Why are car addicts so afraid? - Page 5 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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By I Killed Keynes
#13482388
Image

Just about the ugliest building I've ever seen, those green umbrellas serve as an exclamation mark!
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By danholo
#13492859
Now that I think about it, we should just bring back horses to serve as inner-city transportation? How does it sound? Instead of parking garages, you'll have stables. You won't need to go to the gas station, but get hey for the horses. Also, it will bring old jobs back in the form of street cleaners, or should people pick up their own horse's shit?

If one lives in the country side, one is pretty much forced to own a car, unless you can make that bike trip to the store which can be 5 km off, and maybe you'll have to have a cart to pull with the bicycle for all that water you have to carry back. But this doesn't exist. Living in the woods is the shit, but nonetheless you need a mode of transport, and horses are a bit obsolete, and bikes can only serve one purpose. Bicycles are great, so are cars. Both have their uses. :) Too bad Qatz can't appreciate the "advanced" West...? Why don't you move to Africa or India, Qatz, to some rural area where you really have to work the Earth to get that next meal?
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By QatzelOk
#13493488
Now that I think about it, we should just bring back horses to serve as inner-city transportation? How does it sound?

It sounds terrible.

Back when horses served as status symbols for urban commuters, the streets were full of manure.

Now the air is unbreathable, and the noise drives people crazy, the atmosphere is becoming toxic, and wars are being fought so that drivers can use up every last drop of oil (rather than farmers using it for fertilizer for the next century, we prefer to burn it all driving to new suburban sprawl).

Why don't you move to Africa or India, Qatz...

Why don't you move to earth, danholo? Space age vehicles belong in world's fairs.
User avatar
By I Killed Keynes
#13510557
I don't think its fear of devalued identity, I think its that driving around a lot of bikers is really annoying because they think they don't have to pay attention to traffic and thus become a liability, let it is always the driver's fault if they get hit. Some things are just surface deep, Q.
User avatar
By Suska
#13510590
In order to see a rock for what it is you'll have to put the sledgehammer down.

By satisfying wants are we made content?
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By QatzelOk
#13510941
In order to see a rock for what it is you'll have to put the sledgehammer down.

The Western world's material culture - which includes cars and suburban barracks - isn't just some minor tick or cultural nuance. It's a non-culture of consumption. And it's making the entire world fatally ill.

So it's not just a matter of tweaking. Our societies are going to go bankrupt trying to maintain this happy motoring fantasy.
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By Suska
#13510958
Why does it totally creep me out that I agree with you so often lately.

suburban barracks

:lol:

brilliant
User avatar
By Godstud
#13511046
Urban cubicles are just so much more pleasant than suburban barracks. My 'barracks' has a nice BBQ and a green grassy yard, where I spend my evenings with my neighbours after BBQing dinner, an option not available to inner city dwellers who adore concrete and steel.

While you spout out your spiteful anti-car/suburban nonsense, you always fail to demonstrate any sort of legitimate alternative, QatzelOk. You conveniently ignore any sort of question that asks you for a reasonable alternative. You simply don't have any reasonable alternative, do you? It's all just supposed to magically happen. You just expect people to do things as you'd like them, and that's that. :knife:

North America does not have alternatives to cars yet. Public transportation is, generally, poorly planned and entirely insufficient for even inner city travel. The populations cannot just file into the inner city and live there either, like you propose, since there is neither the capacity(housing) nor the transportation to allow it. The employment is not confined to the inner city either and so this further complicates any attempt to make inner city life for all even a remote possibility. You're simply talking out your ass, Qatz.
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By Suska
#13511285
I can't speak for Qatz but it seems to me that the alternative is that none of it is necessary if we cooperate. Where there is no necessity there is no rush, where there is no rush there are better ways.
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By QatzelOk
#13511395
Godst*d wrote: My 'barracks' has a nice BBQ and a green grassy yard, where I spend my evenings with my neighbours after BBQing dinner

You and your neighbors lie on your lawn after eating? Isn't that sort of boring? And what about all those lawn chemicals?

North America does not have alternatives to cars yet

I don't drive ever. I bike and take transit and walk, and I live in North America. So this lack of alternatives is lodged in your brain.

Public transportation is, generally, poorly planned and entirely insufficient for even inner city travel.

