I used to be all for the removal of highways, but now I worry that this trend will accentuate economic inequality and hurt poorer people who might want to move to the big wealthy cities where these highways are being removed.

50 years ago, when these roads were being built, they enabled wealthy workers to flee to the suburbs and commute into city centers for work, cutting through the poorer neighborhoods left behind.

Now the geographic patterns are reversing in some areas, and city centers are now far more vibrant (read: wealthy), while in places like Los Angeles, where I live, much of the new population growth is occurring on the periphery of the urban area, where lower income workers can afford to live while enduring long commutes into the city.

I live in an affluent neighborhood, and many of my neighbors want to make the city more walkable and "friendlier", by making roads smaller and de-emphasizing cars in favor of transit and human-scale development. In the long run, I think this is a good idea, and would dramatically improve my life in the city.

But at the same time, if policies make a city and its high quality jobs difficult to access for people who can't afford to live in the city itself, it's not necessarily a net positive, especially when the wealthiest cities are enthusiastically restricting supply.

Ultimately, I worry that we will look back at this period in urban policy as the time when city centers got far wealthier, low-income people were displaced, and the focus of wonks turned to creating cities that rich people like them would like to live in, without realizing that the same policies that makes a city enjoyable to live in also makes the engine of good jobs hard to access for people who aren't fortunate enough to already be living there.