In New York in the late 19th century, horses pulling carts and buggies were the main way of delivering goods and moving people. All those thousands and thousands of working animals deposited an estimated 1.13 million kilograms of manure and 250,000 litres of urine on the city's streets every day.

New Yorkers had to put up not only with the smell from mountains of excrement but also with the spread of disease from horse carcasses left rotting on the street.

Although the first cars were promoted as a clean and efficient alternative to horses, they weren't universally popular. Wealthy car owners tended to order their chauffeurs to drive as fast as possible on streets that were crowded to the point of gridlock with horses and carts -- as well as children playing. Many were killed, including Louis Camille, whose death in a densely-populated Italian neighbourhood became a flashpoint of class resentment: Angry residents nearly lynched the car's driver and passenger.

What really crowned the car king of the streets of New York was the Model T. When Henry Ford's sturdy vehicles brought car ownership to the middle class, the last vestiges of opposition to motorized vehicles disappeared.

Throughout the 1950s and '60s, a new planning elite of developers and engineers created a vast network of arterial roads, bridges and tunnels to allow car traffic to flow and circulate. If there was an obstacle, the solution was to build another bridge or a new highway. Nothing could stand in the way of "progress."

But New York's success has come at a high price. There's been no major extension of the subway system in 60 years and the streets are becoming as regularly gridlocked as they were more than a century ago. Traffic congestion is growing so acute that it threatens the city's competitiveness as an economic and financial centre.

Such a quirky look at one of the world's great cities is one of the many appealing elements in the documentary Contested Streets: Breaking New York City's Gridlock. What also makes it so much more than a long whine is the way it reframes the problem in Gotham City. Instead of fixating on how bad cars are, Contested Streets instead shifts perspective by looking at streets as public space where cars are merely one user along with buses, pedestrians and bikes.

In suggesting solutions to New York's traffic problems, Contested Streets goes to European cities weaning themselves from car dependency. In Copenhagen, a city with a higher rate of car ownership than New York, 40 years of town planning has resulted in shared roadways where pedestrians and cyclists are treated on an equal basis with cars and buses.

In Paris, a long-term project is underway to introduce Bus Rapid Transit and to turn roadways along the Seine into public spaces for people. In London, the controversial decision to charge vehicles each time they enter the city centre has resulted in a 30-per-cent drop in congestion and a marked increase in the number of cyclists and pedestrians, not to mention much better bus service.

Stefan Schaefer's Contested Streets is one of 14 feature and short documentaries being shown at the city's newest film festival called Planet in Focus: International Environmental Film & Video Festival. The films are all being shown at theH.R. MacMillan Space Centre Auditorium from Monday to March 24, during Spring Break.

Started in 1999 in Toronto, Planet in Focus is a film festival with a point of view: All the films selected are designed to explore social and environmental issues. The festival is affiliated with the Planet in Focus Foundation whose honorary patron is David Suzuki. Planet in Focus is in Vancouver for the first time as part of its cross-Canada tour.

Other films being shown include:

Refugees from the Blue Planet: Although Refugees looks at environmental refugees -- such as the residents of the island nation of Maldives which faces extinction due to rising sea levels caused by global warming -- Helene Croquette's and Jean-Philippe Duval's film expands the definition to zero in on much more localized causes that force people from their homes. It looks at how the Aracruz Cellulose Factory in Brazil, for example, has displaced farmers and their families from the land as it has replaced the Amazon forest with eucalyptus trees to make toilet paper for European and North American consumers. The Quebec documentary also looks much closer to home at environmental refugees who have had to flee their farms in Alberta because of the dangerous and potentially fatal hydrogen sulphide emissions from sour gas wells.

A Big Lake (Vies Nouvelle): This Belgian film follows the Guo family who live in central China on the banks of the DaninRiver, a tributary of the Yang Tse being transformed by the Three Gorges Dam. In Mandarin with English subtitles, the documentary follows the Guo as their world fragments around them and the river rises centimetre by centimetre.