Car companies ruined what used to be fantastic mass transit before you were born. You were born with the garbage that car companies created. But mass transit remains the least expensive and most ecological means to get around, other than walking or biking. Which, by the way, I do far more off than taking transit, which I dislike almost as much as I dislike getting into private cars which are claustrophobic and feel like isolation tanks.

The populations cannot just file into the inner city and live there either, like you propose, since there is neither the capacity(housing) nor the transportation to allow it.

You don't seem to understand that urban is just suburban at a higher density. When you live closer together, walking, biking and shared transit become simple.

You're simply talking out your ass, Qatz.

It appears that my ass has studied more urbanism and ecology than your barbecue-charred fingertips have, Godst*d.

By the way, this stage of your (our?) car addiction is somewhere between denial and bargaining.
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By Godstud
#13511427
Your ass knows nothing about urbanism if you can't even understand why there is a suburban part of a city. Not everyone wishes to live in a small cubicle in a high-rise building. Your ass knows nothing about public transportation and city planning, obviously, or you'd understand this. It doesn't have to do with cars, but with how people want to live. Not everyone is QatzelOk and not everyone should be expected to want what he wants either. I'd rather live in a community where I know my neighbours and have the open air by which to meet them and socialize with them without wondering if they're going to mug me or ask me for money.

By the way, your "car addiction theory" is a self-inflicted delusion.
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By QatzelOk
#13512237
Your ass knows nothing about urbanism if you can't even understand why there is a suburban part of a city.

Car companies and oil companies were the mainstays of commercial TV advertising in the 50s and 60s.

That's why you frolic on lawns and eat hot dogs that have been barbecued... instead of living in close proximity to urban amenities.

The suburbs have created an entire generation of social retards with no sense of citizenship or a common good.

This addiction is killing all of us - including those who take no part in suburban consumption patterns.
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By Godstud
#13512730
Right, because anyone who doesn't think in the same way as you, has to be a social retard. :roll: Preach much?

The whole "sense of community" started IN the suburbs, where people actually took the time to find out who lived next to them and get to know their neighbours. Most people living in the high-rise complexes don't even know who lives next door to them. Top assume some sort of community, citizenship, or common good comes out of that, is deceitful, to say the least.

Your "addiction" theory is just another conspiracy theory and belongs in that section.
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By QatzelOk
#13513156
The whole "sense of community" started IN the suburbs

Isn't that weird? Because the suburbs are a product of the 1950s and 1960s.

That's about when a sense of community ENDED.

It's hard to build a sense of community watching TV and driving to malls.
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By Godstud
#13513209
It's hard to build a sense of community living in a cubicle where people don't even know who lives around them.
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By Cartertonian
#13513259
I've lived (during the week) in a flat in city-centre Birmingham for a year now, and my only interaction with my neighbours has been a row about (guess what) car-parking spaces. Whereas I've lived (at weekends - with my family there all the time) in a village in rural England for only three months and we already know half the people in the village. 8)

Cities are unfriendly places. :(

But the price of living in a genuine community, instead of just being another anonymous number in a city-centre box, is that for pretty much everything except primary schooling and a post-office, we have to get in the car and drive to the nearest town. :hmm:
User avatar
By QatzelOk
#13513480
Cities are unfriendly places.

I live in central Montreal (in a coop) and I know all of my neighbors.

We organize community activities (like sharing old discarded furniture with one another, cleaning storm gutters, Christmas parties, etc.) and there are many community sports and other free activities for urbanites.

I grew up in suburbia where swing-sets are private, you are always locked in a car, and there is virtually no public space of any quality, or any means to walk anywhere where you might spontaneously run into a neighbor or friend.

Suburbs are the isolation tanks that ruined North America.

No one is more scared of "the terrorists" than suburban TV-viewers hunkered down in their "family" rooms (TV rooms).

The city allows people to interact with a wide variety of different types of people. The suburbs are all about privacy.
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By Godstud
#13513703
Your profound ignorance of the suburbs is glaring, QatzelOk. Stick to what you know and stop making such vast and erroneous generalizations about things you are ignorant of.
By Jarlaxle
#13513813
It's not ignorance, Godstud, it's simple denial of reality, in the manner of a toddler covering his ears and hollering LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA!
User avatar
By Suska
#13513840
LA-LA-LA-LA-LA!

OH OH! I know that tune!

LA-LA-LA-LA-LA! The suburbs suxxor LA-LA-LA-LA-LA!
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