The outcome of the cities will depend on the race between the automobile and the elevator, and anyone who bets on the elevator is crazy.

Rome did not look like the capital of a great empire … no broad avenues and few open spaces … Few streets were wide enough to allow vehicles to pass one another and most of them were unpaved. … to eliminate daytime traffic jams … the night clattered with the cacophony of wooden carts … The rich lived in houses with no outside windows … rooms were grouped around one or more open-air courtyards … Shops lined many of the main streets … Rome was a city of horrible smells. Rubbish and sewage, even occasional human corpses, were tipped into the street. Passersby were so often hit by the contents of chamber pots emptied from the second floor or the roof that laws were passed … City life was made bearable only by the ready availability of water. Four aqueducts … strode across the land, bringing fresh, clean water …