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You know I used to believe that for many years and I’ve come to the conclusion that this is just a “bike-city” circle jerk scapegoating Robert Moses in order to

You know I used to believe that for many years and I’ve come to the conclusion that this is just a “bike-city” circle jerk scapegoating Robert Moses in order to ignore our deeper problem: Americans don’t like each-other. We would have built better cities if we wanted carless communities. But we didn’t and still don’t. We want this. This is what we like. We are a sick people. And it isn’t Robert Moses and GMs fault, they are a product of us. We weren’t brainwashed we weren’t forced into this. There is no cabal that made it this way. We choose it. The sooner we accept that the sooner we can evaluate real options for change.

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
This just historically inaccurate. Older US cities have many of the same characteristics as cities in other parts of the world. Those characteristics can vary, from small single-family homes tightly packed into a walkable neighborhood to large scale apartment dwelling with city squares and boulevards nearby. Americans used to build cities this way. Whether it was Moses or the emergence of a general dislike of each other, or a multitude of other possible reasons, we generally no longer do. Moreover, many of those older city neighborhoods are considered extremely desirable to live in, even today, so much so that they have become very exclusive areas available only to those with plenty of income or wealth. That doesn't imply that most Americans would necessarily make that choice even if they could, but the continued elevation of housing costs in the best of these "old world" neighborhoods suggests to me that your thesis is at best incomplete and at worst just incorrect.
- tsunamifury 5y ago
  I don’t understand what you are refuting. But I live in Pacific Heights, one of the most desirable old world communities in America, and it’s mostly empty and full of ghost capital homes. People like it for a while but they leave for the suburbs pretty fast and go looking for elbow room away from others. And it’s mostly because the energy under the surface of the beautiful homes is rude, selfish and inconsiderate. From the owners to the workers that come to service the homes. Regardless of class we are really angry people.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    Pacific Heights is indeed one of the most desirable neighboors, and is very much non-surburban in its nature. but ... The current situation in uber-expensive real-estate markets when it comes to high-end housing should not be over-interpreted as having more to say about what most Americans want from the places where they live. Pacific Heights current situation is also very similar to wealthy old neighborhoods in cities across Europe. London at the very least is full of such examples.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    also ... > I don’t understand what you are refuting. >> We would have built better cities if we wanted carless communities. But we didn’t and still don’t.
- pempem 5y ago
  ^ this is very accurate. There are multiple studies and historical accounts documenting exactly this TsunamiFury. Car lobbies are actually clearly tied to many city planning decisions, combined with white flight and corresponding government loans to create suburban communities that essentially cut others out. Additionally interstate commerce in a comparatively intensely large land mass like the US did create a need for additional transportation, but the sprawl has indeed been very much tied to the factors PaulDavisThe1st and others have pointed out. Its not 'not liking' each other. Its money + racism + poor representation of the populous. Like a lot of things.
  - tsunamifury 5y ago
    Sure. I’ve studied that for years and I’ve come to the conclusion that is not the root cause. At the end of the day it’s a boogie man people trot out to excuse the fact that they did that and continue to do it together. They let it happen because they wanted it.
    - pempem 5y ago
      Hm... fair enough. I have studied this for years and come to the opposite conclusion. Specifically in Geography and Urban and city planning courses. What studies or books lead you to your conclusion?
      - tsunamifury 5y ago
        That people ultimately do what they want. They aren’t brainwashed. Car companies or lobbies don’t build our cities. We build them they way we want them. If we wanted them some other way we would. And most people live in suburban sprawl where they distance themselves from their fellow American — who they don’t particularly like very much.
        pempem 5y ago
        Womp.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- orasis 5y ago
  Rather than they “used to build cities this way”, perhaps it just takes centuries for cities to evolve to a good form.
- bobthepanda 5y ago
