AthenorBattle Hardened OptimistThe Skies of HiigaraRegistered Userregular
I wasn't planning this thread covering urban planning or class differences. I know those are inherent in infrastructure and planning, especially as suburbs sprawl out. But even if we all lived in ultra dense soundproof skyscrapers, there is still the issues of power, water, and logistics to consider.
I wasn't planning this thread covering urban planning or class differences. I know those are inherent in infrastructure and planning, especially as suburbs sprawl out. But even if we all lived in ultra dense soundproof skyscrapers, there is still the issues of power, water, and logistics to consider.
Sure, but community planning has a huge impact on the infrastructure you need, and how often it needs to be repaired
It's not just a cities vs suburban vs country living thing. Many cities went with the same design decisions as suburban development, no sidewalks, no crosswalks or pedestrian lights, no public transportation. In Antioch, TN for example you have to walk on a highway to get under an overpass for an interstate. As in, have fun walking in a lane of traffic with no gutter or shoulder trying to get from one side to the other. It's a small City that used to be wealthy outside of Nashville. It flooded and all the businesses that wealthy white people use left.
A little less racist(income based segregation) would go a long way towards people in urban areas having more community space for gardens and sheds.
Having driven the roads all over the country, it's pretty easy to tell whether the state gives a shit the second you cross into one.
Cities are better for humanity probably but I won't be giving up my garden and shed anytime soon. Turns out people don't make decisions based on what efficiency experts say is best.
It's cool to demonize or belittle people who choose to carve out a private space though...
Indeed it is, because the current structure of the US government means that a vast chunk of resources are taken from people who have made the right decision (to live in higher density urban areas) and transferred to people living in lower density rural areas. Then, the people designing the lower density rural areas take design and zoning decisions to make their lower density areas as inefficient and socially expensive as possible. They do and did this to make sure that poor people could not live there. And by poor people, I mean black people. They also noted that minorities tend to like communal spaces and social interaction, so they made sure to get rid of us much as that as possible too. You didn't make these design decisions, but if you live in a US suburb that is WHY your suburb is the way it is.
Why are the roads windy? To keep out black people
Why are there no trains or buses? To keep out black people
Why is the nearest grocery store only accesable by a freeway? To keep out black people
Why do my streets have no curbs? To keep out black people
The suburbs did not have to be badly designed to give you a garden shed. Surburbs in MANY nations actually aren't so awfully designed. But US suburbs ARE atrocious. Utterly awful by every metric. Go build a suburb with a nice grid layout, put in regular small commerical and industrial zones, put in crosswalks and sidewalks and make absolutely sure the population density is high enough to support a train line. And if you don't have a train line, pay to build one.
I agree with all most all of this.
But windy roads? That's a stretch. Windy roads are more aesthetically pleasing, in a couple of different ways, and they allow for different plot sizes if you want to have a somewhat wider range of plot values (like what already happens with dead-end circles).
Maybe you're referring to some that take this to the extreme, adding tons of extra commute time? I only know of one neighborhood in my part of the country that's like that, and I'm pretty sure it got that way organically (slowly adding layers over time without any forethought because dumb). And I live in segregation central (at least in general; my actual neighborhood is nicely mixed, but it was built post-2000).
Triptycho: A card-and-dice tabletop indie RPG currently in development and playtesting
I don't think windy roads necessarily have anything to do with race, but having visited DC, it struck me the extent to which road networks were built to segregate communities
Cities are better for humanity probably but I won't be giving up my garden and shed anytime soon. Turns out people don't make decisions based on what efficiency experts say is best.
It's cool to demonize or belittle people who choose to carve out a private space though...
Indeed it is, because the current structure of the US government means that a vast chunk of resources are taken from people who have made the right decision (to live in higher density urban areas) and transferred to people living in lower density rural areas. Then, the people designing the lower density rural areas take design and zoning decisions to make their lower density areas as inefficient and socially expensive as possible. They do and did this to make sure that poor people could not live there. And by poor people, I mean black people. They also noted that minorities tend to like communal spaces and social interaction, so they made sure to get rid of us much as that as possible too. You didn't make these design decisions, but if you live in a US suburb that is WHY your suburb is the way it is.
Why are the roads windy? To keep out black people
Why are there no trains or buses? To keep out black people
Why is the nearest grocery store only accesable by a freeway? To keep out black people
Why do my streets have no curbs? To keep out black people
The suburbs did not have to be badly designed to give you a garden shed. Surburbs in MANY nations actually aren't so awfully designed. But US suburbs ARE atrocious. Utterly awful by every metric. Go build a suburb with a nice grid layout, put in regular small commerical and industrial zones, put in crosswalks and sidewalks and make absolutely sure the population density is high enough to support a train line. And if you don't have a train line, pay to build one.
I agree with all most all of this.
But windy roads? That's a stretch. Windy roads are more aesthetically pleasing, in a couple of different ways, and they allow for different plot sizes if you want to have a somewhat wider range of plot values (like what already happens with dead-end circles).
Maybe you're referring to some that take this to the extreme, adding tons of extra commute time? I only know of one neighborhood in my part of the country that's like that, and I'm pretty sure it got that way organically (slowly adding layers over time without any forethought because dumb). And I live in segregation central (at least in general; my actual neighborhood is nicely mixed, but it was built post-2000).
I'm referring to the deliberate windyness/fractal/zero permeability pattern you see in suburban home layouts, where you might need to drive 10 miles to get to a place 500 yards away. Where the windyness is installed deliberately to create exclusion rather than the natural fractal flow you see in places which have grown organically.
"That is cool" - Abraham Lincoln
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EncA Fool with CompassionPronouns: He, Him, HisRegistered Userregular
Cities are better for humanity probably but I won't be giving up my garden and shed anytime soon. Turns out people don't make decisions based on what efficiency experts say is best.
It's cool to demonize or belittle people who choose to carve out a private space though...
