As a motorcyclist, cobblestones can be deadly. It's basically impossible to make a road out of cobblestones safe if you intend traffic to move above 15-20mph.

The absolute audacity of the article to ask "Where would you rather take your wedding photos?" I don't know, not on infrastructure built for moving large numbers of people? Go find a meadow or something!

Add tram rails and you have the perfect mix to scare away urban cyclists from some roads. I went around the center of the city I lived in when I had to cross it in some directions, because of those death traps.

An example https://maps.app.goo.gl/bgqmJhuaGvpfqeLz6 Note the asphalt poured between the stones to even out the steps. It cracks and goes away and the steps are there waiting for wheels. The rails too.

In my experience: small cobble stones like the ones in many of the pictures on the right column of that side don't age well with traffic. They start to move and eventually pull out. Smaller stones are worse. I drive regularly on plenty of examples of that. Stones should be very thick to stay in place because they can help each other not to form an angle with the surface of the road.

Large stones like the ones in the Street View I linked are better at staying in place but they must be thick too and when they move they create a significant step. I don't like to drive over them and I don't want to be a cyclist there.

If you zoom the stone roads in that website you see that they are not very even. Asphalt also has the purpose to protect the layers below it. If it's not replaced before it starts to crack it's like having many small stones. In both cases, stones or asphalt, water enters the gaps, washes away the material under them (sand, gravel, rocks, whatever) and heavy traffic makes the road bumpy. The only solution would be to remove the surface layer and rebuild the road, but nobody does it AFAIK. They just peel off the asphalt and lay new one. It's back to cracks and bumps in a year or two. At least it's faster and quieter to drive on than stones.

For me, asphalt on every road except pedestrian areas.

I was cycling on such a "beautiful" cobblestone path with a tram line through it, and got my tire stuck in the tram rail, I instantly fell over, and only luck saved me from getting run over by a car.

Where I've seen cobblestone replaced generally everyone was much happier with the new pavement.

I broke both of my hands because I slipped while cycling on wet cobblestone.

A cobblestone seduced my mother and left my poor pa with not 1 not 2 not 3 but 10 hungry kids!

Hell, as a motorist, motor cyclist or pedestrian, cobblestones are also terrible!

Exactly. I physically felt the image to the right in sections 4 and 5 in my wrists.

2, 6, and 7 share many of the same benefits and some of them are used for cycle paths in some places I've lived in.

Every day is Paris-Roubaix. Sounds fun... for a week.

Yeah I don't know how anyone could seriously criticise asphalt because ripping it up makes it less smooth, but then suggest cobbles as an alternative!

Clearly they have only ever walked on cobbles or seen them in photos.

It definitely is ugly though.

The first time they ran the Clyde's 10K in Georgetown, the course included several blocks of cobblestoned streets. The race flyer for the following year explicitly said that the course included no cobblestoned streets.