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Comment by ido | Hacker News Reader

How do mobile phones affect city planning?

No need for door bells. No need for street signs. No need for taxi stops. No need for privately owned cars (rent via phone app or use Uber like service).

Those things affect urban planning a lot.

I don't think we're ready for all those things to disappear. The only thing that really has gone since mobile phones are phone booths.

But the thing is Street signs and door bells don't take up any space. There's no real benefit in removing them anyway.

Private cars are a big issue but the problem is people commuting from outside the city and shared car schemes are too expensive for that.

Walking around Toronto, Canada, I've noticed that it's getting harder to find street signs. Their placement is for drivers in cars, not for people walking.

That's silly. Phones can get damaged or stolen, looking at a sign is much faster than looking at a phony and signs hardly take up any space.

Its still really convenient. It is really starting to pick up - I can use my phone to pay fares in a lot of metros now, have real time transit tracking, and use it for navigation even when walking.

Its definitely, imo, to the point where it is becoming a responsibility of societies to provide its citizens access to these technologies because of their utility. That means subsidized / free phones and service, imo. Everyone really should have a baseline of digital access as a fundamental right, hopefully this decade. The COVID relief free cell service in the US I think has been an eye opener for me.

Are you suggesting that cars can't get damaged or stolen? lol

All those phones require towers and some 5g bands need way more to blanket whole areas.

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