Indeed it is, because the current structure of the US government means that a vast chunk of resources are taken from people who have made the right decision (to live in higher density urban areas) and transferred to people living in lower density rural areas. Then, the people designing the lower density rural areas take design and zoning decisions to make their lower density areas as inefficient and socially expensive as possible. They do and did this to make sure that poor people could not live there. And by poor people, I mean black people. They also noted that minorities tend to like communal spaces and social interaction, so they made sure to get rid of us much as that as possible too. You didn't make these design decisions, but if you live in a US suburb that is WHY your suburb is the way it is.
Why are the roads windy? To keep out black people
Why are there no trains or buses? To keep out black people
Why is the nearest grocery store only accesable by a freeway? To keep out black people
Why do my streets have no curbs? To keep out black people
The suburbs did not have to be badly designed to give you a garden shed. Surburbs in MANY nations actually aren't so awfully designed. But US suburbs ARE atrocious. Utterly awful by every metric. Go build a suburb with a nice grid layout, put in regular small commerical and industrial zones, put in crosswalks and sidewalks and make absolutely sure the population density is high enough to support a train line. And if you don't have a train line, pay to build one.
I agree with all most all of this.
But windy roads? That's a stretch. Windy roads are more aesthetically pleasing, in a couple of different ways, and they allow for different plot sizes if you want to have a somewhat wider range of plot values (like what already happens with dead-end circles).
Maybe you're referring to some that take this to the extreme, adding tons of extra commute time? I only know of one neighborhood in my part of the country that's like that, and I'm pretty sure it got that way organically (slowly adding layers over time without any forethought because dumb). And I live in segregation central (at least in general; my actual neighborhood is nicely mixed, but it was built post-2000).
Specifically talking about the first garden cities in the US, their designs incorporated curved streets and couldesacs with a maze-like design specifically to block thoroughfares and discourage minorities from driving through. Like, that was part of the intent as written on the wrapper. A large part of the early advertising and marketing (that largely persists to this day) was a white flight message to flee from minorities in the cities to have your own white utopia just within driving distance.
The roads were part of that, though not exclusively for it.
But you really don't want thoroughfares going through neighborhoods. That's how you get traffic problems on said thoroughfares.
Maze neighborhoods can go to hell, though. I knew about white flight, but I didn't know the mazes were a part of that. Thanks for the history lesson, and now I hate whitey that much more.
Triptycho: A card-and-dice tabletop indie RPG currently in development and playtesting
Cities are better for humanity probably but I won't be giving up my garden and shed anytime soon. Turns out people don't make decisions based on what efficiency experts say is best.
It's cool to demonize or belittle people who choose to carve out a private space though...
Indeed it is, because the current structure of the US government means that a vast chunk of resources are taken from people who have made the right decision (to live in higher density urban areas) and transferred to people living in lower density rural areas. Then, the people designing the lower density rural areas take design and zoning decisions to make their lower density areas as inefficient and socially expensive as possible. They do and did this to make sure that poor people could not live there. And by poor people, I mean black people. They also noted that minorities tend to like communal spaces and social interaction, so they made sure to get rid of us much as that as possible too. You didn't make these design decisions, but if you live in a US suburb that is WHY your suburb is the way it is.
Why are the roads windy? To keep out black people
Why are there no trains or buses? To keep out black people
Why is the nearest grocery store only accesable by a freeway? To keep out black people
Why do my streets have no curbs? To keep out black people
The suburbs did not have to be badly designed to give you a garden shed. Surburbs in MANY nations actually aren't so awfully designed. But US suburbs ARE atrocious. Utterly awful by every metric. Go build a suburb with a nice grid layout, put in regular small commerical and industrial zones, put in crosswalks and sidewalks and make absolutely sure the population density is high enough to support a train line. And if you don't have a train line, pay to build one.
I agree with all most all of this.
But windy roads? That's a stretch. Windy roads are more aesthetically pleasing, in a couple of different ways, and they allow for different plot sizes if you want to have a somewhat wider range of plot values (like what already happens with dead-end circles).
Maybe you're referring to some that take this to the extreme, adding tons of extra commute time? I only know of one neighborhood in my part of the country that's like that, and I'm pretty sure it got that way organically (slowly adding layers over time without any forethought because dumb). And I live in segregation central (at least in general; my actual neighborhood is nicely mixed, but it was built post-2000).
I'm referring to the deliberate windyness/fractal/zero permeability pattern you see in suburban home layouts, where you might need to drive 10 miles to get to a place 500 yards away. Where the windyness is installed deliberately to create exclusion rather than the natural fractal flow you see in places which have grown organically.
The modern subdivision is also for safety.
When you have the roads laid out in grids in the post-WW2 style that was never designed to handle the amount of traffic it gets, it's down right dangerous. People cut through your neighborhood going easily twice the speed limit to avoid a light.
My house is on a road that bypasses a light between two major thoroughfares, and I've sat in my living room multiple times and watched cars careen out of control into lawns because they are going so fast. I want my roads to suck and be a huge hassle to drive on so people stop cutting through my neighborhood and endangering my kids.
Also, the reason you don't see suburbs in the rest of the world is because they don't have the land. Post-WW2 America had huge stretches of rural land in between a web of small cities / towns, and it was far cheaper just to plunk down a housing development in some unincorporated township with no zoning laws than to buy up in urban areas. Plenty of racism of course, but a lot of people want to buy a house that is bigger and newer with no more thought behind it.
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AuralynxDarkness is a perspectiveWatching the ego workRegistered Userregular
Cities are better for humanity probably but I won't be giving up my garden and shed anytime soon. Turns out people don't make decisions based on what efficiency experts say is best.
It's cool to demonize or belittle people who choose to carve out a private space though...
Indeed it is, because the current structure of the US government means that a vast chunk of resources are taken from people who have made the right decision (to live in higher density urban areas) and transferred to people living in lower density rural areas. Then, the people designing the lower density rural areas take design and zoning decisions to make their lower density areas as inefficient and socially expensive as possible. They do and did this to make sure that poor people could not live there. And by poor people, I mean black people. They also noted that minorities tend to like communal spaces and social interaction, so they made sure to get rid of us much as that as possible too. You didn't make these design decisions, but if you live in a US suburb that is WHY your suburb is the way it is.
