Reading Material: Witold Rybczynski on Post-Industrial American Cities

While posting on this site I've tried to concentrate as much as possible on original articles about the project itself. However, I also think that if the project is going to be successful, we should try, as a community, to educate ourselves as much as possible about all the areas of knowledge that go into a game like this one: history, economics, software design, urban planning, and so on. To that end I've set up a new category, Reading Material, to provide some links to articles or resources that can provide us with food for thought.

For the first entry, an interesting article that appeared in Slate, by architect Witold Rybczynski, which discusses the kind of cities that people gravitate towards in the contemporary U.S.:

The question is not whether we want to live in cities. Obviously, a growing number of us do—otherwise we would not build so many of them. The real question is: In what kind of cities do we want to live? Compact or spread out? Old or new? Big or small?

Judging from the direction that American urbanism has taken during the second half of the 20th century, one answer is unequivocal—Americans want to live in cities that are spread out. Decentralization and dispersal, the results of a demand for private property, privacy, and detached family homes, have been facilitated by a succession of transportation and communication technologies: first, the railroad and the streetcar; later, the automobile and the airplane; lastly, the telephone, television, and the Internet. In addition, regional shopping malls, FedEx, UPS, the Home Shopping Network, and Amazon.com have helped people to spread out. Even environmental technologies—small sewage treatment facilities and micro power plants—have allowed people to live in more dispersed communities than in the past.

Rybczynski identifies some other noticeable trends, such as the gravitation towards warmer climates and cities with newer infrastructure. I highly recommend checking out the full article below:

The Cities We Want by Witold Rybczynski via Slate Magazine