[Godstud]

50% of all cities are suburbs. Do you honestly think, realistically, that the inner cities can double the population and give jobs in the inner city to all those who move their? Please tell me where they will live and work, QatzelOk. What will happen to all the manufacturing that is sustained by the people who live in those areas? Not everyone works at Starbucks like you think they do, QatzelOk.

[QatzelOk]

50% of all cities are suburbs.

The war profiteers of WW2 gave us non-stop propaganda, highways, and suburbia.

It has been around for about 60 years, and it is - according to James Kuenstler - "the biggest waste of resources in human history."

Thing is, Godstud, humanity can't afford to maintain suburbia anymore.

In some advanced countries where people aren't as stupid as North America - like Germany - the government is actively involved in demolishing suburbs and small towns, and builds all new construction nearer to transit.

In North America, we will soon be left with the choice of abandoning most of our suburbs, or driving our civilization into the ground trying to keep it running.

The Deepwater Horizon disaster is an example of what awaits us if we keep trying to "sustain the unsustainable."

I realize that suburbanites are worried about their property value and mortgages. Which is why our banking system won't survive. Suburbia will kill that, our ecology, our social lives, and many other things.

Suburbia was a fad that didn't die off after a few years only because it made too much money for its promoters/builders/suppliers.

[Godstud]

QatzelOk, it's nothing to do with North Americans being stupid, but with North Americans having a great deal of room to expand to. It's not the same in Europe and so the cities have become different because of this.

[QatzelOk]

North Americans having a great deal of room to expand to.

Europe is huge.

The hunters of Europe expanded until they killed all the big game.

North American cities expanded in size until the people who lived in them were completely addicted to their cars.

Now that North America has so many addicts, it's constantly killing oil dealers and destroying landscapes and food sources. Suburbia is the drug addict that is killing our society.

And it was built by businessmen who were only thinking about their own bottom line - not YOUR quality of life. Marketing is all that suburbanites needed to become car addicts.

I'm starting to understand why they are scared now. They are like addicts who are watching their drug habits side effects piss off some very dangerous people.

[Godstud]

Are you stoned again?

[QatzelOk]

No one pays for my pot except myself, Godst*d.

Your suburban numbness is being financed by the present and the future generations, and it is killing a lot of defenseless people and leading to a lot of extinctions, and quality of life issues like pollution and noise.

It's only a matter of time before you are in rehab, and your suburb becomes a bad collective memory. Our society will be in therapy for a few generations because of all the damage your boring, awful suburbs have caused.

[Jarlaxle]

The area I live in long pre-dates WW2...it long pre-dates the automobile...heck, parts of it predate the United States. My house is old...it was built in the 1850's and isn't even one of the 5 oldest houses in the town.

I have a large 3-bedroom house with a large (detatched) garage on over 5 acres...and I love it. I'm perfectly willing to drive 40 miles to work every morining and drive 40 miles home after work. You may like living in a concrete sardine-can, Qatz. Not me.

[QatzelOk]

My sardine can was also built in the mid 1800s, before Canada existed.

But it is nicely situated right off the sidewalk on a narrow street.

It's close to every kind of business and service, so you could actually get by walking everywhere.

I bike because I like to go for long trips to the countryside around the suburbs. The suburbs are just the fake countryside carnival of bland ugliness that you have to pay in order to get to farmland and forest.

I biked through 3 hours of the nice south shore suburbs of Montreal, and it was depressing and bland. I can see how people who pass through these areas every day might have their self esteem lowered by the experience.

I can see why suburbanites feel broken down and desperate.

But scared? What is scaring you guys? Don't you think the state can find some way of relocating you with a minimum of inconvenience if it mobilizes the resources to do so?

Don't be afraid. Corporations can't hurt you.

[Cartertonian]

I'm so glad I've just moved to a Yorkshire village, populated sufficiently only to support a church, a pub, a shop and a school...

[Jarlaxle]

My sardine can was also built in the mid 1800s, before Canada existed.

But it is nicely situated right off the sidewalk on a narrow street.

I'm sorry.

It's close to every kind of business and service, so you could actually get by walking everywhere.

I could here, too...well, if not for the fact I work for a living!

I bike because I like to go for long trips to the countryside around the suburbs. The suburbs are just the fake countryside carnival of bland ugliness that you have to pay in order to get to farmland and forest.

I did a 4500+ mile road trip last month...beautiful scenery once I got out of the midwest (which is table-flat) and into the Smokey Mountains.

I biked through 3 hours of the nice south shore suburbs of Montreal, and it was depressing and bland. I can see how people who pass through these areas every day might have their self esteem lowered by the experience.

