7 ms·

To those saying "a big company shaping cities is bad" - take a hard look at how American cities are shaped now and the big companies who influenced the relevant

To those saying "a big company shaping cities is bad" - take a hard look at how American cities are shaped now and the big companies who influenced the relevant policies. You're going to find oil, car, tire, etc companies at the forefront.

rayiner 9y ago
Also take a hard look at what happened to cities in the aftermath of corporate dependency. The midwest is littered with cities and towns that were left polluted and bankrupt after their corporate sponsor moved on.
- xapata 9y ago
  How about the Northeast? NYC and Boston seem fine. It's not really an issue of company, but industry. Cities that are single-industry are fragile.
  - deusofnull 9y ago
    And if a company (or set of companies) of a given industry is operating in a single industry city, they hold all the cards in that city. That is advantageous for these companies. It was in the past and it is now, even considering the push of big companies back into cities. A lot of corporations moved out of cities and into small municipalities / smaller states in the second half of the 20th century. They were given the gold-star treatment with tax breaks, infrastructure projects to support their corporate campuses, etc. I know a town in New Jersey where Lokheed Martin employs probably more than half of the home owners in the town. Who do you think runs that town?
    - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
      Lockheed Martin is actually incredible in the scope that it influences government. The reason the F-35 continued to have such strong support even after numerous reports of design flaws and massive cost overruns: Lockheed spread the development of the F-35 over 46 states, so almost any Congressman who acts against the F-35 program acts against jobs in his or her own state. http://www.businessinsider.com/this-map-explains-the-f-35-fiasco-2014-8 http://www.businessinsider.com/this-map-explains-the-f-35-fi...
      - hinkley 9y ago
        I always had a suspicion the 787 was just a thinly veiled union-busting activity but your description of LM's shenanigans makes me wonder if Boeing was trying to learn some new tricks from Lockheed...
      - dragonwriter 9y ago
        > Lockheed Martin is actually incredible in the scope that it influences government. The reason the F-35 continued to have such strong support even after numerous reports of design flaws and massive cost overruns: Lockheed spread the development of the F-35 over 46 states, so almost any Congressman who acts against the F-35 program acts against jobs in his or her own state. That's not something special about the F-35, except maybe in execution details; the strategy has been well-known and frequently practiced by many defense contractors (and commented on by critics of defense procurement) for many years before the F-35 project.
Tiktaalik 9y ago
So yes, big companies shaping cities is bad.
- andys627 9y ago
  Probably. Probably unavoidable. I think I'd rather have Google doing it than Exxon. I'm excited to see how this pans out!
alexasmyths 9y ago
American cities were generally not shaped directly by the companies, rather, by the economy made from those companies. Lots of cars = big stores = possibility for suburbs. Exxon did not say to the President: 'build suburbs because it's good for cars'. I believe Google has considerably more goodwill - at the same time... We've known for 100's of years how to build good cities Cities are about people, culture and architecture - not 'wifi' and 'hyper-loops'. Many North American cities are trying to get people to bicycle - yeah - that's retrograde ! and good. We don't need tech for that. Utopian thinking usually ends up in dystopia because of the arrogance of the 'visionaries' - they over emphasize some things, and fail to recognize the underlying, important things. I can't think of a single 'modern' city, truly designed in the modern era that is a glowing example of 'how it should be'. All the great places to live are old - built before cars, interesting architecture, and some kind of local culture with nice people, low crime, fresh air. That's mostly what you need. Want a hyperloop? Sure. Put it underground where nobody can see it, and it serves it's function: getting people from A->B.
- mfoy_ 9y ago
  > Many North American cities are trying to get people to bicycle - yeah - that's retrograde ! and good. We don't need tech for that. When there are no bike lanes it's a problem.
- andys627 9y ago
  > Exxon did not say to the President: 'build suburbs because it's good for cars'. Yes he did. A few examples of what oil/car folks did: dismantle public transit, make sure negative externalities of cars are not directly paid, lobby congress to pay for 90% of highways and make transit funding less/harder to get, get into wars for oil, take over planning departments at highly regarded colleges and change curriculum to churn out car focused planners.
  - drawkbox 9y ago
    Don't forget that Eisenhower created the Interstate System [1] which was car based and heavily advertised for traveling for Americans, while also being a national security need for military transport. Creating the interstate systems did kill trains but also greatly influenced where cities and economies sprang up. It also made the US a car culture and locked it in, which worked great for big areas of undeveloped land at the time, and allowed people to move around more freely. I'd love a president or government in the US to do the same and make an electric car interstate system, basically just giving it to companies like Tesla or others with conditions. Basically start adding electric car charging stations and add an iteration to the interstates, make them self-driving capable and more. Or a president or government policy to get gigabit broadband across the nation as a new baseline of digital transportation of data that will open up unforseen new products and markets. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System
nerdshoe 9y ago
I think the difference here is a company building a community rather than a community building around a company. A modern example of the latter is visible in the municipalities clamouring to accommodate Amazon. Time will tell if that one ends in another broken city.
deusofnull 9y ago
Yeah, and that is exactly why they are saying it. The urban rail systems of 100 years ago were ripped out of the streets and replaced with bus-lines and consumer automobiles after considerable lobbying effort from auto-manufacturers. Public rail infrastructure has never really bounced back. When the interstate highway system was designed and built, it bulldozed through dozens, if not hundreds, of lower income / minority neighborhoods. The public housing projects constructed as a replacement became problematic straight away. Guess which large companies at the forefront of the push for an interstate highway system? Point is American cities have been shaped by these corporate forces for along time. In many of those cases, perhaps most, their influence and actions have hurt the community, disbanded or destroyed neighborhoods, made transportation more expensive and nightmarish (traffic), and benefited the bottom lines of 3rd party interest groups / corporations. That is why we are skeptical of Google, or any other for profit large institution, influencing urban planning. Far better to set standards of urban design and have multiple smaller institutions, some for profit, some not for profit, some collectivized to represent of organized neighborhoods, all develop and participate in a dynamic urban planning system.
- akgerber 9y ago
  Those urban rail systems were built by huge, monopolistic corporations, and were generally ripped out by local governments— e.g. Fiorella LaGuardia used WPA employees to tear out NYC's trolleys: http://www.nytimes.com/1975/07/09/archives/last-trolleys-rolled-in-the-city-in-1957.html http://www.nytimes.com/1975/07/09/archives/last-trolleys-rol... And much of the mid-20th century suburbanization that gutted American cities for decades was driven by high-minded federal policy, prototyped by that of Rexford Tugwell: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rexford_Tugwell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rexford_Tugwell To me, the lessons of 20th century American urban policy are more about the dangers in embracing the wrong technology (automobiles as the solution to all transportation problems) and rebuilding cities to serve that, as opposed to a simplistic story about private interests destroying down public goods.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

