IT'S A VISION THING:

Radiant City Redux (Edward B. Driscoll, Jr., 04/16/2002, Tech Central Station)

Segway's vision takes the Radiant City full circle: Instead of reorganizing the city for the car, we reorganize it for the Segway. The car is banished. Streets, if they exist at all, will only be used for mass transit - and, of course, the Segway. As Bridge says, individuals would park their cars in greenbelt areas outside the city and glide in on their Segways. Never mind that it still hasn't been proven that people will actually buy the Segway, its builders are already in talks with city governments (Atlanta seems to be particularly keen on the Segway concept for some reason) to almost insure that they will have no choice. And if they don't, maybe the city government will buy a fleet of them and let individuals rent them.

It remains unclear to me why we should expect that cities even have a future. With the demise of manufacturing, does anyone still have a job that they couldn't just as easily do out of their home with a computer and video-conferencing?

But, as always, Mr. Driscoll's piece is interesting.

UPDATE : Mr. Driscoll believes I'm wrong and cities are here to stay.

It's entirely possible that this is just an instance of personal prejudice blinding me to the truth, but I find it hard to believe that people would choose to gather in cities unless it were necessary for work. On the other hand, I can buy the glorified playground idea. Of course, cities have lasted an awful long time and you'd have to be an ass to bet against them. I'm not.

Posted by Orrin Judd at April 17, 2002 8:02 AM