Why are the roads windy? To keep out black people
Why are there no trains or buses? To keep out black people
Why is the nearest grocery store only accesable by a freeway? To keep out black people
Why do my streets have no curbs? To keep out black people
The suburbs did not have to be badly designed to give you a garden shed. Surburbs in MANY nations actually aren't so awfully designed. But US suburbs ARE atrocious. Utterly awful by every metric. Go build a suburb with a nice grid layout, put in regular small commerical and industrial zones, put in crosswalks and sidewalks and make absolutely sure the population density is high enough to support a train line. And if you don't have a train line, pay to build one.
I agree with all most all of this.
But windy roads? That's a stretch. Windy roads are more aesthetically pleasing, in a couple of different ways, and they allow for different plot sizes if you want to have a somewhat wider range of plot values (like what already happens with dead-end circles).
Maybe you're referring to some that take this to the extreme, adding tons of extra commute time? I only know of one neighborhood in my part of the country that's like that, and I'm pretty sure it got that way organically (slowly adding layers over time without any forethought because dumb). And I live in segregation central (at least in general; my actual neighborhood is nicely mixed, but it was built post-2000).
I'm referring to the deliberate windyness/fractal/zero permeability pattern you see in suburban home layouts, where you might need to drive 10 miles to get to a place 500 yards away. Where the windyness is installed deliberately to create exclusion rather than the natural fractal flow you see in places which have grown organically.
The one that gets me about the whole phenomenon is how easy it is to play a game of "spot the permanently-locked access gate they won't let anyone use now that all the homes are built," which usually would let everyone get into and out of their community a lot faster and easier.
Cities are better for humanity probably but I won't be giving up my garden and shed anytime soon. Turns out people don't make decisions based on what efficiency experts say is best.
It's cool to demonize or belittle people who choose to carve out a private space though...
Indeed it is, because the current structure of the US government means that a vast chunk of resources are taken from people who have made the right decision (to live in higher density urban areas) and transferred to people living in lower density rural areas. Then, the people designing the lower density rural areas take design and zoning decisions to make their lower density areas as inefficient and socially expensive as possible. They do and did this to make sure that poor people could not live there. And by poor people, I mean black people. They also noted that minorities tend to like communal spaces and social interaction, so they made sure to get rid of us much as that as possible too. You didn't make these design decisions, but if you live in a US suburb that is WHY your suburb is the way it is.
Why are the roads windy? To keep out black people
Why are there no trains or buses? To keep out black people
Why is the nearest grocery store only accesable by a freeway? To keep out black people
Why do my streets have no curbs? To keep out black people
The suburbs did not have to be badly designed to give you a garden shed. Surburbs in MANY nations actually aren't so awfully designed. But US suburbs ARE atrocious. Utterly awful by every metric. Go build a suburb with a nice grid layout, put in regular small commerical and industrial zones, put in crosswalks and sidewalks and make absolutely sure the population density is high enough to support a train line. And if you don't have a train line, pay to build one.
I agree with all most all of this.
But windy roads? That's a stretch. Windy roads are more aesthetically pleasing, in a couple of different ways, and they allow for different plot sizes if you want to have a somewhat wider range of plot values (like what already happens with dead-end circles).
Maybe you're referring to some that take this to the extreme, adding tons of extra commute time? I only know of one neighborhood in my part of the country that's like that, and I'm pretty sure it got that way organically (slowly adding layers over time without any forethought because dumb). And I live in segregation central (at least in general; my actual neighborhood is nicely mixed, but it was built post-2000).
I'm referring to the deliberate windyness/fractal/zero permeability pattern you see in suburban home layouts, where you might need to drive 10 miles to get to a place 500 yards away. Where the windyness is installed deliberately to create exclusion rather than the natural fractal flow you see in places which have grown organically.
The modern subdivision is also for safety.
When you have the roads laid out in grids in the post-WW2 style that was never designed to handle the amount of traffic it gets, it's down right dangerous. People cut through your neighborhood going easily twice the speed limit to avoid a light.
My house is on a road that bypasses a light between two major thoroughfares, and I've sat in my living room multiple times and watched cars careen out of control into lawns because they are going so fast. I want my roads to suck and be a huge hassle to drive on so people stop cutting through my neighborhood and endangering my kids.
Also, the reason you don't see suburbs in the rest of the world is because they don't have the land. Post-WW2 America had huge stretches of rural land in between a web of small cities / towns, and it was far cheaper just to plunk down a housing development in some unincorporated township with no zoning laws than to buy up in urban areas. Plenty of racism of course, but a lot of people want to buy a house that is bigger and newer with no more thought behind it.
You can prevent high speed driving with regular speed bumps, or slight 20 degree changes in road direction, which don't add anything to the distance driven. Of course, in any sensible layout you can replace the grid with roundabouts and then you can have nice easy access to everywhere and have no lengths of straight which are more than the length of one 'block'.
Cities are better for humanity probably but I won't be giving up my garden and shed anytime soon. Turns out people don't make decisions based on what efficiency experts say is best.
It's cool to demonize or belittle people who choose to carve out a private space though...
Indeed it is, because the current structure of the US government means that a vast chunk of resources are taken from people who have made the right decision (to live in higher density urban areas) and transferred to people living in lower density rural areas. Then, the people designing the lower density rural areas take design and zoning decisions to make their lower density areas as inefficient and socially expensive as possible. They do and did this to make sure that poor people could not live there. And by poor people, I mean black people. They also noted that minorities tend to like communal spaces and social interaction, so they made sure to get rid of us much as that as possible too. You didn't make these design decisions, but if you live in a US suburb that is WHY your suburb is the way it is.
Why are the roads windy? To keep out black people
Why are there no trains or buses? To keep out black people
Why is the nearest grocery store only accesable by a freeway? To keep out black people
Why do my streets have no curbs? To keep out black people
The suburbs did not have to be badly designed to give you a garden shed. Surburbs in MANY nations actually aren't so awfully designed. But US suburbs ARE atrocious. Utterly awful by every metric. Go build a suburb with a nice grid layout, put in regular small commerical and industrial zones, put in crosswalks and sidewalks and make absolutely sure the population density is high enough to support a train line. And if you don't have a train line, pay to build one.
