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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

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.

acdha 4y ago
> > 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? The point wasn't that this was unique in human history but that many of the buildings tourists love required historically-rare amounts of money and labor to create. We have better technology now but labor, especially from skilled artisans, is in much tighter supply and a lot of those classic building techniques aren't widely used because almost nobody likes them enough to be willing to pay current market rates.
- quacked 4y ago
  That could be true for some of the stone-built cathedrals, but a lot of buildings tourists like aren't particularly difficult to build or maintain, they're just not done due to cost. These buildings could also be imitated or "quoted" for a fraction of the cost of the source buildings, but they're just not done since development is really only done to turn a buck, whereas in the past a lot of people developed buildings out of a sense of grandness or splendor meant to inspire and show off.

acdha 4y ago

> > 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? The point wasn't that this was unique in human history but that many of the buildings tourists love required historically-rare amounts of money and labor to create. We have better technology now but labor, especially from skilled artisans, is in much tighter supply and a lot of those classic building techniques aren't widely used because almost nobody likes them enough to be willing to pay current market rates.

quacked 4y ago
That could be true for some of the stone-built cathedrals, but a lot of buildings tourists like aren't particularly difficult to build or maintain, they're just not done due to cost. These buildings could also be imitated or "quoted" for a fraction of the cost of the source buildings, but they're just not done since development is really only done to turn a buck, whereas in the past a lot of people developed buildings out of a sense of grandness or splendor meant to inspire and show off.