COMMENT OF THE DAY: HOW NATURAL SELECTION ELIMINATES HOUSTON PEDESTRIANS “Biology has words to describe the relationship between parking and driving. ‘Arms race’ and ‘co-evolution’ fit pretty well. If you find a creature that has evolved to devote a lot of its energy to producing toxins, you’ll find some other creature that has evolved to survive those toxins — the two are in an arms race with each other, and have co-evolved these capabilities. One becomes a little more toxic, the other becomes a little more immune to that toxin. Other organisms can’t invade that relationship because they aren’t toxic enough or immune enough. From this perspective, large parking lots and heavy reliance on cars can be seen as Houston’s defense mechanism. Houston is immune to walkability because driving and parking have co-evolved to such extremes here. There’s no stable strategy to provide a path from where we are to where the new urbanists want to be.” [Memebag, commenting on Houston’s Pothole Progress; Reagan HS Name Staying for Now] Illustration: Lulu