I agree with all most all of this.
But windy roads? That's a stretch. Windy roads are more aesthetically pleasing, in a couple of different ways, and they allow for different plot sizes if you want to have a somewhat wider range of plot values (like what already happens with dead-end circles).
Maybe you're referring to some that take this to the extreme, adding tons of extra commute time? I only know of one neighborhood in my part of the country that's like that, and I'm pretty sure it got that way organically (slowly adding layers over time without any forethought because dumb). And I live in segregation central (at least in general; my actual neighborhood is nicely mixed, but it was built post-2000).
I'm referring to the deliberate windyness/fractal/zero permeability pattern you see in suburban home layouts, where you might need to drive 10 miles to get to a place 500 yards away. Where the windyness is installed deliberately to create exclusion rather than the natural fractal flow you see in places which have grown organically.
The modern subdivision is also for safety.
When you have the roads laid out in grids in the post-WW2 style that was never designed to handle the amount of traffic it gets, it's down right dangerous. People cut through your neighborhood going easily twice the speed limit to avoid a light.
My house is on a road that bypasses a light between two major thoroughfares, and I've sat in my living room multiple times and watched cars careen out of control into lawns because they are going so fast. I want my roads to suck and be a huge hassle to drive on so people stop cutting through my neighborhood and endangering my kids.
Excepts that's a terrible idea. It causes massive amounts of congestion. You want people to cut through side streets if they are moving small distances. You don't want to funnel people only onto major arterial roads.
Cities are better for humanity probably but I won't be giving up my garden and shed anytime soon. Turns out people don't make decisions based on what efficiency experts say is best.
It's cool to demonize or belittle people who choose to carve out a private space though...
Indeed it is, because the current structure of the US government means that a vast chunk of resources are taken from people who have made the right decision (to live in higher density urban areas) and transferred to people living in lower density rural areas. Then, the people designing the lower density rural areas take design and zoning decisions to make their lower density areas as inefficient and socially expensive as possible. They do and did this to make sure that poor people could not live there. And by poor people, I mean black people. They also noted that minorities tend to like communal spaces and social interaction, so they made sure to get rid of us much as that as possible too. You didn't make these design decisions, but if you live in a US suburb that is WHY your suburb is the way it is.
Why are the roads windy? To keep out black people
Why are there no trains or buses? To keep out black people
Why is the nearest grocery store only accesable by a freeway? To keep out black people
Why do my streets have no curbs? To keep out black people
The suburbs did not have to be badly designed to give you a garden shed. Surburbs in MANY nations actually aren't so awfully designed. But US suburbs ARE atrocious. Utterly awful by every metric. Go build a suburb with a nice grid layout, put in regular small commerical and industrial zones, put in crosswalks and sidewalks and make absolutely sure the population density is high enough to support a train line. And if you don't have a train line, pay to build one.
I agree with all most all of this.
But windy roads? That's a stretch. Windy roads are more aesthetically pleasing, in a couple of different ways, and they allow for different plot sizes if you want to have a somewhat wider range of plot values (like what already happens with dead-end circles).
Maybe you're referring to some that take this to the extreme, adding tons of extra commute time? I only know of one neighborhood in my part of the country that's like that, and I'm pretty sure it got that way organically (slowly adding layers over time without any forethought because dumb). And I live in segregation central (at least in general; my actual neighborhood is nicely mixed, but it was built post-2000).
I'm referring to the deliberate windyness/fractal/zero permeability pattern you see in suburban home layouts, where you might need to drive 10 miles to get to a place 500 yards away. Where the windyness is installed deliberately to create exclusion rather than the natural fractal flow you see in places which have grown organically.
The modern subdivision is also for safety.
When you have the roads laid out in grids in the post-WW2 style that was never designed to handle the amount of traffic it gets, it's down right dangerous. People cut through your neighborhood going easily twice the speed limit to avoid a light.
My house is on a road that bypasses a light between two major thoroughfares, and I've sat in my living room multiple times and watched cars careen out of control into lawns because they are going so fast. I want my roads to suck and be a huge hassle to drive on so people stop cutting through my neighborhood and endangering my kids.
Also, the reason you don't see suburbs in the rest of the world is because they don't have the land. Post-WW2 America had huge stretches of rural land in between a web of small cities / towns, and it was far cheaper just to plunk down a housing development in some unincorporated township with no zoning laws than to buy up in urban areas. Plenty of racism of course, but a lot of people want to buy a house that is bigger and newer with no more thought behind it.
Cul de sacs are actually more dangerous (especially for kids) than streetgrids due to the fact that you are obligated to drive more journeys and so increase your overall VMT and likelihood of a car crash. Raised speed tables, roundabout intersections, &c. are all much better solutions to ameliorating through traffic.
We’ve built too horizontally for too long. In addition, we’ve never been paying enough to extinguish the debt before stuff has to be replaced. So we’ve been refinancing or extending stuff to the point of failure and it’s likely that suburbia is going to have to be left to Immortan Joe’s Warboys in the not-too-distant future.
This would actually help, therefore it's entirely a nonstarter. We will have to pay the piper on infrastructure sooner rather than later.
I can see the whole road system going to a constant toll-based fee system now that the tech exists to automatically track where your car has been and you don't need to stop at a roadblock to pay a toll. Republicans would absolutely rather pay $10 a trip to work than 50c extra a day on infrastructure taxes.
No they wouldn't, because that tax would actually target Republicans, who tend to live in more remote areas with a complete absence of public transit (by their own decision, in an effort to exclude poor people). It would place the burden of rural road maintenance (those which aren't needed as farm thoroughfares) on those who drive a long distance on them.
Yep, our desire to not fund anything and also to have completed freedom to sit alone for two hours a day in a car stopped in traffic on a giant, ugly, environment-destroying highway just to avoid having to ride with people that look and think different than us, in order to get to our closed off suburban homes with lots of wasted space between houses to again keep us from having to possibly interact with someone different than ourselves, that’s going swell for us huh.