rayiner 9y ago

Also take a hard look at what happened to cities in the aftermath of corporate dependency. The midwest is littered with cities and towns that were left polluted and bankrupt after their corporate sponsor moved on.

xapata 9y ago
How about the Northeast? NYC and Boston seem fine. It's not really an issue of company, but industry. Cities that are single-industry are fragile.
- deusofnull 9y ago
  And if a company (or set of companies) of a given industry is operating in a single industry city, they hold all the cards in that city. That is advantageous for these companies. It was in the past and it is now, even considering the push of big companies back into cities. A lot of corporations moved out of cities and into small municipalities / smaller states in the second half of the 20th century. They were given the gold-star treatment with tax breaks, infrastructure projects to support their corporate campuses, etc. I know a town in New Jersey where Lokheed Martin employs probably more than half of the home owners in the town. Who do you think runs that town?
  - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
    Lockheed Martin is actually incredible in the scope that it influences government. The reason the F-35 continued to have such strong support even after numerous reports of design flaws and massive cost overruns: Lockheed spread the development of the F-35 over 46 states, so almost any Congressman who acts against the F-35 program acts against jobs in his or her own state. http://www.businessinsider.com/this-map-explains-the-f-35-fiasco-2014-8 http://www.businessinsider.com/this-map-explains-the-f-35-fi...
    - hinkley 9y ago
      I always had a suspicion the 787 was just a thinly veiled union-busting activity but your description of LM's shenanigans makes me wonder if Boeing was trying to learn some new tricks from Lockheed...
    - dragonwriter 9y ago
      > Lockheed Martin is actually incredible in the scope that it influences government. The reason the F-35 continued to have such strong support even after numerous reports of design flaws and massive cost overruns: Lockheed spread the development of the F-35 over 46 states, so almost any Congressman who acts against the F-35 program acts against jobs in his or her own state. That's not something special about the F-35, except maybe in execution details; the strategy has been well-known and frequently practiced by many defense contractors (and commented on by critics of defense procurement) for many years before the F-35 project.

