ABSTRACT
In 1976, in his book The Joyless Economy, the economist and welfare theorist Tibor Skitovsky predicted that an excess of standard goods would lead to increasing social dissatisfaction, because these goods are devoid of real sensory stimulation for human beings. Scitovsky’s predictions that a cheerless and tasteless economy would leave deep traces throughout Europe are directly borne out in the physical planning, urban development and architecture of the last few decades. The mobility axes illustrate this clearly. Add to that more than 400 km of noise-protection barriers and you have a model of the bad taste inherent in the most visited public space in the Netherlands: the motorway.