This is also more “trust the invisible hand (except for when we benefit from a hidden subsidy or don’t have to worry about externalities)” bullshit.
Hey now, don't forget our insistance on designing deliberately non-percolating road networks to add 5 miles to our commute distance by making us unable to have regular freeway exits or drive in straight lines in our suburbs and absurd zoning laws which require 30 minute drives to buy basic necessities in a consistent effort to make sure poor people can't move in by creating convenience barriers.
What does that mean? Google didn't really shed light on it.
MeeqeLord of the pants most fancySomeplace amazingRegistered Userregular
Flint Town is an amazing docu-series on Netflix that talks about what happens to sub-urban areas 20 years after the boom. Its not pretty, but its a worthwhile watch.
This would actually help, therefore it's entirely a nonstarter. We will have to pay the piper on infrastructure sooner rather than later.
I can see the whole road system going to a constant toll-based fee system now that the tech exists to automatically track where your car has been and you don't need to stop at a roadblock to pay a toll. Republicans would absolutely rather pay $10 a trip to work than 50c extra a day on infrastructure taxes.
No they wouldn't, because that tax would actually target Republicans, who tend to live in more remote areas with a complete absence of public transit (by their own decision, in an effort to exclude poor people). It would place the burden of rural road maintenance (those which aren't needed as farm thoroughfares) on those who drive a long distance on them.
Yep, our desire to not fund anything and also to have completed freedom to sit alone for two hours a day in a car stopped in traffic on a giant, ugly, environment-destroying highway just to avoid having to ride with people that look and think different than us, in order to get to our closed off suburban homes with lots of wasted space between houses to again keep us from having to possibly interact with someone different than ourselves, that’s going swell for us huh.
This is also more “trust the invisible hand (except for when we benefit from a hidden subsidy or don’t have to worry about externalities)” bullshit.
Hey now, don't forget our insistance on designing deliberately non-percolating road networks to add 5 miles to our commute distance by making us unable to have regular freeway exits or drive in straight lines in our suburbs and absurd zoning laws which require 30 minute drives to buy basic necessities in a consistent effort to make sure poor people can't move in by creating convenience barriers.
What does that mean? Google didn't really shed light on it.
Eh, it's a fluid movement term. A percolating network is one with long distance connectivity, so fluid will mix between every point, or can be sucked out from any point. A non percolating road network is one where you can't reach a similar point in your local area without using major roads.
Yep, our desire to not fund anything and also to have completed freedom to sit alone for two hours a day in a car stopped in traffic on a giant, ugly, environment-destroying highway just to avoid having to ride with people that look and think different than us, in order to get to our closed off suburban homes with lots of wasted space between houses to again keep us from having to possibly interact with someone different than ourselves, that’s going swell for us huh.
This is also more “trust the invisible hand (except for when we benefit from a hidden subsidy or don’t have to worry about externalities)” bullshit.
Hey now, don't forget our insistance on designing deliberately non-percolating road networks to add 5 miles to our commute distance by making us unable to have regular freeway exits or drive in straight lines in our suburbs and absurd zoning laws which require 30 minute drives to buy basic necessities in a consistent effort to make sure poor people can't move in by creating convenience barriers.
You both realize that living and commuting with people is actually pretty awful? People having obnoxiously loud conversations on trains, people being drunk on trains, people assaulting you with music/trying to sell you garbage, your neighbor playing obnoxiously loud music until 3am, hearing your neighbor snoring all night, your roommate getting a death threat in the Stop and Shop. Like people are not moving away from this shit because they're scared of "dealing with different people". They're moving away from people because people are awful. If I had the resources I'd move into a detached home with 200 feet minimum between me and my nearest neighbor plus sound proofing the hell out of my house. To bring this back around you would have to make this utopia of yours cost like 1/10th the price of suburbia to entice people to put up with that nonsense and even then I think it'd be a hell of a tough sell.
A totally unbiased and reasonable view of city life, this is.
Guess its time to pack it up, mixed use, medium density developer types.
No, I'd say he's pretty accurate, I just consider the convenience of city living to outweigh the frustration of other people. Annoying, loud people on the bus, drunks harassing other commuters, neighbors who all play booming music and/or have squalling toddlers who scream pretty much from waking up til they fall asleep again 12 hours later, it's pretty goddamn bad. But I lived in the countryside for the first 10 years of my life, and I'd rather deal with this crap the best I can than have to drive 5 km to the nearest store again.
Keep in mind, I still live in a pretty small city, I cant imagine how much worse it gets when you live in somewhere the size of the average American city.
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EncA Fool with CompassionPronouns: He, Him, HisRegistered Userregular
Yep, our desire to not fund anything and also to have completed freedom to sit alone for two hours a day in a car stopped in traffic on a giant, ugly, environment-destroying highway just to avoid having to ride with people that look and think different than us, in order to get to our closed off suburban homes with lots of wasted space between houses to again keep us from having to possibly interact with someone different than ourselves, that’s going swell for us huh.
This is also more “trust the invisible hand (except for when we benefit from a hidden subsidy or don’t have to worry about externalities)” bullshit.
Hey now, don't forget our insistance on designing deliberately non-percolating road networks to add 5 miles to our commute distance by making us unable to have regular freeway exits or drive in straight lines in our suburbs and absurd zoning laws which require 30 minute drives to buy basic necessities in a consistent effort to make sure poor people can't move in by creating convenience barriers.
You both realize that living and commuting with people is actually pretty awful? People having obnoxiously loud conversations on trains, people being drunk on trains, people assaulting you with music/trying to sell you garbage, your neighbor playing obnoxiously loud music until 3am, hearing your neighbor snoring all night, your roommate getting a death threat in the Stop and Shop. Like people are not moving away from this shit because they're scared of "dealing with different people". They're moving away from people because people are awful. If I had the resources I'd move into a detached home with 200 feet minimum between me and my nearest neighbor plus sound proofing the hell out of my house. To bring this back around you would have to make this utopia of yours cost like 1/10th the price of suburbia to entice people to put up with that nonsense and even then I think it'd be a hell of a tough sell.
A totally unbiased and reasonable view of city life, this is.
