What movment increased science as a way to improve society
Without the movement of goods,
people, and ideas, cities falter, economies wane, and societies wither.
As local economies and their associated land uses have become more
specialized, mobility has grown ever more central to the sustainability
of human activity. Economic specialization, which has fueled
productivity growth and propelled the dispersion of interlinked
activities worldwide, is premised upon various forms of mobility,
including the migration of labor from low-wage to high-wage places, the
daily travel of workers from their homes to workplaces, the movement of
materials to worksites, and the distribution of finished products to
markets. When mobility ceases, as in the case of a natural disaster, not
only do workplaces fall idle, but also people cannot get emergency
medical attention, families cannot obtain food, and social gatherings of
all sorts are canceled or postponed.
The increasing importance of mobility to local,
regional, and global economies and to everyday life is reflected in data
showing the relentless increase in many measures of the movement of
people and goods (Figures 7.1 and 7.2). In the United States, the movement of people and freight has been steadily increasing.1
At the international scale, human migration more than doubled between
1970 and 2000, with the largest proportion of migrants moving to
countries in the developed world