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>Probably nothing short of much wider-scale urban reform than just impeding some intersections, is going to meaningfully change that. Interesting. What did you

>Probably nothing short of much wider-scale urban reform than just impeding some intersections, is going to meaningfully change that. Interesting. What did you have in mind?

mrandish 2y ago
Well, I said elsewhere in my post > "I take no position on what (if any) viable solutions might exist to really address the problem with the second segment because it's a symptom of much larger systemic issues." So I don't know of anything in particular which might, A) address the underlying causes of urban youth being disaffected or engaging in disruptive behavior, and B) Fit within the ability and political will of urban cities to implement and afford. As far as I can tell it's a largely intractable problem which has existed to some extent for as long as there have been large, dense, urban inner cities. Historically, different cities seem to have gone through periods where it was worse (Chicago in the 60s, NYC in the 70s, Detroit in the 80s) but it's never been completely "fixed" in any of these cities. While today's manifestations of urban youth disaffection, such as sideshows, are different on the surface, I suspect the underlying root causes are much broader and not much different than they've always been. It's entirely possible that some of these root causes are baked into the structure of large, dense, urban inner cities and fully addressing the root causes isn't possible without essentially banning the existence of large urban centers beyond some arbitrary population density. Lee Kuan Yew seems to have found a different urban equilibrium in metro Singapore - but only by being a totalitarian and limiting individual rights in ways the U.S. constitution could (thankfully) never allow. Apparently, the best that can be done in the context of modern U.S. urban inner cities being allowed to exist, is to somewhat reduce the fundamental issues through some balanced combination of social programs, schooling, community engagement, policing and local political participation. And the optimal "harm minimization" balance for a given city seems to change over time based on evolving macro conditions (economics, demographics, etc). There are only two things I'm fairly confident in, and they are A) Over the past decade the S.F. Bay Area has devolved into a shit show for a wide variety of complex reasons (which reasonable people can (and do) disagree about) B) Trying to solve the "sideshow problem" by further degrading some urban intersections is the most temporary of surface fixes, which addresses a 1 hr/week symptom by making already-failing infrastructure even worse 24/7. And it'll only cause expressions of the root cause issues to morph into other forms - ultimately not solving the existing problem while creating new problems. The only sort-of positive is that it is "something", thus allowing local government to claim they "Did Something."

>Probably nothing short of much wider-scale urban reform than just impeding some intersections, is going to meaningfully change that. Interesting. What did you have in mind?

mrandish 2y ago

Well, I said elsewhere in my post > "I take no position on what (if any) viable solutions might exist to really address the problem with the second segment because it's a symptom of much larger systemic issues." So I don't know of anything in particular which might, A) address the underlying causes of urban youth being disaffected or engaging in disruptive behavior, and B) Fit within the ability and political will of urban cities to implement and afford. As far as I can tell it's a largely intractable problem which has existed to some extent for as long as there have been large, dense, urban inner cities. Historically, different cities seem to have gone through periods where it was worse (Chicago in the 60s, NYC in the 70s, Detroit in the 80s) but it's never been completely "fixed" in any of these cities. While today's manifestations of urban youth disaffection, such as sideshows, are different on the surface, I suspect the underlying root causes are much broader and not much different than they've always been. It's entirely possible that some of these root causes are baked into the structure of large, dense, urban inner cities and fully addressing the root causes isn't possible without essentially banning the existence of large urban centers beyond some arbitrary population density. Lee Kuan Yew seems to have found a different urban equilibrium in metro Singapore - but only by being a totalitarian and limiting individual rights in ways the U.S. constitution could (thankfully) never allow. Apparently, the best that can be done in the context of modern U.S. urban inner cities being allowed to exist, is to somewhat reduce the fundamental issues through some balanced combination of social programs, schooling, community engagement, policing and local political participation. And the optimal "harm minimization" balance for a given city seems to change over time based on evolving macro conditions (economics, demographics, etc). There are only two things I'm fairly confident in, and they are A) Over the past decade the S.F. Bay Area has devolved into a shit show for a wide variety of complex reasons (which reasonable people can (and do) disagree about) B) Trying to solve the "sideshow problem" by further degrading some urban intersections is the most temporary of surface fixes, which addresses a 1 hr/week symptom by making already-failing infrastructure even worse 24/7. And it'll only cause expressions of the root cause issues to morph into other forms - ultimately not solving the existing problem while creating new problems. The only sort-of positive is that it is "something", thus allowing local government to claim they "Did Something."