Guess its time to pack it up, mixed use, medium density developer types.
No, I'd say he's pretty accurate, I just consider the convenience of city living to outweigh the frustration of other people. Annoying, loud people on the bus, drunks harassing other commuters, neighbors who all play booming music and/or have squalling toddlers who scream pretty much from waking up til they fall asleep again 12 hours later, it's pretty goddamn bad. But I lived in the countryside for the first 10 years of my life, and I'd rather deal with this crap the best I can than have to drive 5 km to the nearest store again.
Keep in mind, I still live in a pretty small city, I cant imagine how much worse it gets when you live in somewhere the size of the average American city.
Yes, welcome to the conversation from yesterday at midday.
Yep, our desire to not fund anything and also to have completed freedom to sit alone for two hours a day in a car stopped in traffic on a giant, ugly, environment-destroying highway just to avoid having to ride with people that look and think different than us, in order to get to our closed off suburban homes with lots of wasted space between houses to again keep us from having to possibly interact with someone different than ourselves, that’s going swell for us huh.
This is also more “trust the invisible hand (except for when we benefit from a hidden subsidy or don’t have to worry about externalities)” bullshit.
Hey now, don't forget our insistance on designing deliberately non-percolating road networks to add 5 miles to our commute distance by making us unable to have regular freeway exits or drive in straight lines in our suburbs and absurd zoning laws which require 30 minute drives to buy basic necessities in a consistent effort to make sure poor people can't move in by creating convenience barriers.
You both realize that living and commuting with people is actually pretty awful? People having obnoxiously loud conversations on trains, people being drunk on trains, people assaulting you with music/trying to sell you garbage, your neighbor playing obnoxiously loud music until 3am, hearing your neighbor snoring all night, your roommate getting a death threat in the Stop and Shop. Like people are not moving away from this shit because they're scared of "dealing with different people". They're moving away from people because people are awful. If I had the resources I'd move into a detached home with 200 feet minimum between me and my nearest neighbor plus sound proofing the hell out of my house. To bring this back around you would have to make this utopia of yours cost like 1/10th the price of suburbia to entice people to put up with that nonsense and even then I think it'd be a hell of a tough sell.
A totally unbiased and reasonable view of city life, this is.
Guess its time to pack it up, mixed use, medium density developer types.
No, I'd say he's pretty accurate, I just consider the convenience of city living to outweigh the frustration of other people. Annoying, loud people on the bus, drunks harassing other commuters, neighbors who all play booming music and/or have squalling toddlers who scream pretty much from waking up til they fall asleep again 12 hours later, it's pretty goddamn bad. But I lived in the countryside for the first 10 years of my life, and I'd rather deal with this crap the best I can than have to drive 5 km to the nearest store again.
Keep in mind, I still live in a pretty small city, I cant imagine how much worse it gets when you live in somewhere the size of the average American city.
Yes, welcome to the conversation from yesterday at midday.
Man, this is a forum, a static board. The entire point of this format is to be able to read and reply asynchronously. Being able to reply to comments made yesterday is kind of why this style of page exists!
Cities are better for humanity probably but I won't be giving up my garden and shed anytime soon. Turns out people don't make decisions based on what efficiency experts say is best.
It's cool to demonize or belittle people who choose to carve out a private space though...
Indeed it is, because the current structure of the US government means that a vast chunk of resources are taken from people who have made the right decision (to live in higher density urban areas) and transferred to people living in lower density rural areas. Then, the people designing the lower density rural areas take design and zoning decisions to make their lower density areas as inefficient and socially expensive as possible. They do and did this to make sure that poor people could not live there. And by poor people, I mean black people. They also noted that minorities tend to like communal spaces and social interaction, so they made sure to get rid of us much as that as possible too. You didn't make these design decisions, but if you live in a US suburb that is WHY your suburb is the way it is.
Why are the roads windy? To keep out black people
Why are there no trains or buses? To keep out black people
Why is the nearest grocery store only accesable by a freeway? To keep out black people
Why do my streets have no curbs? To keep out black people
The suburbs did not have to be badly designed to give you a garden shed. Surburbs in MANY nations actually aren't so awfully designed. But US suburbs ARE atrocious. Utterly awful by every metric. Go build a suburb with a nice grid layout, put in regular small commerical and industrial zones, put in crosswalks and sidewalks and make absolutely sure the population density is high enough to support a train line. And if you don't have a train line, pay to build one.
I agree with all most all of this.
But windy roads? That's a stretch. Windy roads are more aesthetically pleasing, in a couple of different ways, and they allow for different plot sizes if you want to have a somewhat wider range of plot values (like what already happens with dead-end circles).
Maybe you're referring to some that take this to the extreme, adding tons of extra commute time? I only know of one neighborhood in my part of the country that's like that, and I'm pretty sure it got that way organically (slowly adding layers over time without any forethought because dumb). And I live in segregation central (at least in general; my actual neighborhood is nicely mixed, but it was built post-2000).
I'm referring to the deliberate windyness/fractal/zero permeability pattern you see in suburban home layouts, where you might need to drive 10 miles to get to a place 500 yards away. Where the windyness is installed deliberately to create exclusion rather than the natural fractal flow you see in places which have grown organically.
The modern subdivision is also for safety.
When you have the roads laid out in grids in the post-WW2 style that was never designed to handle the amount of traffic it gets, it's down right dangerous. People cut through your neighborhood going easily twice the speed limit to avoid a light.
My house is on a road that bypasses a light between two major thoroughfares, and I've sat in my living room multiple times and watched cars careen out of control into lawns because they are going so fast. I want my roads to suck and be a huge hassle to drive on so people stop cutting through my neighborhood and endangering my kids.
Also, the reason you don't see suburbs in the rest of the world is because they don't have the land. Post-WW2 America had huge stretches of rural land in between a web of small cities / towns, and it was far cheaper just to plunk down a housing development in some unincorporated township with no zoning laws than to buy up in urban areas. Plenty of racism of course, but a lot of people want to buy a house that is bigger and newer with no more thought behind it.
