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It's interesting that protests generally happen in dense parts of cities. Now imagine a city without a dense part - protesting becomes more difficult. Myanmar'
by tuna-piano 6y ago
It's interesting that protests generally happen in dense parts of cities. Now imagine a city without a dense part - protesting becomes more difficult. Myanmar's non-democratic military government actually moved their capital from a dense city to a new city so spread out and with no downtown area - potentially to prevent the ability to protest the government.
https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/inside-burma-s-ghost-town-capital-city-which-4-times-size-london-fraction-population-a7805081.html https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/inside-burma-s-ghost-to...
I don't think that's why Houston is the way it is, and while there is still a downtown there, imagining mass protests in Houston seems much different than Hong Kong - due to the density.
- adolph 6y ago"Some of Haussmann's critics said that the real purpose of Haussmann's boulevards was to make it easier for the army to maneuver and suppress armed uprisings; Paris had experienced six such uprisings between 1830 and 1848, all in the narrow, crowded streets in the center and east of Paris and on the left bank around the Pantheon. These critics argued that a small number of large, open intersections allowed easy control by a small force." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haussmann%27s_renovation_of_Paris https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haussmann%27s_renovation_of_Pa...
- leetcrew 6y agois there any further explanation of this? it strikes me that narrow chokepoints would be more advantageous to the numerically inferior but better-equipped/trained force.
- bobthepanda 6y agomore advantageous to the numerically inferior who know the lay of the land, because it's much easier to conduct urban guerilla warfare in such instances. Armies during this period were all still about marching in formation, which doesn't work well in confined spaces where you can't really keep a formation.
- throw_away 6y agoIt was also in the context of a long history of barricades being put up by popular uprisings and stymying and trapping troop formations.
- leetcrew 6y agoI guess I'm thinking too much in terms of modern times, where police are mostly aiming to contain a larger crowd. didn't consider that demonstrators might actually intend to trap security forces.
- CydeWeys 6y agoYou're thinking about modern protests that are relatively peaceful and in which deaths are rare. The Paris riots looked a lot more like outright urban guerrilla warfare with lots of deaths, in a manner that is more similar to actual declared wars here in the US (e.g. the Revolutionary War, War of 1812, and Civil War), not mere urban unrest.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- drewbug01 6y agoNot directly related, but the US Interstate Highway system was at least partially designed with military concerns in mind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System#Hist... . I'm reminded of it every time I see military vehicles on the highway. Obviously not the same thing that you're talking about here - but just interesting to me, and vaguely related!
- kevin_thibedeau 6y agoThere's a reason why the Eisenhower Interstate System signs have the 5 stars of a general.
- mikece 6y agoIf I'm not mistaken, the 5-star logo only applies to sections of interstate highway that have at least one mile of level and straight road in any given 5-mile stretch. The idea was that an "Eisenhower Freeway" could be used as an impromptu landing spot for Air Force planes. While I'm sure this ability was tested at the beginning I don't know if there are regular drills and exercises making use of this feature.
- xxxtentachyon 6y agoI would love to see a plane try to decelerate from 200+ mph with the surface quality changing every 200 yards and with 18-inch-deep potholes every so often. I wonder what sort of maintenance budget the original interstate plan envisioned
- laurent92 6y agoSeveral planes land on highways per year, I don’t find the source but it was from AVWeb and the order of magnitude is ~10 per year. It’s actually much safer han fields. But those are Cessnas at 80mph, not Boeings.
- CydeWeys 6y ago
- ucarion 6y agoThis is pretty widely thrown around, but it should be noted that the central purpose of Haussmannization was public health and beautification: tearing down the slums, building proper infrastructure like sewers and aqueducts, and pretty parks and streets. The article you link to emphasizes this. The wide boulevards did very little to prevent the Paris Commune, for instance. Napoleon III just wanted to build a second Rome, not some martial panopticon.
- paganel 6y agoThe wide boulevards certainly helped the French Army in drowning the Commune in blood soon afterwards, though.
- boomboomsubban 6y agoThe Commune was also fairly unique among French revolts as it did not begin in Paris, rather it was Paris reacting to their emperor getting captured in battle.
