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The obvious question, of course, is what you would've recommended for us to use between 1950 and 2000?

Transportation and moving around fast is pretty dang valuable. It lets us do a lot of things, markets become larger, and the different number of highly specialized people I can interact with increases.

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Higher population density in urban areas severely reduces the need for cars. It's possible to live in cities developed pre-car (London, Berlin, Boston, New York) without owning a car. Americans have put ourselves in a pickle by building sprawling suburbs, which then require cars to increase the "number of highly specialized people" they can interact with.

There are however many people who find high-density living to be unappealing

That, and they drastically reduce housing costs, and increase incomes. Two of the biggest areas we're currently sliding backwards with in modern cities.

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