>These people are driven by a deep cynicism that anything can be made better: they don't believe people could consciously want to make things better, and they d

>These people are driven by a deep cynicism that anything can be made better: they don't believe people could consciously want to make things better, and they don't believe that unguided "forces" can make things better either. I believe my local council do want to make things better, unfortunately what the council leadership consider better I would generally consider to be worse - they are constantly making trying to make the area become "trendy" and divert tourists and foot traffic from the richer suburbs nearby, but at the expense of the people who actually live here. For example, they "upgraded" a local park by adding a bunch of sheltered seating and an enclosed dog walking area, which does look quite fancy... but removed the skateboarding area and mountain bike jumps that were heavily used by the local kids as they did not "fit the image", and put the new seating and dog areas scattered around inside the park so there isn't enough contiguous area for sports. >If you propose to remove 50 parking spots for a bike lane, they object. If you propose to remove a bike lane to replace it with parking, they'd object too. We usually end up with the worst of both worlds and get awful combined parking / bike lane areas that force cyclists to weave between the road proper and the bike lane to avoid parked cars, and that often contain small oil leaks leftover in the parking spaces that can slip up the cyclists.