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By Scamp
#15194442
I was just watching this on my cell phone, while traveling 60 mph in my big V8 American made truck. I heard a thump and looked up and I believe I may have just ran over some poor idiot on a bicycle out here in the fast vehicle only lanes. I hope I didn't get any damage to my vehicle.
#15194455
Scamp wrote:I was just watching this on my cell phone, while traveling 60 mph in my big V8 American made truck. I heard a thump and looked up and I believe I may have just ran over some poor idiot on a bicycle out here in the fast vehicle only lanes. I hope I didn't get any damage to my vehicle.


Casually joking about breaking transit law, committing manslaughter and ending a human life is not as amusing as you think.

This is coming from a guy claiming to believe in "christian values". The same sort of people go out of their way to try to push everyone into doing whatever wacky morals they believe in. No wonder someone had to make up a invisible magic being to control people like this... If they didn't have the constant fear of having someone watching over their actions, the world would be on literal hell.
#15194536
XogGyux wrote:
Casually joking about breaking transit law, committing manslaughter and ending a human life is not as amusing as you think.

This is coming from a guy claiming to believe in "christian values". The same sort of people go out of their way to try to push everyone into doing whatever wacky morals they believe in. No wonder someone had to make up a invisible magic being to control people like this... If they didn't have the constant fear of having someone watching over their actions, the world would be on literal hell.



As a cyclist that has done 1200 miles this year, I agree. He will try to say he's joking, but he's not.

The weak minded have been persuaded that destroying the country, and killing it's people, is a good thing. Which is why they support Covid, and oppose science. They want more death.
#15194946
XogGyux wrote:Casually joking about breaking transit law, committing manslaughter and ending a human life is not as amusing as you think.

When you spend most of your life bubble-wrapped in a steel tank, you tend to lose your empathy towards "other people" who are more like "obstacles" in your daily life.

Also, when you live in suburbia, all you really contribute to "society" is carbon monoxide and dog shit (if you also own a dog).
#15194954
Houston is god awful in terms of city design. I actually like the vibe of the city (believe it or not, there's lots of varied culture/diversity due to immigration, universities, and tech presence), but fuck man, they need a redesign. Same goes for Dallas.

Austin, might have a chance given they recently passed a transit expansion prop that includes additional light rail lines. They are also looking at burying I-35 in a tunnel and putting like an 8 mile long park at surface level.
#15194964
Rancid wrote:
Houston is god awful in terms of city design. I actually like the vibe of the city (believe it or not, there's lots of varied culture/diversity due to immigration, universities, and tech presence), but fuck man, they need a redesign. Same goes for Dallas.

Austin, might have a chance given they recently passed a transit expansion prop that includes additional light rail lines. They are also looking at burying I-35 in a tunnel and putting like an 8 mile long park at surface level.



I just started a book titled Walkable Cities. It's really good, and explains what makes cities work for the people that live in them. I need to do a thread about it soon. This is from a review of the book:

"Throughout my urban design career, I grappled with the same situation daily: how to inform developers and contractors, retail merchants and corporate CEOs, mayors and councilmembers–folks whose authority and decisions have tremendous impact on city form–about good urban design? Instead of sketching plans for revitalizing floundering neighborhoods and creating friendly, inviting people places that could bolster our quality of life, the bulk of my days were spent explaining to policymakers and doers why their ideas for how cities should be are, in fact, deleterious. Deleterious to future retail investment, property values, public safety, human comfort, even climate change.

As much as I felt it necessary to introduce these planning luminaries to all the mayors, developers and builders, design review board members, planning commissioners, Public Works officials, and the Department of Transportation engineers I routinely interacted with, dropping a 40-pound stack of books onto their desks and saying, “read these, then let’s talk,” just wasn’t realistic. Still, if these policymakers and doers could get a crash course on urban planning and design, the urban projects and changes that ultimately get approved and funded would be exponentially better than they are today.

But what if the most salient points from all those planning volumes—and dozens more—were synthesized into one trim, accessible, easily perusable book? Could it be achieved? That would be quite the ambitious endeavor, one that is too daunting to me, even though I wish I could have tried.

Luckily, I don’t have to, because Jeff Speck did us all a favor with his latest book Walkable City Rules. I’ve worked with Jeff many times and have relied on his expertise for years. Few in the field of city planning are as learned and practiced as he, and those who are lack Speck’s talent in teaching.

Walkable City Rules is a comprehensive yet concise volume, thoughtfully laid out so that the numerous issues city planners and urban designers regularly face are each listed on an eminently graspable two-page spread. What makes Speck’s achievement even more impressive are the scads of images and illustrations he includes, and the simple, easy to remember fundamental steps or “rules,” as he calls them, of sound planning and design. He then expounds on each rule with pith and clarity."

https://meetingoftheminds.org/a-book-review-of-jeff-specks-walkable-city-rules-32844
#15194981
QatzelOk wrote:When you spend most of your life bubble-wrapped in a steel tank, you tend to lose your empathy towards "other people" who are more like "obstacles" in your daily life.

