From: Rafal Smigrodzki (rms2g@virginia.edu)
Date: Tue Feb 11 2003 - 15:52:05 MST
Damien Broderick wrote:
> Mike Lorrey said:
>
>> Successfully used public mass transit is a
>> paramount sign of a mature and ingrained socialist society.
>
> I dunno about that, but it sure makes life in Melbourne considerably
> more comfortable and pleasant than it would be otherwise. New York,
> too, for that matter.
>
### It would be interesting to find out if any New York-type cities were
ever built *after* cars became widely available, in areas with sufficiently
cheap land.
As I said before, New York, and other high-density cities were formed by the
logic of industrial and economical development in the age of the horse buggy
and snail mail. They are the infrastructure from a bygone era, adapted to
technologies of one hundred years ago, and can be best explored using
antiquated methods of transport. However, suburbs are effects of the
interaction between today's technological possibilities and innate human
preferences.
Tooby and Cosmides include an essay in the "Adapted Mind" about human
esthetic preferences. Apparently, most humans prefer environments with the
appropriate balance between being enclosed and having unobstructed view,
environments which promise hiding places from predators, good lookouts, an
element of mystery, appropriate seclusion and the right amount of closeness.
While there are great interindividual differences, the teeming metropolis of
the Industrial Age seems to violate our most cherished desires - for space,
safety, greenery, and absence of noise. The flight into the suburbs is an
expression of these desires, and was enabled first by the car, now even more
so by the Internet.
It is true that the metro makes New York less unbearable, but apparently,
for many if not most people, a quiet, village-like settlement, with abundant
greenery, large, quiet, comfortable houses, and easy access using narrow,
meandering roads connected to high-speed highway networks and G-bit data
lines, is what good Mother Nature made us for.
Rafal
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