  I wouldn't say it's an emergence of a general dislike of each other. It was desegregation; the dislike always existed, but before Brown vs Board of Ed and other decisions in the same cities different racial groups lived in different worlds. Blockbusting was a real phenomenon in which real estate agents would move a black family into the neighborhood to get white families to fire sell their homes, and it worked because they could no longer legally isolate minorities from their children. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockbusting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockbusting We know that this happens today, even with minority groups that are affluent and do well in education metrics. https://slate.com/human-interest/2015/07/silicon-valley-white-asian-divide-why-families-self-segregate-and-what-can-be-done.html https://slate.com/human-interest/2015/07/silicon-valley-whit... (And before anyone accuses me of "wokism", the original story was broken by the Wall Street Journal, which is decidedly not a "woke" publication.)
acdha 5y ago
> Americans don’t like each-other. Specifically white Americans want to avoid living with brown Americans. Once segregation was no longer law, it launched a wave of destruction for public infrastructure: pools, schools, transit, even things like sidewalks all became things to oppose if they had to be shared.
- throwawayboise 5y ago
  It's more than that. Jews, Asians (individually, Chinese, Koreans, Vietnamese, etc), Italians, Polish, Irish, Arabic ... all segregated into their own neighborhoods. The "melting pot" was never really real. We are a nation of immigrants that never really got along with one another except when common interests were threatened. I don't know that it's uniquely American thing either, I think this happens anywhere that different cultures come together. Humans are deeply tribal.
  - kilotaras 5y ago
    > all segregated into their own neighborhoods. Check out Shellings model of segregation [0]. Global seggregation doesn't necessarily mean that local decisions have strong preference for their race. e.g. for two types it's enough to have preference "I want at least 33% of my neighbours to be same type as me" to reach segregated global result. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schelling%27s_model_of_segregation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schelling%27s_model_of_segrega...
  - acdha 5y ago
    I think the intensity matters: my Irish ancestors weren’t considered white when they got here but there wasn’t a mass exodus from cities rather than sharing infrastructure, and they were allowed into whiteness over time (especially when large numbers of cops were needed to police black populations). The ones who served in the military weren’t restricted to certain units and duties, etc. When white people moved to the suburbs, the neighborhoods which were razed to make highways had a very uneven distribution. That’s definitely not perfect (and it’s like, say, Chinatowns weren’t raided or sacked) but that option of coexistence wasn’t on offer in much of the country.
kiba 5y ago
This is inaccurate. The GM conspiracy bought streetcar companies to replace them with buses, not to eliminate public transportation. The reality is that streetcar companies were already unprofitable, killed by infrastructure cars and poor urban planning. So it was already easy for GM to buy these companies.
- bch 5y ago
  > The reality is that streetcar companies were already unprofitable What seems to me to be a good takedown of “public transit must be profitable or be dismantled”, or “the US post office must be profitable or be dismantled” is: How profitable is the US military?
  - kiba 5y ago
    Everybody has a budget. Going red is just very bad. Sustainability is the keyword here. A streetcar enhance economic activity and transportation, especially when built with proper urban planning, and may even make a profit. With the profit, the public transit agency can use the fund to improve infrastructure with hopefully less political influence in order to further it missions. You could of course make a trade off and not mandate the agency to be profitable and subsidize it, but it's a political tradeoff.
    - amrocha 5y ago
      Just because a business turns a loss doesn't mean it isn't sustainable. Public transport is unprofitable pretty much everywhere, because the explicit transactions don't offset costs of operation. However, the cost of not operating public transit is that you end up with awful car centric cities, more respiratory disease from increased traffic, lost efficiency from congestion, higher real estate prices in walkable areas, etc. Additionally, there's a ton of positive externalities that are not factored in when judging profitability. Effective public transport increases foot traffic, which increases economic activity. Even if public transit was 100% free, it would still be worth running. The market is awful at evaluating long-term large scale effects, and just disregards them as "externalities". You can't blindly trust markets to build your cities.
dan-robertson 5y ago
I’m very unconvinced but this. New Yorkers famously all hate each other yet if you can afford to live in relatively central parts of New York, you don’t need a car. Though New York is still somewhat car-focused. Internationally, London has similar but a slightly milder case of car-dependent sprawl to New York (but people still famously don’t like each other). Swedes are also known for their desire for space and privacy yet they somehow manage to live in cities that don’t follow the North American model. And many Dutch cities used to be going in the direction of the American model (held back by the lower wealth after the war preventing mass car ownership) and only changed direction in the 70s after won’t-somebody-think-of-the-children political campaigning and some very slim majorities in votes on the topic. And the transition was a slow one too.