Also, when you live in suburbia, all you really contribute to "society" is carbon monoxide and dog shit (if you also own a dog).

Such a peppy view of humanity, like usual :lol:.
#15194983
All the "good" American cities were built before cars had become a commonly owned thing.

There have been virtually no new cities designed by government planners in America in over a hundred years.

Most of the newer cities have been built by private developers, usually over time by several different private development companies.

The real question we should be asking ourselves is why is government not building or planning any new cities?
#15195424
Puffer Fish wrote:All the "good" American cities were built before cars had become a commonly owned thing.

There have been virtually no new cities designed by government planners in America in over a hundred years.

Most of the newer cities have been built by private developers...

What actually happened is that American cities threw "good urban design practices" in the garbage after WW2, and let car companies and oil companies design the best type of "form" to sell their products.

This is all suburbia does well: it sells cars well.

It is horrible for children, wastes resources, destroys acres and acres of forest uselessly, and removes any possibility of community. Americans lost something invisible when they moved to these car-company-designed bungalow-scapes.

And America lost any claim to have beautiful or functional cities.
User avatar
By AFAIK
#15195454
The USA built it's highway system after WWII and bulldozed entire neighbourhoods to accommodate ugly smelly roads. Cities like New York and San Francisco are vibrant and livable because locals successfully resisted attempts to turn their cities into truck stops.
#15195455
Not all countries are the same, and it's good to remember that. Cities vary depending on how new they are, and where they are. Not all cities HAVE suburbs, or at least not as we know them.
#15195649
AFAIK wrote:The USA built it's highway system after WWII and bulldozed entire neighbourhoods to accommodate ugly smelly roads. Cities like New York and San Francisco are vibrant and livable because locals successfully resisted attempts to turn their cities into truck stops.

And look how expensive these "old school" city neighborhoods are now.

It proves that there is far more demand for traditional urbanism than there is supply. And that can be blamed on car companies, oil companies, and all the politicians they bought in the 50s, 60s, and even right up to the present.

If you let giant corporations "decide" instead of democracy, you get flawed design that only serves the interests of these companies. Millions of normal average Americans would prefer to live in traditional urban neighborhoods, and this has made those very surviving hoods unaffordable to these normal average people.

Godstud wrote:Not all countries are the same, and it's good to remember that. Cities vary depending on how new they are, and where they are. Not all cities HAVE suburbs, or at least not as we know them.

And by travelling to places with better urbanism and no suburbs, you can see the damage that these land-occupying carscapes do. Holguin Cuba and Valencia Spain have no sprawl at all. This means that urban dwellers have fast access to the countryside, farms, and forests.


Whereas North American urban kids need to be bussed for hours and hours in order to find some attractive farmland or forests. And this will be unavailable to kids on bikes, or walking. Only via the automobile industry and oil companies is any natural landscape available to children in most North American cities of any size.

This is a criminal waste of resources, and it cripples childhood development.
#15195654
AFAIK wrote:Cities like New York and San Francisco are vibrant and livable because locals successfully resisted attempts to turn their cities into truck stops.


Why it's bad to turn any city into a truck stop?

(Maybe this is why American Truck Simulator starts its map drawing from the West)
#15196217
When politicians in the West decided to let car companies and oil companies "define" the new urban model after WW2, they were letting these profit-seeking corporations decide how many friends children would have (fewer), how many spontaneous conversations would happen (a lot fewer), how many adults children would have regular contact with (very few), and how interesting women's lives would be (extremely dull, required drugs).

The drug phenomenon of the 60s and 70s was a result of suburban damage to human character. Angry feminism from that period channeled all the anger and hatred that a bungalowed life of social isolation caused... onto the males of the species.

Children with fewer adult role models, fewer friends, less access to activities... Adults with fewer visitors, far fewer spontaneous conversations, and (for housewives) no more social community in which to participate.

BUT... the upside of the suburban model was that it made lots of money for car companies and oil companies by.... taking away all other options for life.
By late
#15196218
QatzelOk wrote:
When politicians in the West decided to let car companies and oil companies "define" the new urban model after WW2, they were letting these profit-seeking corporations decide how many friends children would have (fewer), how many spontaneous conversations would happen (a lot fewer), how many adults children would have regular contact with (very few), and how interesting women's lives would be (extremely dull, required drugs).

The drug phenomenon of the 60s and 70s was a result of suburban damage to human character. Angry feminism from that period channeled all the anger and hatred that a bungalowed life of social isolation caused... onto the males of the species.

Children with fewer adult role models, fewer friends, less access to activities... Adults with fewer visitors, far fewer spontaneous conversations, and (for housewives) no more social community in which to participate.

