Throughout human history, there is really only one era where concrete was as ubiquitous as it is today: the Roman Empire.
Pantheon, 125 AD, Rome
After the Roman Empire collapsed, it would be over a millennia before concrete was used as extensively again. Today, for better or worse, it is the second most used substance in the world (after water) and an essential part of modernity.
Consider how concrete peaked early in the Colosseum only to reach unimaginable heights, scope and scale in the modern world. Innovations may not be linear as much as cyclical in some aspects, as what is old is reimagined and utilized in entirely new ways.
On a much shorter scale, trams and light-rail lines expanded much throughout the 1950s and 1960s in the U.S. Trams fell out of favor due to high costs, inflexible infrastructure, and the emergence of the automobile and bus service. While automobiles dominate the U.S. if not the world for transportation, they create new issues such as pollution, traffic, and congestion in conjunction with urban decay.
Trams have come back as a potential solution to reduce traffic and pollution, while tram investments are sold as fostering economic recovery in ways that buses apparently don’t.
Regardless, greater minds than mine ponder potential solutions that could be better than automobiles, trams or buses. Take Elon Musk, for instance:
This novel approach was ultimately lampooned as Elon reimagined the bus system.
While easy to mock, Elon’s point is interesting commentary on current problems and existing solutions, as well as brand new technological applications. Our existing automobile infrastructure is causing a lot of harm, while a simple solution like a better bus system is so obvious and yet invisible as a solution
How does technology take us into the future, either as reforming where we’ve been or taking us to entirely new systems? Will we end up with more expensive trams or tech-enabled buses that take something plain and awful into something future forward?
Concrete, like the bus, reminds us that the most impactful solutions may be built on the refinement and reimagination of what is familiar. It may not be a future dominated by cars or large infrastructure investments such as tram lines, but rather reimagining solutions like the bus that can be cheaper, smarter, and more sustainable. As we focus on the Soaring Twenties, our challenges may not require unprecedented or extravagant innovations, but rather transform our view to see the extraordinary potential in the ordinary, including the bus.
One of my whole things is:
Too much of the world is stuck arguing about meaning or semantics or who benefits or whether the processes serve the right ideology. Too few discussions I see in any public venues really have anything to do with a) making clear what the specific need is, b) coming up with solutions for those needs and c) debating their costs and tradeoffs.
"It's a crisis of meaning!" "It's a crisis of truth!" "It's a crisis of trust!" "It's a crisis of culture!" "It's embodied capitalism!" "It's the authorian tick of socialism!" "You don't invent the lightbulb by iterating on candles!" "We can't begin to fix these issues until we rethink how we understand public transit!"
No guys, it's literally "How much would it cost to run a bus from here to here" and "How do we pay for it?" Fucking chill out.
This is so true! And something we even struggle with here in little Omaha as a ton of money is being piled into a few miles of streetcar when we have a city 144 sq miles that could be better served by additional rapid bus lines, etc. Part of it where the funds are coming from and possibly who are the expected users of each infrastructure solution. Great essay