Tiktaalik 9y ago

So yes, big companies shaping cities is bad.

andys627 9y ago
Probably. Probably unavoidable. I think I'd rather have Google doing it than Exxon. I'm excited to see how this pans out!

alexasmyths 9y ago

American cities were generally not shaped directly by the companies, rather, by the economy made from those companies. Lots of cars = big stores = possibility for suburbs. Exxon did not say to the President: 'build suburbs because it's good for cars'. I believe Google has considerably more goodwill - at the same time... We've known for 100's of years how to build good cities Cities are about people, culture and architecture - not 'wifi' and 'hyper-loops'. Many North American cities are trying to get people to bicycle - yeah - that's retrograde ! and good. We don't need tech for that. Utopian thinking usually ends up in dystopia because of the arrogance of the 'visionaries' - they over emphasize some things, and fail to recognize the underlying, important things. I can't think of a single 'modern' city, truly designed in the modern era that is a glowing example of 'how it should be'. All the great places to live are old - built before cars, interesting architecture, and some kind of local culture with nice people, low crime, fresh air. That's mostly what you need. Want a hyperloop? Sure. Put it underground where nobody can see it, and it serves it's function: getting people from A->B.

mfoy_ 9y ago
> Many North American cities are trying to get people to bicycle - yeah - that's retrograde ! and good. We don't need tech for that. When there are no bike lanes it's a problem.
andys627 9y ago
> Exxon did not say to the President: 'build suburbs because it's good for cars'. Yes he did. A few examples of what oil/car folks did: dismantle public transit, make sure negative externalities of cars are not directly paid, lobby congress to pay for 90% of highways and make transit funding less/harder to get, get into wars for oil, take over planning departments at highly regarded colleges and change curriculum to churn out car focused planners.
- drawkbox 9y ago
  Don't forget that Eisenhower created the Interstate System [1] which was car based and heavily advertised for traveling for Americans, while also being a national security need for military transport. Creating the interstate systems did kill trains but also greatly influenced where cities and economies sprang up. It also made the US a car culture and locked it in, which worked great for big areas of undeveloped land at the time, and allowed people to move around more freely. I'd love a president or government in the US to do the same and make an electric car interstate system, basically just giving it to companies like Tesla or others with conditions. Basically start adding electric car charging stations and add an iteration to the interstates, make them self-driving capable and more. Or a president or government policy to get gigabit broadband across the nation as a new baseline of digital transportation of data that will open up unforseen new products and markets. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System

nerdshoe 9y ago

I think the difference here is a company building a community rather than a community building around a company. A modern example of the latter is visible in the municipalities clamouring to accommodate Amazon. Time will tell if that one ends in another broken city.

deusofnull 9y ago

Yeah, and that is exactly why they are saying it. The urban rail systems of 100 years ago were ripped out of the streets and replaced with bus-lines and consumer automobiles after considerable lobbying effort from auto-manufacturers. Public rail infrastructure has never really bounced back. When the interstate highway system was designed and built, it bulldozed through dozens, if not hundreds, of lower income / minority neighborhoods. The public housing projects constructed as a replacement became problematic straight away. Guess which large companies at the forefront of the push for an interstate highway system? Point is American cities have been shaped by these corporate forces for along time. In many of those cases, perhaps most, their influence and actions have hurt the community, disbanded or destroyed neighborhoods, made transportation more expensive and nightmarish (traffic), and benefited the bottom lines of 3rd party interest groups / corporations. That is why we are skeptical of Google, or any other for profit large institution, influencing urban planning. Far better to set standards of urban design and have multiple smaller institutions, some for profit, some not for profit, some collectivized to represent of organized neighborhoods, all develop and participate in a dynamic urban planning system.

akgerber 9y ago
Those urban rail systems were built by huge, monopolistic corporations, and were generally ripped out by local governments— e.g. Fiorella LaGuardia used WPA employees to tear out NYC's trolleys: http://www.nytimes.com/1975/07/09/archives/last-trolleys-rolled-in-the-city-in-1957.html http://www.nytimes.com/1975/07/09/archives/last-trolleys-rol... And much of the mid-20th century suburbanization that gutted American cities for decades was driven by high-minded federal policy, prototyped by that of Rexford Tugwell: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rexford_Tugwell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rexford_Tugwell To me, the lessons of 20th century American urban policy are more about the dangers in embracing the wrong technology (automobiles as the solution to all transportation problems) and rebuilding cities to serve that, as opposed to a simplistic story about private interests destroying down public goods.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]