Most of those eventual transitions were fueled by the abundance of cheap energy, either in the form of abundant natural resources, slave labor, or the advent of fossil fuel beginning with coal in the British Empire after 1850.
With the advent of cloud computing as an infrastructure choice, the evolution crank is again turning, with companies beginning to investigate the technology options available to them.
But now, Leinberger told CNN, it appears the pendulum is beginning to swing back in favor of the type of walkable community that existed long before the advent of the once fashionable suburbs in the 1940s.