FWIW, the sentence quoted above says that cities with fewer urban motorways are overrepresented in that list of the richesty urban centres, it doesn't say every city listed meets that criteria.
The article also discusses goods and services in the case study it's looking at - comparison between the Montreal subway and highway built for the Expo. i.e. about how moving passengers onto underground subways leaves more space for movements of goods or services on the surface. A similar argument applies to any shift towards more space-efficient modes of transport for passengers.
Also, I don't quite see the argument on emergency services. Inner city highways/motorways are mostly for moving from the centre into and out of the suburbs. Emergency services need to go from any random point to the nearest hospital, which is a different thing. Sending hundreds of thousands of highly space inefficient cars into city centres (which have a fundamental limit on street space, and their capacity to handle traffic) is highly likely to increase congestion and make it more difficult, not less difficult, to move around on the surface streets from one point to another in the centre. You'd have to introduce some congestion charging system, or perhaps bus lanes, otherwise building the road is likely to make the situation worse.
Where highways really shine is in moving goods into and out of cities. If you have high-volume industry in the centre of a city, or for instance a port, you clearly need some way of getting the inputs and outputs into and out of the city. But there does seem to be a continuous, long standing trend of moving this kind of infrastructure out of city centres. Modern container ports and factories need greater economies of scale, and tend to be situated on the outskirts of, or outside, cities where land is cheaper. And Western economies are moving more towards services rather than manufacturing. A big part of this debate is about what a city is for, and how to reconcile that with changes in transport and industry.
"it doesn't say every city listed meets that criteria"
But it does list San Jose first, implying that it is (most?) representative.
...
"Also, I don't quite see the argument on emergency services... Emergency services need to go from any random point to the nearest hospital"
Exactly! And what is the fastest way to the nearest hospital with an open emergency room (let alone a real trauma center) in such areas? I don't know, but I assume that most cities lack real hospitals within fast access of downtown by surface streets (due to traffic, if not also distance). In the San Jose case, you're talking VMC, which would be 20+ minutes away by surface streets but maybe 8 minutes using 280.
In San Francisco, the only hospital South of Market is SF General. (Technically South or East of Market, but SOMA is a well-known term).
FWIW, the sentence quoted above says that cities with fewer urban motorways are overrepresented in that list of the richesty urban centres, it doesn't say every city listed meets that criteria.
The article also discusses goods and services in the case study it's looking at - comparison between the Montreal subway and highway built for the Expo. i.e. about how moving passengers onto underground subways leaves more space for movements of goods or services on the surface. A similar argument applies to any shift towards more space-efficient modes of transport for passengers.
Also, I don't quite see the argument on emergency services. Inner city highways/motorways are mostly for moving from the centre into and out of the suburbs. Emergency services need to go from any random point to the nearest hospital, which is a different thing. Sending hundreds of thousands of highly space inefficient cars into city centres (which have a fundamental limit on street space, and their capacity to handle traffic) is highly likely to increase congestion and make it more difficult, not less difficult, to move around on the surface streets from one point to another in the centre. You'd have to introduce some congestion charging system, or perhaps bus lanes, otherwise building the road is likely to make the situation worse.
Where highways really shine is in moving goods into and out of cities. If you have high-volume industry in the centre of a city, or for instance a port, you clearly need some way of getting the inputs and outputs into and out of the city. But there does seem to be a continuous, long standing trend of moving this kind of infrastructure out of city centres. Modern container ports and factories need greater economies of scale, and tend to be situated on the outskirts of, or outside, cities where land is cheaper. And Western economies are moving more towards services rather than manufacturing. A big part of this debate is about what a city is for, and how to reconcile that with changes in transport and industry.