Regional and Urban Design Committee

Let's not forget the transportation machine that really transformed urban environments was not the bicycle, but the elevator.

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George McGoldrick AIA
Principal
George E. McGoldrick, AIA, LLC
Meriden CT
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....and the elevator depended for its ultimate success on the electric motor.  Many factors have given the city its form, not least of which are density resulting from the value of real estate resulting from the need for close human interaction, coupled with better sanitation coupled with advancing knowledge of disease processes, enhanced by etc., etc., etc.  It seems to me the discussion needs to shift to what we want cities to BE in our own time and into the future; how we want them to serve as not only life-affirming habitat, but engines of the advancement of civilization responsive in a humane way to new technologies serving people more than the next great technology and excessively concentrated wealth.

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Gary Collins AIA
Principal
Gary R. Collins, AIA
Jacksonville OR
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Glenn Coleman AIA
Glenn Eldric Coleman AIA
Santa Rosa CA
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Great understanding of MACHINES, but the reall machine that transformed the urban environment was the one & only machine that has transformed anything on this Planet Earth...$$money$$.