more than just a typical drive-in.  Its architectural flair, personal service, unique food, and free movies helped it attain a legendary status that most businesses can only envy.

Location was paramount. A handful of manufacturing plants were located within a two-mile radius, forming a loyal customer base.  AG’s was also adjacent to two major roadways, one of them US 40, the major route entering Indy from the east. A huge green and yellow also sign helped identify this landmark. The result is a place that thousands of people will not forget, in part because it is associated with their teenage years, and in part because of the magic created by Al, Belle, and Nate Green, the siblings born of Russian immigrants who made the restaurant happen.  Virtually every day somebody Googles Al Greens, which points them to www.algreensdrivein.com.

Why AG succeeded isn’t hard to explain. Explaining its decline is more difficult.  The early 1970s marked a turning point for the United States as a whole. 1969 to 1975 was essentially one long recession. Oil prices quadrupled during that time. Many businesses could not cope with the changing market conditions. Like many other drive-ins, Al Greens was hit hard. The Green family were apparently not keen on the idea of abandoning their flagship family business. Rumors circulated that they were rich from the boom years and could have done anything they wanted with the money, but that is almost certainly exaggerated. In any case the Greens might have adopted any number of strategies: converting to an indoor restaurant, a strip mall or an office complex, or selling outright to another developer. In the end, they chose to do virtually nothing. While they sold a parcel to Highland Appliances in the late 70s or early 80s, they continued to operate for years as if nothing had changed, letting the place fall into disrepair and ruin until finally selling it to a car dealership in the 1990s, which paved over the famous food stand, leaving not a trace.

Obviously, the reasons for AG’s decline were complex and beyond the Green's control. With the opening of I-70 around 1970, AG’s no longer had its prime location. They could have adapted a new strategy to cater to the I-70 traffic, but that would have meant becoming faster and more impersonal, like the other fast food restaurants. That just wasn't their style. Then, when local factories began closing in the early 70s, and fuel prices spiked in 1973, it was clearly a sign of an ebbing tide that was sinking all drive-in boats. Finally, as land prices shot up, drive-in owners sold out in droves. 

It's also clear that the success of Al Greens depended in large part on some of the inherent weakness of suburbia: The shortage of public spaces such as village centers, parks, and plazas.  Nearly all social experience required automobiles and the drive-in was a perfect fit for that time and place.

Many urban planners today wrack their brains to find out what make some neighborhoods more “livable” than others. Some of the concepts once deemed unnecessary during the height of suburban expansion have been making a comeback: Town squares, walking trails, pocket parks, and urban density, for example.  Ecological sustainability, walkability, and residential mixed with commercial are just some of the aspirations of new communities today. Proposing any form of a drive-in near an urban center today would be laughed at. Also taboo are the once-common high-density public housing projects that are now symbols of the segregation era. The latest trends favor human-scale development, walkability, and transit choices besides the automobile. But with decades of built environment that is not going away soon, it takes generations to change urban living patterns.

Virtually all cities have an older core that was designed for walking. Indianapolis, for example, has its "Mile Square," an area bound by East, West, North and South streets forming a square mile. The Mile Square is a perfect example of old-school human-scale planning where the entire commercial and business district was located within a short walk of residential. That concept worked well for centuries and is now coming back, now that streets have become clogged with too many vehicles and more people can appreciate the efficiency of urban living.

Another example of this older city structure is Alexandria, Virginia. Just across the Potomac from Washington DC, Alexandria has one of the largest preserved 18th-19th century residential areas in the United States. Residents enjoy plenty of sidewalks, proximity to transit and entertainment, and the original market square. The high-density mid-rise apartments and condos nearby help to give Alexandria a vibrancy that many American cities can only envy.  Alexandria tells us something about cities and human nature, namely, that there are certain rules that successful cities follow regarding proportions, scale, and flow patterns. For a time during the peak suburban years, planners neglected principles of connectivity, often creating pockets of suburban isolation that now are starting to decay. Better transit connectivity might make these areas more livable, but transit is too expensive to reach all the remote areas. In fact, some planners believe that the eventual decline of shoddy suburban developments will become one of the biggest urban revitalization issues of the future (David Lewis of Carnegie Mellon.)

It’s interesting to note that AG’s architecture has a natural human scale. Placed alongside the Parthenon of Athens, AG’s is about equal in length if you include the car canopy. Architects tell us that great buildings "feel" right to people because they are sized according to human function and scale, with Athens being a primary example.  For its small size, Athens has left a huge footprint in the world of culture and history. The portion of Athens enclosed by city walls was about a square mile, the same as Indianapolis' Mile Square. Its marketplace, or agora, was no bigger than a moderately sized shopping mall yet it was one of the most vibrant public spaces in recorded history, as vital to political freedom as it was to commerce. Indeed, early democracy could not have existed without public spaces where people could meet and express ideas. Also note how the democratic revolts of North Africa and the Middle East in 2011 were fomented in the public spaces such as Tahrir Square, in Cairo, which literally means “Liberation Square.”
 
Also, the area we consider as our “stomping grounds” has a natural scale.  For example, the area I “belonged” to as a teenager consisted of about four square miles. Beyond that range lay the "barbarians," foreigners whose customs were strange and inferior according to my adolescent mindset. Immature as it was, this pattern of thinking was only natural.  As humans we have a tendency to feel most comfortable within a certain territorial space. This territorial space must be large enough to accommodate the places we frequent and it must fit our mode of transportation.  It’s all about transportation, scale, and points of social interest.  With a change in the transpiration patterns, new social and commercial patterns arise. The drive-in was the right solution in its time and place.

In the last analysis, young people during the 1940s-60s were often concerned with three things: Food, cars, and social excitement. Al Green's provided an outlet for all three elements. With its endless supply of traffic coming and going, it was a form of social networking that linked the lives of thousands of young people.  Today's social networking is quite different, but that's a topic for a different article.