Wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat.
The new Saint Louis train station dumps you right under a highway, as if to say, “You took the train? Fuck you.” Saint Louis is a nice town but still terrifying coming from Sri Lanka. The cars are as big as our lorries, their back alleys are as big as our main roads, and their main streets are as big as our expressways. Don’t get me started on their highways. They have more lanes than I can count. Everything is bigger and none of this looks remotely sustainable at all. As the Bible said ‘wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction.’ Or as AC/DC put it ‘I’m on the highway to hell!’
So is any of this sustainable? No. Charles Marohn of the ambitiously (delusionally?) named Strongtowns organization says “we have grown to understand that the underlying financing mechanisms of the suburban era operate like a classic pyramid scheme, with ever-increasing rates of growth necessary to sustain the accumulation of long-term liabilities.”
As I’ve said:
Every road is actually a long-term liability, and cities don’t raise nearly enough…
