April 23, 2007
Growing Cities, Growing Wealth...
It seems pretty straight forward that if you increase the rate of human interaction the opportunity for wealth creation will also increase. Now there has been some additional quantification of this phenomena:
Cities have an almost magical ability, spurred by increased human interaction, to stimulate innovation and increase wealth.If this is the case it would seem appropriate for state and local governments to focus their energies* on infrastructure elements that will increase human interaction. Instead they seem to spend a massive amount of effort on building more roads (an oft failed commons), on allegedly decreasing the time it takes to get from place to place.
Shouldn't they, rather, be focusing on eliminating cars from large segments of cities so that barriers to interaction such as autococoons, freeways, ever lengthening trips to the store, and commutes are minimized?
Via Speedmaster.
Update: See this article on commuting in the New Yorker. Via Buzz Anderson.
*To the extent it is appropriate for them to focus on anything beyond public safety and maintaining a judicial system.
Posted by Steve on April 23, 2007
