbs (Morton, 2014). After the war, private housing, which had been a luxury just a few years earlier, was now becoming affordable to many thanks to low interest rates and flexible payments through the National Housing Act of 1934, created by the Federal Housing Administration (Fishman , 1987). A perfect example of a policy that favored the private over the public was the Los Angeles Master Plan of 1941, which pushed the direction towards private automobiles and single families: there were 1.16 million cars (2.4 people for cars) and 31% of the city land was dedicated for single-family homes, this was truly consolidating the post-suburban lifestyle (Fishman, 1987). In Los Angeles alone, during this period, 900 square miles were transformed into urban development homes... middle of paper... playing a key role in their contribution to the development of the freeway we know today. Works Cited “California Roads and Highways.” California @ AARoads. AARoads, January 14, 2012. Web. March 8, 2014. "Field Guide to Interchanges." Kurumi. Kurumi and Web. March 8, 2014. Fishman, Robert. Bourgeois utopias: the rise and fall of the suburbs. New York: Basic, 1987. Print.Morton, Patricia. "." Introduction to architecture and urban planning: suburbs. University of California, Riverside, Riverside, California. February 06, 2014. Lecture.Nicolaides, Becky M., and Andrew Wiese. “Postwar Suburbs and the Construction of Race.” The peripheral reader. New York: Routledge, 2006. 321-48. Print.Weingroff, Richard F. “Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956: Creating the Interstate System.” Public roads. U.S. Department of Transportation - Federal Highway Administration, Summer 1996. Web. 09 March. 2014.