The unnamed narrator meets a college student, Terry, at an Ohio State University panel discussion and falls in love.

[2] The narrator emotionally navigates the conversation and later that evening speaks on a metropolitan radio broadcast about social issues and transportation, proposing how private automobiles could be banned and the streets could be reclaimed for leisure.

[4] The book incorporated previous works by Goodman, such as his 1961 proposal for banning cars from Manhattan[5] and two short stories: "Eagle's Bridge: The Death of a Dog" (1962)[6] and "At the Lawyer's" (1963).

[1] Theodore Roszak wrote that the "Banning the Cars from New York" chapter encapsulated Goodman's ethos in building from spontaneous human joy into addressing a structural civic issue.

It begins with Goodman's emphasis on unperturbed animal impulse, such as child's play or the narrator's physical love for the boy, and extrapolates into a larger societal concern and analysis.