DescriptionThis manifesto on the car landscape interrogates and redesigns a suburban highway strip in New Jersey. The 17.2 mile stretch of U.S. Route 1 between Trenton and New Brunswick is a divided surface highway that frustrates drivers, is unsafe for pedestrians, and impossible for cyclists. The thesis questions how this failing landscape came about, and what forces prevent it from improving. In doing so, it explores the landscape implications of our co-dependence on the car, considering both the driving experience and associated land uses. The research exposes the twentieth-century illusion that mechanized speed provides individual autonomy and progress. It then looks toward the future, at the potential of autonomous vehicle technology to change our relationship with cars and thereby reshape suburban transportation infrastructure. The proposed design solution for Route 1 separates ourselves from our cars. The design functions at multiple scales, from regional planning, to highway infrastructure, to site-scale landscapes. At its most essential, the proposal is a separation of fast through-traffic and slower local traffic, utilizing a series of flyways that bridge each intersection. That separation reverses our notion that fast is freedom by calling for discrete realms and speeds for two different autonomies: mechanized and personal. In addition, the flyways shrink the amount of space currently consumed by interchanges and highway ramps, claiming approximately 200 acres of publicly-owned land back from the car. The reclaimed landscapes at each intersection become community and ecological resources to spur new, human-centric, relationships to Route 1.