- throw_away 6y agoThere was a bit more than just Napoleon III getting captured. Paris was subsequently sieged and captured by the Prussians. Afterwards, the Prussian troops were kept nearby and occasionally paraded through the streets. The Commune arose also due to power disagreements with the new Third Republic and an attempted seizure of cannons in Paris.
- ashtonkem 6y agoThe Paris commune was tripped off by a political failure, a war lost in a single battle, and the siege of Paris by the Germans followed by mass starvation. I doubt that any city design could possibly have stopped the commune from happening.
- scruple 6y agoReminds me of Brasilia.
- marcosdumay 6y agoWhere people have no problem protesting in front of government buildings. That "people always protest at the densest areas of the city" is just that, correlation. The targets of their protests happen to be in those areas.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- xg15 6y agoNow that we have the ability to decouple most administrative work from location thanks to remote working, I wonder how long it will take for the first fully decentralised authoritarian government to appear. Can't have protests in the capital if you don't have a capital.
- omosubi 6y agoI guess authoritarians have risen to power over the internet but it's hard to imagine someone exerting that much influence over zoom
- philwelch 6y agoDecentralized authoritarianism is an inherently weird concept. Sounds more like a vicious type of mob rule to me.
- xg15 6y agoI meant physically decentralized - as in, no grand palaces or other government buildings that can be stormed, because the whole administration is working from home. Imagine a 100% remote company, except, it's not a company. The power structures are of course not decentralized at all.
- xg15 6y ago... that being said, an authoritarian state with decentralized power structure is also an interesting concept. The episodes about social scoring from Black Mirror [1] and The Orville [2] might go into that direction. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosedive_(Black_Mirror) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosedive_(Black_Mirror) [2] https://orville.fandom.com/wiki/Majority_Rule https://orville.fandom.com/wiki/Majority_Rule
- badrabbit 6y agoPeople can drive to the location of the protest. Less dense means more transportation, protests could also mean blocking off major freeways.
- username90 6y agoWhere would you find parking for a hundred thousand cars? You can't really get protests like this without a dense city: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/87/March_for_Women%27s_Lives_1.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/87/March_fo...
- badrabbit 6y agoYou'd be surprised. Most of cities like this is parking lots. But yeah, in a protest situation they may not be available. Big marathons and marches happen just fine.
- julesqs 6y agoyeah I live in New York and I definitely went to more protests this summer because they were happening literally right outside my apartment than I would have if I had to deal with driving and finding parking (probably hard if it's a big protest). I think generally American style suburban sprawl decreases social capital just because you're more isolated, and that includes protests. I think mask wearing is another example.
- saint-loup 6y agoThis article is specifically about the specific tactics BLM protest used in the suburbs and small towns. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-06-19/protests-for-racial-justice-take-root-in-suburbia?srnd=citylab https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-06-19/protests-...
- RangerScience 6y agoIMO this is part of why why protests started marching down freeways. In LA, if you protest by marching down basically any freeway, you snarl up that freeway (and likely more) for tens of miles, at least (AFAIK). (the 101 between hollywood and DTLA is essentially a single thing, the 10 between DTLA and West Side, the 405 from culver city up to over the pass in sherman oaks...) AKA, the "center" isn't geographic, but... transit-based? Arterial?
- CydeWeys 6y agoIt also gives a great sense of your own power (which is very important to protest movements) in marching along and shutting down a freeway, which you could never in any other situation just calmly walk down the middle of. Critical Mass is invigorating for the same reasons.
- msla 6y agoAnd people who need to get somewhere to save lives are suitably invigorated, I'm sure.
- CydeWeys 6y agoYeah, actually. I saw a huge fucking grin on the face of the guy riding shotgun in the ambulance as the crowd of cyclists parted like magic in front of them and they had a personal escort of two vested corkers. Guy was even filming. They got where they were going faster than if the usual stop and go car traffic had been there. The great thing about people on foot or on bike is that they can easily get out of the way of emergency vehicles, vs cars and trucks which often can't.
- macintux 6y agoIf you’ve created a logjam however, how does the ambulance get through the stopped traffic? (I’m not arguing against protesting on the freeway, to be clear, just genuinely curious how often it helps vs hinders emergency vehicles.)
- abstractbarista 6y agoThat's one of the reasons I chose not to live in a city center.