The Economic Life of the Urban Core
The cities have attracted so much traffic that over the centuries they become huge
snarls of traffic and business. But what's at the anatomy of all this. The
crossroads effect. The ideal is an intersection of two roads,
not limited access highways, but regular roads, as well as an intersection of a
rail way, in the proximity of a canal or port and airport. One such
intersection was, I believe, Greenwood Avenue in Bethel, Connecticut in the
U.S.A., except that the train terminated in the next town. What it needed
to do was connect with Chicago, directly or indirectly. But the crossroads
effect can just be as simple as two roads such as, arbitrarily, 5th Avenue and
57th Street in Manhattan, NY, NY.
That effect is one of the simplest of economic engines and is an historic one. It's kind of surprising that more
notoriety hasn't been directed at this reality, but it might be that anyone discovering the principle has kept it secret for their own advantage. But not me. I don't like them too much at all. So I don't mind spilling the beans.
The problem with crossroads is that in this new century they're harder to build and that's too bad, because for now they're really the immediate key to success and immediate is all that's needed for a major upheaval in world history. Because
of improper connectivity, the life of citizens that tend to congregate in the
urban core of cities that have sprung up around known economic circumstance or
accidental economic engines, becomes stifled, oppressive, failing, less and less
bearable, and so on because new basic crossroads effects don't exist because the
intersection of the needed connectivity has been neglected.
Throughout history, too much attention has been given to the powerful; that they
somehow deserve priority on where the roads go and how they're built. This is
very embarrassing due to the apparent morons that have attained power especially
in the United States. It makes me ashamed to be the same species. Roads are
meant to be deployed strategically to develop prosperity much more so than to serve as some mere convenience!
A road going to a powerful person's estate is a road to nowhere. This is evidenced in the Paris
phenomenon of the twentieth century in which all roads led to the capitol. What was needed was a major thruway from Calais to
Marseilles via Lyon and an intersecting thruway form the major Pyrenees connection with Spain going directly to Trois and on into the
Ruhr Valley in Germany. The place where the two roads intersected would
grow into a new city, a Neuveau Paris or Paris 2 which could interconnect with
Paris by high speed rail. For the moment, all that's there is Pasriche.
But you never know, maybe they're taking my advise through some quirk of the
internet. However it happens, if they get their connectivity even part way
right, among other things, that would help pull Germany out of the doldrums.
But instead Paris, so far at least, has became like a little Rome to which all roads led. It looked like it would work and it seemed to because there was nothing to compare it to, but it was an underachiever and seriously affected the prosperity of France which still did fairly well in spite of the handicap, largely due to the excellent education of it's peoples at least in the major urban areas.
Copyright (c) 2005 by Paul A. L. Hall. All rights reserved.
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