Eye of the Beholder

Sally often laughs when she hears me say, “look how beautiful that is” — only to find me pointing at a highway overpass.

Check out these interchanges via dailycognition.

I love the elegant tangle of these massive concrete-and-steel curves, but they represent conflicting ideals to me. On one hand, I appreciate and admire the ingenuity and even artistry that went into engineering (most of) these interchanges. On the other hand, their very purpose is distasteful to me. They exist to prevent us and our motor vehicles from having to slow down (as much) when our paths cross. While I wouldn’t want anyone’s commute to be longer than it needs to be, I would trade all of our beautiful highway interchanges for more mom-and-pop local interaction.