It's instructive to consider the alternative. Many US towns expand in a dendritic pattern by branching cul-de-sacs off of interconnecting roads. By contrast pre

It's instructive to consider the alternative. Many US towns expand in a dendritic pattern by branching cul-de-sacs off of interconnecting roads. By contrast pre-Westphalian cities were always built within convex hulls for defensive purposes. These shapes were imitated by early grid-planned US towns built by capitalist pioneers, but after the introduction of the automobile those towns were soon surrounded by irregular additions. The convex hull is clearly superior in a fire-prone forest, because it permits the introduction of a fire-break. However, it requires us to, from a top-down perspective, decide that we will build a new entire town. We are reluctant to commit to building towns in forests, even though we are equally reluctant to ban people from living in forests. In this situation we have the worst of both worlds: ad-hoc development is subsidized by the "surplus value lying around" when the government pays to build a road/powerlines/etc between two places, but it ultimately depletes that resource and creates new demands which must be fulfilled by the government.