The mental atrophy around city planning comes from not thinking through the matter of vastly reducing the presence, cost and force of the automobile. Once we have essentially freed our rights of way we can place upon them double wide, advanced transportation for human beings and goods.
We can use the interstate system as the template for the creation of car-free, walkable cyber communities on new sites or the recreated sites of existing sprawl areas.
It is this step toward new industries to create a reasonable chance of economically-viable redesign of society that has not yet been made.
The matrix or skeleton that contains all of the channels and conductors needed to afford recycling, energy and waste removal on-site is beyond the ken of existing city or regional planning.
The way such skeletons create in a mile square area a four level above ground opportunity for the attachment of myriad, lego-like, mass-produced spaces that serve as residence areas, kiosks, public areas, offices, stores and all other things we find in a city has not been surmised.
We can see the end though. A walkable, safe, pattern-language redolent, stair-free, car free community that is build around the realities of cyberspace and which tailors occupations to communities of 10,000 - education, recreation, health and everything else.Cyber communities clustered in cyber-cities in an ecumenopolis.
This is what is coming and we hardly know it yet.
