what impact do roads have on society

Answer 1

Hi Sal,

That is a gargantuan question!

Do you mean to ask, "What impact do roads have on 20th- or 21st-Century society?" If so, we could talk about overland freight, the decline of the railroad and railroad town, the topography of cities (often, the shape they take is based on a layout of the roads), or how an early investment in highways contributed to the dominance of the United States towards the end of the 20th-Century. Why, who could deny the importance of the road in shaping our on-demand society, where we can order consumer goods on Amazon and the like? Many of the biggest businesses that capitalize on the "information superhighway" do real business on real highways too.

Roads, though, have a long and winding history (puns intended). In ancient, walled cities (not all ancient cities were walled), roads were strategic points of entry. The Athenian Greeks in the 5th-Century BCE, for instance, built a long wall that defended the Piraeus Road, which led form the city-center near the Acropolis, to the major port where the Athenian navy deployed. After the Peloponnesian War, which was fought between Athens and Sparta, the Spartan victors made one of their first orders of business having the wall demolished so that they could more easily control the road. They viewed it as the major artery that supplied Athens with all its strategic goods and access to the sea. Parts of that road are still there! Just last summer, I had the pleasure of strolling on it.

Besides the Greek example, Ancient civilizations the world over have used roads for commercial and military expansion. The Romans were notorious road builders. The city of Rome was so crisscrossed by roads that some historians have compared it to a great, spoked wheel. In what was basically the first "adopt-a-highway program," Julius Caesar and other roman politicians contributed funds to road building from their personal wealth because roads were understood to be so important for the health of Rome.

You may have heard of the Silk Road, which ostensibly originated in China and stretched to Europe. This is not a real road, and some historians even consider it a "myth," pointing out that there was no really organized trade route from China to Europe that dealt primarily in silk. But, nonetheless, the Ancient Chinese civilization was a road-building civilization. Interestingly, they romanticized roads, making the road the setting of many of what are sometimes called "bandit stories," (e.g., Outlaws of the Marsh). Roads are also featured as allegorical images in some early Taoist literature now known as the Zhuangzi. In other words, not just just Jack Kerouac, but an entire, great civilization saw the road as a good, thought provoking setting for a story.

In all, the developments of roads from simple hunting and trading paths into highways for mass transit closely reflects developments in society; and developments in society are often accompanied by advances in road building.

I hope this helps. Since I am not exactly sure what the scope of your question is, I just want to give you some fun things to think about. I'm always free if you want to talk about any specific points! Or if you want to talk about the general impact of other rudimentary technology on society.