5 ms·

My hope is that if not Gen Z then the following generation will push for American cities to get their act together and become better for people to live in. It i

My hope is that if not Gen Z then the following generation will push for American cities to get their act together and become better for people to live in. It is going to take a lot of political will to make it work as the entrenched older generations want things to stay the same as always and/or cannot envision a different way of living. A walkable city with car free zones seems like a fantasy and that is a real shame.

coldpie 4y ago
It is truly shocking how much damage the car has done to our cities and lives. Here in the Twin Cities, we have three enormous concrete canyons completely dividing up the city[1], destroying any chance at walkability or density for miles. All for the sake of people who don't even live in the cities to drive 30 minutes in their personal luxury steel cages from their suburban mansions to spend 30 hours a week here and then buzz off again. We lose so much to cater to the surburbanites and gain so little. We have a real opportunity to fix this by removing one of them[2], but we're too terrified of change to improve our own lives. So the concrete canyon called I-94 will remain, poisoning the heart of our cities, for at least another four generations. Sigh. [1] Comparison of the Twin Cities before & after the freeways were built: https://twitter.com/SegByDesign/status/1623376761722490881 https://twitter.com/SegByDesign/status/1623376761722490881 [2] https://www.twincitiesboulevard.org/ https://www.twincitiesboulevard.org/
- j_heffe 4y ago
  Not to mention the opposition of public transportation here. People are already up in arms about the light rail expansion cost, plus the people angry about losing parking on Hennepin Ave for the proposed 24 hr bus lane.
  - coldpie 4y ago
    If you haven't, give your congresspeople & city representatives a ring about the TCB :)
  - bluGill 4y ago
    I grew up there. The public transit was always worthless for anyone who wanted to do something more than go to work downtown. It is no wonder most people oppose anything: so many years of bad service makes even good ideas look like throwing more good money after bad (and like most cities they have plenty of bad ideas they are funding as well)
SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago
It’s difficult on a few levels I suspect, because genz will be fighting the previous generation and maybe the one before it too, all the homeowners that will fight tooth and nail for their investments to remain (plus any genz that benefits from the status quo, the inheritors of landlords)
kortilla 4y ago
Why would they though? Covid just forced the development of technologies even further to make working from home even more viable than before. Millennials followed the boomers right into the suburbs as they got older and that was before there was a path to killing the commute. When Gen Z can get by without a commute and live in social media, where is their push for cities going to come from?
- ghaff 4y ago
  A lot of what we consider "elite" US cities were losing population well into the 1990s. While I don't think the WFH trend is as widespread as people in some bubbles think it is, it's probably an open question whether the latest young college-educated cohort will move into cities for a while like some of their predecessors did.
  - vanilla_nut 4y ago
    Young people want things to do. I'm right on the divide between Millenials and Gen Z (the MillenialZ generation, if you'll forgive my poor portmanteau skills) and many college students I knew during covid have done one of the following: - secured a remote job and settled down in their college city - as a remote worker, followed a significant other or close friend to a city where they have to work in person - found a hybrid role that allows some in-person work in a city I think the "work remotely, from your college city" trend is a positive one. I attended college in a small city with a serious brain drain problem (aside from medical folks) and it's nice to see more and more classmates move back to that city as the brain drain reverses.
    - ghaff 4y ago
      Fair enough. Certainly the fact that I would have needed to commute to a job that was an hour outside the nearest major city (where I went undergrad) influenced the fact that I just went to live near my office when I graduated grad school. It was mostly the same with my classmates who also worked way out in the burbs/exurbs. If the commute weren't a factor, I'd probably have at least considered living in the city--at least while I was still renting. (Of course, urban prices weren't nearly as relatively high as they are today.)

coldpie 4y ago

It is truly shocking how much damage the car has done to our cities and lives. Here in the Twin Cities, we have three enormous concrete canyons completely dividing up the city[1], destroying any chance at walkability or density for miles. All for the sake of people who don't even live in the cities to drive 30 minutes in their personal luxury steel cages from their suburban mansions to spend 30 hours a week here and then buzz off again. We lose so much to cater to the surburbanites and gain so little. We have a real opportunity to fix this by removing one of them[2], but we're too terrified of change to improve our own lives. So the concrete canyon called I-94 will remain, poisoning the heart of our cities, for at least another four generations. Sigh. [1] Comparison of the Twin Cities before & after the freeways were built: https://twitter.com/SegByDesign/status/1623376761722490881 https://twitter.com/SegByDesign/status/1623376761722490881 [2] https://www.twincitiesboulevard.org/ https://www.twincitiesboulevard.org/

j_heffe 4y ago
Not to mention the opposition of public transportation here. People are already up in arms about the light rail expansion cost, plus the people angry about losing parking on Hennepin Ave for the proposed 24 hr bus lane.
- coldpie 4y ago
  If you haven't, give your congresspeople & city representatives a ring about the TCB :)
- bluGill 4y ago
  I grew up there. The public transit was always worthless for anyone who wanted to do something more than go to work downtown. It is no wonder most people oppose anything: so many years of bad service makes even good ideas look like throwing more good money after bad (and like most cities they have plenty of bad ideas they are funding as well)

SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago

It’s difficult on a few levels I suspect, because genz will be fighting the previous generation and maybe the one before it too, all the homeowners that will fight tooth and nail for their investments to remain (plus any genz that benefits from the status quo, the inheritors of landlords)

kortilla 4y ago

Why would they though? Covid just forced the development of technologies even further to make working from home even more viable than before. Millennials followed the boomers right into the suburbs as they got older and that was before there was a path to killing the commute. When Gen Z can get by without a commute and live in social media, where is their push for cities going to come from?

ghaff 4y ago
A lot of what we consider "elite" US cities were losing population well into the 1990s. While I don't think the WFH trend is as widespread as people in some bubbles think it is, it's probably an open question whether the latest young college-educated cohort will move into cities for a while like some of their predecessors did.
- vanilla_nut 4y ago
  Young people want things to do. I'm right on the divide between Millenials and Gen Z (the MillenialZ generation, if you'll forgive my poor portmanteau skills) and many college students I knew during covid have done one of the following: - secured a remote job and settled down in their college city - as a remote worker, followed a significant other or close friend to a city where they have to work in person - found a hybrid role that allows some in-person work in a city I think the "work remotely, from your college city" trend is a positive one. I attended college in a small city with a serious brain drain problem (aside from medical folks) and it's nice to see more and more classmates move back to that city as the brain drain reverses.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    Fair enough. Certainly the fact that I would have needed to commute to a job that was an hour outside the nearest major city (where I went undergrad) influenced the fact that I just went to live near my office when I graduated grad school. It was mostly the same with my classmates who also worked way out in the burbs/exurbs. If the commute weren't a factor, I'd probably have at least considered living in the city--at least while I was still renting. (Of course, urban prices weren't nearly as relatively high as they are today.)