Writing for The Atlantic‘s Technology channel now, Alexis Madrigal makes a simple but important argument about how cellphones and other mobile devices, by enabling new ways of life, are affecting the form and density of cities:

…the latest network to overspread our country — the wireless electromagnetic one — is just not fully compatible with driving, at least for human brains. In more economic terms, the opportunity cost of car commuting is going up. You can listen to Howard Stern in a car; you can run your business from a train or bus.

Infrastructure is a viscous social structure, so I have no illusions that a century-old transportation system and its attendant urban forms are suddenly going to disappear. But it’s all the networks we layer on top of one another — information, power, transportation, water — that help determine the social desirability of a place.

This is a perfect illustration of why mammoth has argued that the smartphone is one of the most important pieces of architecture produced in the past decade.