Friday, August 31, 2012

What comes first: people or roads?

In Wednesday's class our professor posed to us the following question: What comes to an area first, people or transportation? I believe that both cases exist but in different stages of development. Initially, people precede transportation systems. It's not logical to simply build a road to nowhere; a road is first built because people have the need to get from one place to another and at both ends of the road there must be something worth traveling to. Once this road has been established it is likely that it will become increasingly used. With this increased density on the road, people will begin to stop along the way and choose to settle or build around this important artery of transportation. So in this stage of development, it is clear that transportation precedes people. 

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