The need for speed devours huge chunks of American cities and leaves the edges of the expressways worthless. Busy streets, for almost all of human history, created the greatest real estate value because they delivered customers and clients to the businesses operating there. This in turn cultivated the highest tax revenues in town, both from higher property taxes and from elevated sales taxes. But you can’t set up shop on the side of an expressway. How can cities afford to spend so much to create thoroughfares with no adjoining property value?

Source: www.originalgreen.org

That is is the ENTIRE city of Florence, Italy on the left, while there is area surrounding just one cloverleaf interchange in Atlanta, Georgia on the right.  The high speed on the highways is one of the costs of sprawl.   

Tags: transportation, planning, sprawl, scale.