There's a monster at the end of this book

Seven years ago, the first lecture in my introduction to mechanics course at MIT begged the question, "Why can't monsters exist on Earth?"  And so Professor Franz-Josef Ulm introduced the concept of dimensional analysis to a roomful of insouciant freshmen.  Time. Mass. Length.  Through dimensional analysis we learned why one could not expect to simply scale up a grasshopper and expect a giant grasshopper to be able to walk around-its design simply couldn't handle it, and could only exist at its own specific size.  Grow it any larger, and it would collapse unto itself.

Three years of time (12% of my life span!) have now passed by in two cities that revolve around the automobile, and in that time I've come to recognize that the same principle can be held for cities.  In what way?  Primarily, transportation.  And I can assure you, there is a monster at the end of this book.

Growing up in a suburb of Boston, I became accustomed to the ability to bike to the town bus stop, take that bus to the town center, and hop on a Commuter Rail into town.  If I wanted to stretch my legs a bit, I could simply bike the entire way into the town center.  As long as I could walk, I could in theory get from my family's house on the circle to anywhere I wanted, overseas included.  Driver's license not required.  As long as I wore a helmet, even if I were to collide with someone else, we'd both probably walk away with no more than a few broken limbs.  The chances that I would be run over and killed or kill someone else either while riding my iron horse or going for a run (I swear if I really wanted to run I could) were next to 0-because such collisions were and are within the human scale.  Our bodies are designed to be able to handle such collisions and cannot on their own (absent falling off a cliff) exceed their design specifications.

Increase this scale to that of automobiles, however, and things change.  One must be physically able to drive a car, more or less of a certain age, and with certain levels of education as to the risks and impacts.  These automobiles exist outside of the human scale, and thus are forced above on elevated highways or buried down below in tunnels.  Collide with one of these things and you're lucky if you wake up the next day.  Allow them to take over a city and you begin to drive (yes) people out.  There's nothing pleasant about going for a stroll next to a four lane road where a sea of vehicles divides the stores on either side.  In fact, I would argue that any situation in which jaywalking cannot safely exist is unpleasant and inappropriate for an urban environment.

But why is this?  At their core, automobiles are larger, faster, and heavier than humans.  They're louder, less nimble, and often counterproductive (you don't have to schedule so many workouts when you've already spent thirty minutes a day or so riding a bicycle).  Automobiles, therefore, exist outside the human dimension. They are monsters.

Cities can be daunting.  They can be overwhelming.  But they can be within the human scale if they are designed for humans-not for automobiles.  Cars have their place-long distance travel, transporting heavy things, sharing a ride when more than one person is going to the same place.  But because cars move through an area faster than the occupants can explore it, they create a destination-based mentality, encourage isolation, and discourage urban exploration.  They can save time-I consistently see metro estimates taking about 75% more time than driving would take (unless you're stuck in traffic or looking for a place to park).  They can also waste time-when you could've been getting some exercise instead and now have to make up for it with extra workouts.

So the answer to that question is yes, monsters can exist on Earth.  But not without appropriate intervention in order to ensure that a city's primary stakeholders are people and not cars.