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago

This just historically inaccurate. Older US cities have many of the same characteristics as cities in other parts of the world. Those characteristics can vary, from small single-family homes tightly packed into a walkable neighborhood to large scale apartment dwelling with city squares and boulevards nearby. Americans used to build cities this way. Whether it was Moses or the emergence of a general dislike of each other, or a multitude of other possible reasons, we generally no longer do. Moreover, many of those older city neighborhoods are considered extremely desirable to live in, even today, so much so that they have become very exclusive areas available only to those with plenty of income or wealth. That doesn't imply that most Americans would necessarily make that choice even if they could, but the continued elevation of housing costs in the best of these "old world" neighborhoods suggests to me that your thesis is at best incomplete and at worst just incorrect.

tsunamifury 5y ago
I don’t understand what you are refuting. But I live in Pacific Heights, one of the most desirable old world communities in America, and it’s mostly empty and full of ghost capital homes. People like it for a while but they leave for the suburbs pretty fast and go looking for elbow room away from others. And it’s mostly because the energy under the surface of the beautiful homes is rude, selfish and inconsiderate. From the owners to the workers that come to service the homes. Regardless of class we are really angry people.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  Pacific Heights is indeed one of the most desirable neighboors, and is very much non-surburban in its nature. but ... The current situation in uber-expensive real-estate markets when it comes to high-end housing should not be over-interpreted as having more to say about what most Americans want from the places where they live. Pacific Heights current situation is also very similar to wealthy old neighborhoods in cities across Europe. London at the very least is full of such examples.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  also ... > I don’t understand what you are refuting. >> We would have built better cities if we wanted carless communities. But we didn’t and still don’t.
pempem 5y ago
^ this is very accurate. There are multiple studies and historical accounts documenting exactly this TsunamiFury. Car lobbies are actually clearly tied to many city planning decisions, combined with white flight and corresponding government loans to create suburban communities that essentially cut others out. Additionally interstate commerce in a comparatively intensely large land mass like the US did create a need for additional transportation, but the sprawl has indeed been very much tied to the factors PaulDavisThe1st and others have pointed out. Its not 'not liking' each other. Its money + racism + poor representation of the populous. Like a lot of things.
- tsunamifury 5y ago
  Sure. I’ve studied that for years and I’ve come to the conclusion that is not the root cause. At the end of the day it’s a boogie man people trot out to excuse the fact that they did that and continue to do it together. They let it happen because they wanted it.
  - pempem 5y ago
    Hm... fair enough. I have studied this for years and come to the opposite conclusion. Specifically in Geography and Urban and city planning courses. What studies or books lead you to your conclusion?
    - tsunamifury 5y ago
      That people ultimately do what they want. They aren’t brainwashed. Car companies or lobbies don’t build our cities. We build them they way we want them. If we wanted them some other way we would. And most people live in suburban sprawl where they distance themselves from their fellow American — who they don’t particularly like very much.
      - pempem 5y ago
        Womp.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
orasis 5y ago
Rather than they “used to build cities this way”, perhaps it just takes centuries for cities to evolve to a good form.
bobthepanda 5y ago
I wouldn't say it's an emergence of a general dislike of each other. It was desegregation; the dislike always existed, but before Brown vs Board of Ed and other decisions in the same cities different racial groups lived in different worlds. Blockbusting was a real phenomenon in which real estate agents would move a black family into the neighborhood to get white families to fire sell their homes, and it worked because they could no longer legally isolate minorities from their children. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockbusting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockbusting We know that this happens today, even with minority groups that are affluent and do well in education metrics. https://slate.com/human-interest/2015/07/silicon-valley-white-asian-divide-why-families-self-segregate-and-what-can-be-done.html https://slate.com/human-interest/2015/07/silicon-valley-whit... (And before anyone accuses me of "wokism", the original story was broken by the Wall Street Journal, which is decidedly not a "woke" publication.)

