There's a certain fascination in watching a city destroy itself more or less overnight. Kyiv last imposed itself on the West's consciousness when it exploded into mass protests during Ukraine's so-ealled Orange Revolution in 2004. But looking around this still beautiful capital on Europe's edge today, you wonder how much strain an urban fabric can take before it rips.

Kyiv's problem is cars. The city's increasingly well-off post-Soviet population has taken to automobiles with the intensity of the long-deprived. Ukraine's booming economy is blast-forging the country's first mass middle class, and by many locals' count, perhaps 10 times more vehicles are now rumbling through this ancient city's hilly streets than there were when the Soviet Union expired in 1991. In 2006, according to the Kyiv Post, Ukraine climbed from 12th place to ninth place in Europe in terms of new car sales, which a leading Ukrainian newsmagazine reports grew 52 percent here from last September to this. About 60,000 new cars were registered in Kyiv this October alone, according to the Unian news agency, bloating a total that Ukraine's Emergency Ministry puts at 1.5 million -- and the number is expected to grow by a million more by 2011.

This has meant something catastrophic for life in Kyiv. Streets that in 1991 were almost empty and that five years ago remained passable thoroughfares are now gridlocked for most of each business day.

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In a macho culture that has embraced conspicuous consumption, the idea of people taking to bicycles like the burghers of Amsterdam is inconceivable. Just a little less so is the idea that, in a nondemocratic culture defined by elite prerogative, the newly affluent will use public transportation like wealthy Westerners. And a culture with an almost totally corrupt public life, no functioning justice system and a tendency toward political murder seems unlikely to make "green" choices when it comes to urban planning.