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I get upset that people pay thousands of dollars to go abroad to look at nice, dense towns with pretty buildings and then come back to the US and say "anyone wh

I get upset that people pay thousands of dollars to go abroad to look at nice, dense towns with pretty buildings and then come back to the US and say "anyone who wants to live in a nice town like the one I just visited needs to get out of the way of Progress, we need cheap people warehouses and we need them now". I'd happily raze several square miles of land in my hometown and build nothing but housing if what came after was something like Copenhagen, instead of Houston (which is what's currently happening).

CPLX 4y ago
How much of Copenhagen and the other Euro cities you’ve been to have you really toured though? There’s absolutely no doubt that those cities are just generally better designed and their core areas are far more aesthetic and well tended to than most American cities. But with that said the vast middle class areas of those cities where people actually live are a lot more generic and cookie-cutter than the parts people tend to see when traveling. They have plenty of boring new construction too.
- quacked 4y ago
  I like to take explore the living areas of most Euro cities I've been to--Paris, Glasgow, Rome, Florence, etc. I spent a semester abroad in Paris about ten years ago and spent most of my time in one of the recently-built satellite towns, which was a mess of concrete and cheap modern buildings. The actual generic middle class areas are usually several steps above the American generic middle class areas, but I concur that most of the new builds are the same cheap, boring, new-right-now approach. It's quite depressing to me that so many people unthinkingly accept the premise that there's no time to build society to any standards that someone would be proud of or pleased about. It builds an apathy and almost a resentment to any sense of time or place within its residence. It's a lack of culture enforced by architecture. A good example is advertisements. They clutter every public space and make people simply ignore what they're seeing. "Just an ad." People will go hours through a city and never look up because they already know what's there.
acdha 4y ago
I mean, yes, I do like nice things but I think it’s also important to remember that in many cases you’re touring things which were built by rich and powerful people – many of Europe’s most famous buildings are basically monuments to how profitable slavery & colonialism were – and if you go outside of the historical zones you often end up with more familiar architecture. I still preferred many of those neighborhoods but that’s because driving wasn’t as heavily subsidized and so the neighborhoods have a more human scale and were safer to walk in. Looking at the neighborhood where this property is, the biggest problem I see is that there’s nothing to do. No corner markets or bars - I loved the neighborhood coffee shop/bars in Portugal and Spain, no parks, not even a bike lane or often sidewalks.
- quacked 4y ago
  I agree with your second paragraph. Do you have any idea how one might convince a city to build dense neighborhoods that are nice to be in? The only projects I see get green-lit are either warehouse stores, warehouse apartments, or road-widening. > Many of Europe’s most famous buildings are basically monuments to how profitable slavery & colonialism were I find this a confusing stance to take. Do you think that there's ever been a civilization that wasn't founded and maintained by incredible violence perpetrated by powerful people? You can go to South Dakota and see many monuments and markers to the Lakota--except the Lakota came into the area and slaughtered the Pawnee, forcing them out of their ancestral homelands and into less desirable land to the south. On every continent, in every country, if there's evidence of wealth there, someone died for it. I don't think that's a good reason to accept the inevitability of drab, ugly, cheap living conditions. Furthermore, I can apply the same logic to anything that is the product of slavery or imperialism. The chip in my laptop is a monument to the profitability of artisan mining and the endless imperialist destabilization of African regimes. The fact that I can drive my car whenever I want is a monument to Saudi control over the middle eastern oil fields and Canadian imperialism over shale lands that used to belong to the natives. There are good reasons to give these things up, but if your governing principle is "I must live morally, and anything that relies on the conquering and subjugation of another people is immoral" your options are basically to either commit suicide or move to your ethnic homeland and live as a pauper.

CPLX 4y ago

How much of Copenhagen and the other Euro cities you’ve been to have you really toured though? There’s absolutely no doubt that those cities are just generally better designed and their core areas are far more aesthetic and well tended to than most American cities. But with that said the vast middle class areas of those cities where people actually live are a lot more generic and cookie-cutter than the parts people tend to see when traveling. They have plenty of boring new construction too.

quacked 4y ago
I like to take explore the living areas of most Euro cities I've been to--Paris, Glasgow, Rome, Florence, etc. I spent a semester abroad in Paris about ten years ago and spent most of my time in one of the recently-built satellite towns, which was a mess of concrete and cheap modern buildings. The actual generic middle class areas are usually several steps above the American generic middle class areas, but I concur that most of the new builds are the same cheap, boring, new-right-now approach. It's quite depressing to me that so many people unthinkingly accept the premise that there's no time to build society to any standards that someone would be proud of or pleased about. It builds an apathy and almost a resentment to any sense of time or place within its residence. It's a lack of culture enforced by architecture. A good example is advertisements. They clutter every public space and make people simply ignore what they're seeing. "Just an ad." People will go hours through a city and never look up because they already know what's there.

acdha 4y ago

I mean, yes, I do like nice things but I think it’s also important to remember that in many cases you’re touring things which were built by rich and powerful people – many of Europe’s most famous buildings are basically monuments to how profitable slavery & colonialism were – and if you go outside of the historical zones you often end up with more familiar architecture. I still preferred many of those neighborhoods but that’s because driving wasn’t as heavily subsidized and so the neighborhoods have a more human scale and were safer to walk in. Looking at the neighborhood where this property is, the biggest problem I see is that there’s nothing to do. No corner markets or bars - I loved the neighborhood coffee shop/bars in Portugal and Spain, no parks, not even a bike lane or often sidewalks.

quacked 4y ago
I agree with your second paragraph. Do you have any idea how one might convince a city to build dense neighborhoods that are nice to be in? The only projects I see get green-lit are either warehouse stores, warehouse apartments, or road-widening. > Many of Europe’s most famous buildings are basically monuments to how profitable slavery & colonialism were I find this a confusing stance to take. Do you think that there's ever been a civilization that wasn't founded and maintained by incredible violence perpetrated by powerful people? You can go to South Dakota and see many monuments and markers to the Lakota--except the Lakota came into the area and slaughtered the Pawnee, forcing them out of their ancestral homelands and into less desirable land to the south. On every continent, in every country, if there's evidence of wealth there, someone died for it. I don't think that's a good reason to accept the inevitability of drab, ugly, cheap living conditions. Furthermore, I can apply the same logic to anything that is the product of slavery or imperialism. The chip in my laptop is a monument to the profitability of artisan mining and the endless imperialist destabilization of African regimes. The fact that I can drive my car whenever I want is a monument to Saudi control over the middle eastern oil fields and Canadian imperialism over shale lands that used to belong to the natives. There are good reasons to give these things up, but if your governing principle is "I must live morally, and anything that relies on the conquering and subjugation of another people is immoral" your options are basically to either commit suicide or move to your ethnic homeland and live as a pauper.