While we were participating with Alex Manu in building a thinkmap on car-driven cities, I thought about this great quotation from John Thakara's In the Bubble (Thackara, 2005, 5 or here http://www.thackara.com/inthebubble/toc.html):

"We’re being swept into unknown and dangerous waters by accelerating economic growth.... Our natural, human, and industrial systems, which evolve slowly, are struggling to adapt. Laws and institutions that we might expect to regulate these flows have not been able to keep up.

"A good example is what is inaccurately described as mindless sprawl in our physical environment.