>Most cities used to have all the industry located in the centre. It led to huge slums (because there was insufficient supply and massive demand) and everyone l

>Most cities used to have all the industry located in the centre. It led to huge slums (because there was insufficient supply and massive demand) and everyone leaving the city when the slums got cleared. I had this realization recently. Our entire society and work culture is structured around the laws of thermodynamics. In the industrial age, you had a mill or a forge, or a steam engine that was running 24/7 and necessitated high concentration of the workforce purely for reasons of thermodynamic efficiency of operating said equipment. Everyone had to "gather around the fire" so to speak because having disparate smaller works would be incredibly inefficient. In a world where information work now dominates, these constraints have become meaningless and are only perpetuated via institutional inertia.