Love it. Except the whole driverless cars fantasy dream though which I would doubt they would help in any fashion.<p>Unfortunately if we care about our ecosystems, communities divided by roads, and the constant noise and air pollution I think we only have harder solutions to negotiate: Speed limits, suburbs, and supporting useful public transit and bicycle infrastructure (to reduce road speed and the need to build road capacity linearly with rising incomes as the world develops)
I appreciate novel and thought provoking critiques like this, and also can keep in mind that roads are amazing and make the world better in a million ways.<p>There’s a big difference between internalizing something like this as a non obvious cost of something positive - and positive on the net despite the cost - vs reading this and deciding that roads should be removed or something like that.
“Goldfarb writes, and our collective future will bring many more cars and the need for even more roads.“<p>Is this true ? I can already see things like working from home, e bikes and drone delivery significantly reducing the need for roads.<p>In Japan, for example, roads are abandoned due to lack of use. A trend that seems to be happening in other countries such as China and Korea.<p>Aside from this, I love this article and I feel it’s really important to consider his arguments.
Here in the USA we're facing an infrastructure crisis. A lot of the roads, sewers, and electric were overbuilt. The expected maintenance is often not included in municipal budgets. Almost all cities and towns use cash basis accounting instead of accrual accounting, which means they all are facing unanticipated maintenance costs.<p><a href="https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/9/the-real-reason-your-city-has-no-money" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/9/the-real-reason...</a>
One thing I saw that really surprised me: In the desert, there are more flowers immediately beside the road. Water is the critical factor for plant life there. When it rains, the water that falls on the road flows off to the edge, so the plants there have more water.
Depressing article noting how prevailing roads are in the U.S.:<p><a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42104894" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42104894</a>