BUT... the upside of the suburban model was that it made lots of money for car companies and oil companies by.... taking away all other options for life.



The idea was that suburbs would make a nuclear attack more survivable. While I have started a number of threads, like this one, about the importance of well designed cities, you can't lay it all on the burbs..

I grew up back then. There are a number of issues here. One of them is that after the war the American people were fed a crap ton of crap. Another is good old Thorsten Veblen, we were the first generation to have an abundance of leisure time, and the ability to use it to go to college by the millions, or just get a car and get laid a lot.

Let me try to explain that better. We were told we were special, that we counted, in this nearly prefect democracy. So we acted like we counted, and well, everyone knows how that turned out.

But I do agree that suburbs are city killers.

Here's a classic on all this:

https://www.amazon.com/Cities-Wealth-Nations-Principles-Economic/dp/0394729110/ref=sr_1_11?dchild=1&keywords=jane+jacobs&qid=1635440917&qsid=131-4556309-4521855&sr=8-11&sres=067974195X%2C1400076706%2C039470584X%2C1613321392%2C0812981367%2CB006XEAHO6%2C9198523694%2C0399589600%2C0812224426%2C0394729110%2C0307961907%2C0375702431%2C0679748164%2CB015BCTH2S%2C0062310739%2C022658044X&srpt=ABIS_BOOK

and:

https://www.amazon.com/Wrestling-Moses-Builder-Transformed-American/dp/0812981367/ref=sr_1_6?dchild=1&keywords=jane+jacobs&qid=1635440956&qsid=131-4556309-4521855&sr=8-6&sres=067974195X%2C1400076706%2C039470584X%2C1613321392%2C0812981367%2CB006XEAHO6%2C9198523694%2C0399589600%2C0812224426%2C0394729110%2C0307961907%2C0375702431%2C0679748164%2CB015BCTH2S%2C0062310739%2C022658044X&srpt=ABIS_BOOK
#15196252
late wrote:The idea was that suburbs would make a nuclear attack more survivable.

Yes, this was the scary ScienceTM that the military profiteers used as a sales pitch.

On TV, sitcoms used idealic country life as a trope for the first few decades of television - which is exactly when suburbs went up. So media propaganda was created to sell suburbia.

And then, Car-Oil companies bribed politicians into supporting suburban zoning, limiting new mortages for veterans to bungalows, and sponsoring the above-mentioned propaganda.

They also destroyed USA streetcars - mafia style.

And now we live depleted lives with no community - all so that car companies and oil companies could control our politics and maximize how much money we give them.

For some reason, these entities really didn't care about all the social damage their relentless profit-making would lead to.
#15196291
QatzelOk wrote:there is far more demand for traditional urbanism than there is supply.

Not here.

Demand has been met.

According to the figures published by Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, all Malta's population is classed as living in an urban area.


:lol:
By late
#15196304
QatzelOk wrote:
Yes, this was the scary ScienceTM that the military profiteers used as a sales pitch.

On TV, sitcoms used idyllic country life as a trope for the first few decades of television - which is exactly when suburbs went up. So media propaganda was created to sell suburbia.

And then, Car-Oil companies bribed politicians into supporting suburban zoning, limiting new mortages for veterans to bungalows, and sponsoring the above-mentioned propaganda.

They also destroyed USA streetcars - mafia style.

And now we live depleted lives with no community - all so that car companies and oil companies could control our politics and maximize how much money we give them.

For some reason, these entities really didn't care about all the social damage their relentless profit-making would lead to.



Both things are true.

Big Oil beat the crap out of the rail lobby. But back then nuclear weapons were new and terrifying. They should be terrifying. Because war has been such a routine in human history, people thought it would happen in their lifetime. That turned out to be wrong, but they didn't know that.

It's also true that owning your own home makes a lot of sense when government programs give a variety of subsidies to help make it happen.
#15196308
late wrote:...owning your own home makes a lot of sense when government programs give a variety of subsidies to help make it happen.

Yes, but in other countries, the government makes sure that everyone is housed.

In Late-Capitalism-ridden countries, home-owners make a lot of money by making sure that there are NOT enough homes for everyone. Scarcity of housing makes them wealthier.

So the 80% of Americans who "own" a mortgage are driving the rest of the population into homelessness - by making sure that housing starts are kept to a minimum.

Also, the new houses being built are - by regulation - primarily built far, far away from jobs and other urban activities. This ensures that even middle class people live under financial stress their entire lives.

A slave-state like the USA (late-modern capitalism is a product of the slave-owner worldview) will never be able to take care of its most vunerable - because in a slave state, these vulenerable people are supposed to be slaves.

American urbanism has been modeled after the needs of slavery, and that's why most Americans have no community - just suburban parking lots.

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