Cul de sacs are actually more dangerous (especially for kids) than streetgrids due to the fact that you are obligated to drive more journeys and so increase your overall VMT and likelihood of a car crash. Raised speed tables, roundabout intersections, &c. are all much better solutions to ameliorating through traffic.
I guess I don't understand this. Considering the only cars that come down the street to our cul-de-sac are the 4 or 5 houses actually on the cul-de-sac or maybe the 8 houses the lead to it that need to possibly turn around (which isn't the case 80% of the time since they leave their driveway in the outbound direction).
Traveling on public transport can be fun, because other people are not just nuisances. For instance I was stuck on the subway in a train that was stopped for about 10 minutes the other day, and some kids started showing everyone card tricks. So cute.
When you are driving, people can also be assholes, although I guess you don't have to smell their body odor while they are cutting you off.
What's the deal with those? Are they essentially busking, or is there something more scammy about it? I always assumed there was a pickpocket working the crowd and avoided stopping.
Cities are better for humanity probably but I won't be giving up my garden and shed anytime soon. Turns out people don't make decisions based on what efficiency experts say is best.
It's cool to demonize or belittle people who choose to carve out a private space though...
Indeed it is, because the current structure of the US government means that a vast chunk of resources are taken from people who have made the right decision (to live in higher density urban areas) and transferred to people living in lower density rural areas. Then, the people designing the lower density rural areas take design and zoning decisions to make their lower density areas as inefficient and socially expensive as possible. They do and did this to make sure that poor people could not live there. And by poor people, I mean black people. They also noted that minorities tend to like communal spaces and social interaction, so they made sure to get rid of us much as that as possible too. You didn't make these design decisions, but if you live in a US suburb that is WHY your suburb is the way it is.
Why are the roads windy? To keep out black people
Why are there no trains or buses? To keep out black people
Why is the nearest grocery store only accesable by a freeway? To keep out black people
Why do my streets have no curbs? To keep out black people
The suburbs did not have to be badly designed to give you a garden shed. Surburbs in MANY nations actually aren't so awfully designed. But US suburbs ARE atrocious. Utterly awful by every metric. Go build a suburb with a nice grid layout, put in regular small commerical and industrial zones, put in crosswalks and sidewalks and make absolutely sure the population density is high enough to support a train line. And if you don't have a train line, pay to build one.
I agree with all most all of this.
But windy roads? That's a stretch. Windy roads are more aesthetically pleasing, in a couple of different ways, and they allow for different plot sizes if you want to have a somewhat wider range of plot values (like what already happens with dead-end circles).
Maybe you're referring to some that take this to the extreme, adding tons of extra commute time? I only know of one neighborhood in my part of the country that's like that, and I'm pretty sure it got that way organically (slowly adding layers over time without any forethought because dumb). And I live in segregation central (at least in general; my actual neighborhood is nicely mixed, but it was built post-2000).
I'm referring to the deliberate windyness/fractal/zero permeability pattern you see in suburban home layouts, where you might need to drive 10 miles to get to a place 500 yards away. Where the windyness is installed deliberately to create exclusion rather than the natural fractal flow you see in places which have grown organically.
The modern subdivision is also for safety.
When you have the roads laid out in grids in the post-WW2 style that was never designed to handle the amount of traffic it gets, it's down right dangerous. People cut through your neighborhood going easily twice the speed limit to avoid a light.
My house is on a road that bypasses a light between two major thoroughfares, and I've sat in my living room multiple times and watched cars careen out of control into lawns because they are going so fast. I want my roads to suck and be a huge hassle to drive on so people stop cutting through my neighborhood and endangering my kids.
Also, the reason you don't see suburbs in the rest of the world is because they don't have the land. Post-WW2 America had huge stretches of rural land in between a web of small cities / towns, and it was far cheaper just to plunk down a housing development in some unincorporated township with no zoning laws than to buy up in urban areas. Plenty of racism of course, but a lot of people want to buy a house that is bigger and newer with no more thought behind it.
Cul de sacs are actually more dangerous (especially for kids) than streetgrids due to the fact that you are obligated to drive more journeys and so increase your overall VMT and likelihood of a car crash. Raised speed tables, roundabout intersections, &c. are all much better solutions to ameliorating through traffic.
I guess I don't understand this. Considering the only cars that come down the street to our cul-de-sac are the 4 or 5 houses actually on the cul-de-sac or maybe the 8 houses the lead to it that need to possibly turn around (which isn't the case 80% of the time since they leave their driveway in the outbound direction).
Because you live in a cul de sac you have to drive for pretty much every trip, rather than being able to walk to the corner store for a gallon of milk. The more you drive the more likely you are to get into a car crash. (Or accidentally back over someone while leaving your driveway.) Since the form of the neighborhood itself increases the amount of necessary driving, it increases the amount of crashes and injuries from crashes. The cul de sac is safe, so long as you never leave it.
What's the deal with those? Are they essentially busking, or is there something more scammy about it? I always assumed there was a pickpocket working the crowd and avoided stopping.
I've seen plenty of them and never been robbed, so I assume they are just buskers. The most annoying type though. They've been cracked down on and you virtually never see them these days.
So, this is a thread about US infrastructure that was started due to action by Congress on that front. It's not actually a city planning thread. Review the OP and stay on topic.
I think we have an urban planning thread floating around if you guys want to take the discussion there.
A new pedestrian bridge at Florida International University collapsed Thursday afternoon, injuring multiple people, according to police.
There are multiple injuries but several agencies are responding and the situation is evolving, according to Alvaro Zabaleta, a spokesman for the Miami-Dade Police Department. The bridge connects the university campus to the town of Sweetwater, and crosses over a state highway.
The story is early and VERY developing, but the one thing people keep referencing is that it is a new bridge. Which.. well.. makes you worry about repairs and investments.
When this happened I immediately thought "damn, how old is the bridge?" but it seems it was a new one about to be opened. Has to be some major fault (obviously) if it failed when not even under load.
Posts
Community gardens are a thing.
Also, I don't have to shovel or mow anything which is a pretty big plus
Cities also tend to have vastly superior parks and playgrounds, because starved of cash as they are, its still more efficient to provide them there.
