by aa5 on June 5th, 2016, 7:32 am
I imagine around that era of the 1940's that large areas of European cities would have to be demolished and rebuilt, to accommodate the new utilities, streets, and density that would be needed in the new era. My own view of history is an adapting political & social organization to the changing technological and scientific advances.
During the 1920's and especially the 1930's the farm combine radically altered Western societies. Before the farm combine, a farmer divided his field into 3 sections; one to farm crops to sell, one for the animals used in farming to graze, and one left fallow. With the farm combine, farmers were able to increase from 1/3rd to 2/3rds of their land under cultivation at any one time. And to carry out the farming with far less labor than before.
The result was that our nations were awash in food, and the farming communities across the land were devastated. This created decades of idiotic 'supply management' farming policies from national governments - still in effect in the West, to try to deal with the surplus of food(although in the 1980's the USA dismantled a fair amount of their supply management.) Hence why American food is so cheap today, relative to other Western nations.
Millions, upon millions of people were forced to flee the farming communities and head to our cities. Fortunately the same technology that enabled the farm combine, the combustion engine, allowed for a huge expansion in cities. The radius that people could live in and still commute to the centers of Western cities for work, vastly expanded. If you are interested look on wikipedia at the parabolic increase in populations of the big western cities during 1925-1955.
To put these millions of people displaced from the farming communities to work, building the commuter highways, the new subdivisions & apartment blocks, and the new utility lines -electrical, telephone, water. There were some barriers in the way. Like the property rights, heritage buildings, many years of 'public consultations', environmental reviews, lawsuits over expropriation, etc.
Unless, of course, there was a national emergency, requiring the national governments to make executive decisions without restraint. Say you have a bunch of old, low density, out of code buildings, and a maze like road structure - with thousands of residents living there, including some with positions of power, fighting you every step of the way... wouldn't it be nice to come up from the subway bomb shelters, and find that sadly, that area was reduced to rubble?