I can see why suburbanites feel broken down and desperate.

Yippee. Yee-ha. Were you trying to make a point here or just trolling?

But scared? What is scaring you guys? Don't you think the state can find some way of relocating you with a minimum of inconvenience if it mobilizes the resources to do so?

I have no desire to relocate. I could relocate now if I wanted to...but I'm pretty happy where I am now. I wouldn't have bought my old farmhouse if I wasn't!

[QatzelOk]

My problem with the Jaraxle narrative is that it repopularizes the country boy meme that was so successfully used in 1950-60-70s media to make males want to live somewhere with trees and emptiness.

This type of wild frontier male was the Marlboro Man of suburban consumption.


This was from a popular show about rural-urban fusion that took place in a model suburb of Los Angeles.

.

[Jarlaxle]

Were you trying to stumble upon a point in that fumbling and flailing? Or just trolling as usual?

[Godstud]

Six Nobel Prizes for Trolling
That about says it all, although I'd suggest him changing it to Six Oscars for Trolling. It would be more appropriate.

[QatzelOk]

My last post was not trolling at all.

The entire mind-set that goes with the automobile is the subject of this thread.

The fear of car addicts may just be related to all the memes that have been burned into our heads by commercial media.

[Godstud]

The only memes burned into heads have been what the commercial media has burned into yours. It's apparently left severe scarring for you to hold such antipathy towards motor vehicles.

The "mindset" you describe is one of realism. I don't see how being realistic about cars, transportation, etc. is such a bad thing. I welcome the day when public transportation is efficient, environmentally friendly, economical and available to everyone. I look forward to the day when mag lev trains whisk us safely and efficiently around while being safe for the environment(a la Spain). That day is not here in most of North America and your antipathy towards motor vehicles and motorists borders on irrationality and obsession.

[QatzelOk]

The only memes burned into heads have been what the commercial media has burned into yours. It's apparently left severe scarring for you to hold such antipathy towards motor vehicles.

Back when I was a kid, I watched tons of TV, and I loooved cars.

So the scarring was done to me as a child.

It took me a decade of NOT WATCHING to get my brain back.

The pollution and death caused by car transportation is REAL.

Your fears of living car-free are fabrications of your own media hallucinations.

[Godstud]

Fear? You're an absolute idiot if you think it's fear. It's called accepting the reality. The reality is that living car-free is not possible at this time for a great majority of the population, and you'll need to step out of your world of self-righteous arrogance and self-delusion to realize that.

If I could walk a block and get onto a nice clean efficient transit that would take me to my destination, then I would do so. I cannot. Therefore I must accept the reality.

It took me a decade of NOT WATCHING to get my brain back.

Don't fool yourself, it's still MIA.

When I purchased my motor vehicle my only consideration was economy and gas mileage. How did the great media affect that decision? Your accusations fall on deaf ears because they are based on total ignorance and assumption.

[QatzelOk]

It's called accepting the reality.

versus

versus the "unreality" that non-media-viewers and non-suburbanites are imagining:


One has to watch a lot of media before excepting that the representation that he sees in media is more real than all the other stuff that is allowed to enter via the five senses.

No wonder you're scared, Godstud. You can't even use your senses to understand your environment anymore.

Your survival is seriously at stake, and you instinctively know this.

[Godstud]

Strange, QuatzelOk, I've never been in a city that looked like that. You take the worst example and make it into the rule.

Did you ever stop to notice that the most polluted parts of cities are the inner cities (where you want people to live) and where all this great transportation you say is available to all? People like you are the cause of that pollution and going off on self-righteous rants while calling for destruction of automobiles(without alternatives) is stupidity.

The reason a new bridge won't go up is because people in the inner city whine and bitch about cars. This doesn't help reduce pollution. it actually causes increases by preventing improvements. How many cars sit on a road for an extra few hours a day because people like you want the car gone and so stop the construction of a bridge that would actually reduce pollution by speeding travel and allowing more efficient transportation?

It's always easier to preach self-righteously and ignore reality. You have it down to an art, QatzelOk.

Don't assume you know what people fear or have instincts for. Your grasp of the human element seems very tenuous.

[QatzelOk]

Did you ever stop to notice that the most polluted parts of cities are the inner cities (where you want people to live) and where all this great transportation you say is available to all?

Yes, and where all the suburbanites go to look for parking.

That they are even allowed to bring their cars into dense parts of the city demonstrates how badly governed we are by business whores.
.

**And why can't you spell my username? You can simply drag over it and copy it by pushing control C.