acdha 5y ago

> Americans don’t like each-other. Specifically white Americans want to avoid living with brown Americans. Once segregation was no longer law, it launched a wave of destruction for public infrastructure: pools, schools, transit, even things like sidewalks all became things to oppose if they had to be shared.

throwawayboise 5y ago
It's more than that. Jews, Asians (individually, Chinese, Koreans, Vietnamese, etc), Italians, Polish, Irish, Arabic ... all segregated into their own neighborhoods. The "melting pot" was never really real. We are a nation of immigrants that never really got along with one another except when common interests were threatened. I don't know that it's uniquely American thing either, I think this happens anywhere that different cultures come together. Humans are deeply tribal.
- kilotaras 5y ago
  > all segregated into their own neighborhoods. Check out Shellings model of segregation [0]. Global seggregation doesn't necessarily mean that local decisions have strong preference for their race. e.g. for two types it's enough to have preference "I want at least 33% of my neighbours to be same type as me" to reach segregated global result. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schelling%27s_model_of_segregation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schelling%27s_model_of_segrega...
- acdha 5y ago
  I think the intensity matters: my Irish ancestors weren’t considered white when they got here but there wasn’t a mass exodus from cities rather than sharing infrastructure, and they were allowed into whiteness over time (especially when large numbers of cops were needed to police black populations). The ones who served in the military weren’t restricted to certain units and duties, etc. When white people moved to the suburbs, the neighborhoods which were razed to make highways had a very uneven distribution. That’s definitely not perfect (and it’s like, say, Chinatowns weren’t raided or sacked) but that option of coexistence wasn’t on offer in much of the country.

kiba 5y ago

This is inaccurate. The GM conspiracy bought streetcar companies to replace them with buses, not to eliminate public transportation. The reality is that streetcar companies were already unprofitable, killed by infrastructure cars and poor urban planning. So it was already easy for GM to buy these companies.

bch 5y ago
> The reality is that streetcar companies were already unprofitable What seems to me to be a good takedown of “public transit must be profitable or be dismantled”, or “the US post office must be profitable or be dismantled” is: How profitable is the US military?
- kiba 5y ago
  Everybody has a budget. Going red is just very bad. Sustainability is the keyword here. A streetcar enhance economic activity and transportation, especially when built with proper urban planning, and may even make a profit. With the profit, the public transit agency can use the fund to improve infrastructure with hopefully less political influence in order to further it missions. You could of course make a trade off and not mandate the agency to be profitable and subsidize it, but it's a political tradeoff.
  - amrocha 5y ago
    Just because a business turns a loss doesn't mean it isn't sustainable. Public transport is unprofitable pretty much everywhere, because the explicit transactions don't offset costs of operation. However, the cost of not operating public transit is that you end up with awful car centric cities, more respiratory disease from increased traffic, lost efficiency from congestion, higher real estate prices in walkable areas, etc. Additionally, there's a ton of positive externalities that are not factored in when judging profitability. Effective public transport increases foot traffic, which increases economic activity. Even if public transit was 100% free, it would still be worth running. The market is awful at evaluating long-term large scale effects, and just disregards them as "externalities". You can't blindly trust markets to build your cities.

dan-robertson 5y ago

I’m very unconvinced but this. New Yorkers famously all hate each other yet if you can afford to live in relatively central parts of New York, you don’t need a car. Though New York is still somewhat car-focused. Internationally, London has similar but a slightly milder case of car-dependent sprawl to New York (but people still famously don’t like each other). Swedes are also known for their desire for space and privacy yet they somehow manage to live in cities that don’t follow the North American model. And many Dutch cities used to be going in the direction of the American model (held back by the lower wealth after the war preventing mass car ownership) and only changed direction in the 70s after won’t-somebody-think-of-the-children political campaigning and some very slim majorities in votes on the topic. And the transition was a slow one too.