If you Build It

If you Build It

Article from Issue 164/2014
Author(s):

"If you build it, they will come…" The line lingers from a well-known baseball-as-religion movie from many innings in my past. No sense in erecting an elegant synopsis of the film (if I try to build that, you will most certainly go), but I will admit that this one mystical line bears repeating.

Dear Linux Pro Reader,

"If you build it, they will come…" The line lingers from a well-known baseball-as-religion movie from many innings in my past. No sense in erecting an elegant synopsis of the film (if I try to build that, you will most certainly go), but I will admit that this one mystical line bears repeating.

As a young engineer, I only lasted six months working for the California Highway Department, creators of what was at the time (and still might be) the most advanced and scientific highway system in the world. I honestly couldn't see how I was helping. You see, the reason the California Highway Department kept building roads was because they kept getting more people in the suburbs. The reason they kept getting more people in the suburbs was because they kept building more roads. A few rounds of "If you build it they will come," and the whole landscape started to transform in ways that no one really ever fully predicted, and what was once a sensible and practical element of the infrastructure became a battleground.

[...]

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