Along with the advances brought about by the invention of the wheel, the Phoenician development of money as a symbolic representation of value was an early, yet radical, paradigm shift in our concept of transportation. With money, instead of dealing directly in the transfer of goods themselves, merchants were able to trade the symbolic representations of these goods ie, currency which was both easier to transport and infinitely more malleable. The history of technology is replete with examples of how faster and more flexible modes of transportation superseded older, heavier and clumsier modes. A pedestrian moves one person at 2 miles per hour. A cart moves three or four people at 5 miles per hour.
Cars move that many at ten times the speed.
Trains carry hundreds of people at over a hundred miles per hour, while planes can carry the same payload at over 500 miles per hour. In each instance, the dominant form of transportation determined the form and function of our communities. The animal cart organic form of the Medieval town gave way to the carriageways of Baroque Paris which, in turn, gave way to the centralized railroad terminal cities of the 19th century. Today, we can foresee the decline of the gas powered automobile, but have yet to come up with an alternative that is at once appealing to the market forces that drive Western technological capitalism and less environmentally deleterious than our current systems of movement.