Half as many people will not support half as many enterprises In a given geographical territory, half as many people will not support half as many such enterprises spaced at twice the distance. When distance inconvenience sets in, the small, the various and the personal wither away. Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities densitydistancegeographybusinesseconomics
You need to make the step forward Throughout a racing season there is constant, relentless pressure on the designer to keep making design improvements. But there is a limit to what can be achieved with any car design, before a jump has to be made to basically a new design, an innovation. As Gordon Murray says, ‘Given the situation and the pressure at any one time, you do get to the brick wall...I mean you're doing all these normal modifications, you know you can't go any quicker, you need to make the step forward.’ In the midst of the pressure, the fervour, the panic, he ‘used to get breakthroughs, I mean I used to get like suddenly a mental block's lifted.’ Gordon Murray, Winning by Design: The Methods of Gordon Murray The Structure of Scientific RevolutionsMediocratopia progress