In 1898, just before the dawn of the automobile age, delegates from around the world came to New York for the world’s first international urban planning conference. One topic dominated the discussion. It wasn’t the effects of the coming car revolution on urban land use, the need for gasoline stations or the implications for economic development. It was horse manure. At that time, Americans used roughly 20 million horses for transport, and cities were drowning in their muck.
But we shouldn’t mock our forebears because our current planning debates are just as rooted in the present, just as ignorant of the oncoming avalanche of changes. As the delegates in New York obsessed over horses when they should have been thinking about cars, our policy wonks obsess over cars when they should be thinking about autonomous vehicles.
Via Bertel Schmitt.