Mowing the lawn is fun!
Lock him away in the suburbs
None of this is fun.
Sure, but community planning has a huge impact on the infrastructure you need, and how often it needs to be repaired
A little less racist(income based segregation) would go a long way towards people in urban areas having more community space for gardens and sheds.
Having driven the roads all over the country, it's pretty easy to tell whether the state gives a shit the second you cross into one.
But windy roads? That's a stretch. Windy roads are more aesthetically pleasing, in a couple of different ways, and they allow for different plot sizes if you want to have a somewhat wider range of plot values (like what already happens with dead-end circles).
Maybe you're referring to some that take this to the extreme, adding tons of extra commute time? I only know of one neighborhood in my part of the country that's like that, and I'm pretty sure it got that way organically (slowly adding layers over time without any forethought because dumb). And I live in segregation central (at least in general; my actual neighborhood is nicely mixed, but it was built post-2000).
I'm referring to the deliberate windyness/fractal/zero permeability pattern you see in suburban home layouts, where you might need to drive 10 miles to get to a place 500 yards away. Where the windyness is installed deliberately to create exclusion rather than the natural fractal flow you see in places which have grown organically.
Specifically talking about the first garden cities in the US, their designs incorporated curved streets and couldesacs with a maze-like design specifically to block thoroughfares and discourage minorities from driving through. Like, that was part of the intent as written on the wrapper. A large part of the early advertising and marketing (that largely persists to this day) was a white flight message to flee from minorities in the cities to have your own white utopia just within driving distance.
The roads were part of that, though not exclusively for it.
Maze neighborhoods can go to hell, though. I knew about white flight, but I didn't know the mazes were a part of that. Thanks for the history lesson, and now I hate whitey that much more.
The modern subdivision is also for safety.
When you have the roads laid out in grids in the post-WW2 style that was never designed to handle the amount of traffic it gets, it's down right dangerous. People cut through your neighborhood going easily twice the speed limit to avoid a light.
My house is on a road that bypasses a light between two major thoroughfares, and I've sat in my living room multiple times and watched cars careen out of control into lawns because they are going so fast. I want my roads to suck and be a huge hassle to drive on so people stop cutting through my neighborhood and endangering my kids.
Also, the reason you don't see suburbs in the rest of the world is because they don't have the land. Post-WW2 America had huge stretches of rural land in between a web of small cities / towns, and it was far cheaper just to plunk down a housing development in some unincorporated township with no zoning laws than to buy up in urban areas. Plenty of racism of course, but a lot of people want to buy a house that is bigger and newer with no more thought behind it.
The one that gets me about the whole phenomenon is how easy it is to play a game of "spot the permanently-locked access gate they won't let anyone use now that all the homes are built," which usually would let everyone get into and out of their community a lot faster and easier.
You can prevent high speed driving with regular speed bumps, or slight 20 degree changes in road direction, which don't add anything to the distance driven. Of course, in any sensible layout you can replace the grid with roundabouts and then you can have nice easy access to everywhere and have no lengths of straight which are more than the length of one 'block'.
The suburbs, as ever, solve nothing.
Excepts that's a terrible idea. It causes massive amounts of congestion. You want people to cut through side streets if they are moving small distances. You don't want to funnel people only onto major arterial roads.
Cul de sacs are actually more dangerous (especially for kids) than streetgrids due to the fact that you are obligated to drive more journeys and so increase your overall VMT and likelihood of a car crash. Raised speed tables, roundabout intersections, &c. are all much better solutions to ameliorating through traffic.
What does that mean? Google didn't really shed light on it.
Steam Profile | Signature art by Alexandra 'Lexxy' Douglass
Eh, it's a fluid movement term. A percolating network is one with long distance connectivity, so fluid will mix between every point, or can be sucked out from any point. A non percolating road network is one where you can't reach a similar point in your local area without using major roads.
No, I'd say he's pretty accurate, I just consider the convenience of city living to outweigh the frustration of other people. Annoying, loud people on the bus, drunks harassing other commuters, neighbors who all play booming music and/or have squalling toddlers who scream pretty much from waking up til they fall asleep again 12 hours later, it's pretty goddamn bad. But I lived in the countryside for the first 10 years of my life, and I'd rather deal with this crap the best I can than have to drive 5 km to the nearest store again.
Keep in mind, I still live in a pretty small city, I cant imagine how much worse it gets when you live in somewhere the size of the average American city.
Yes, welcome to the conversation from yesterday at midday.
Man, this is a forum, a static board. The entire point of this format is to be able to read and reply asynchronously. Being able to reply to comments made yesterday is kind of why this style of page exists!
You cant be annoyed at people around you unless you live in a Return To New York-style hellscape?
I guess I don't understand this. Considering the only cars that come down the street to our cul-de-sac are the 4 or 5 houses actually on the cul-de-sac or maybe the 8 houses the lead to it that need to possibly turn around (which isn't the case 80% of the time since they leave their driveway in the outbound direction).
When you are driving, people can also be assholes, although I guess you don't have to smell their body odor while they are cutting you off.
What's the deal with those? Are they essentially busking, or is there something more scammy about it? I always assumed there was a pickpocket working the crowd and avoided stopping.
Because you live in a cul de sac you have to drive for pretty much every trip, rather than being able to walk to the corner store for a gallon of milk. The more you drive the more likely you are to get into a car crash. (Or accidentally back over someone while leaving your driveway.) Since the form of the neighborhood itself increases the amount of necessary driving, it increases the amount of crashes and injuries from crashes. The cul de sac is safe, so long as you never leave it.
I'll see if I can find the actual studies on it.
I've seen plenty of them and never been robbed, so I assume they are just buskers. The most annoying type though. They've been cracked down on and you virtually never see them these days.
The best buskers are wandering mariachi bands.
I think we have an urban planning thread floating around if you guys want to take the discussion there.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2018/03/15/new-pedestrian-bridge-collapses-at-florida-international-university-injuring-several/?utm_term=.48a67d4baba9
The story is early and VERY developing, but the one thing people keep referencing is that it is a new bridge. Which.. well.. makes you worry about repairs and investments.