3 ms·
They paved paradise, and put up a parking lot.
by toyg 1mo ago
They paved paradise, and put up a parking lot.
- lotsofpulp 1mo agoIs there an alternative if 13 million people want to live somewhere?
- toyg 1mo agoSomewhat sadly, the reason a lot of the ancestors of those 13 millions moved there was that they wanted an unpaved paradise. Unfortunately, humans do not know restraint.
- mag7269 1mo agoParadise? LA was a big giant horrible underdeveloped wasteland in Spanish/Mexican times which, at the time in 1849, had 1,600 residents. Most of them had a largely pastoral life and life was brutal there. LA under US rule is the prime example of what industrialized people can do to a place that lacked nearly everything of what it is at this moment: a world-class city. Objectively, if it had stayed under Mexican rule, it’d resemble Yuma at best or Tecate at worst. I should know, my family lineage goes back to that era to both sides of the border.
- thisismyopinion 1mo agoFunny. It's concrete hell.
- toyg 1mo agoOne's "underdeveloped wasteland" is someone else's untouched paradise. Particularly someone like Joni Mitchell.
- Hnrobert42 1mo agoWas it that a big, giant, horrible wasteland because it was undeveloped? That is, was there something bad about it other than being undeveloped? Personally, I love living in the city AND land in its natural state. Also, GP was quoting a song lyric.
- rustywasm 1mo agoI think the best intro to LA is Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner (it's really about the entire West and its relationship to water, but I think the first few chapters explain LA better than many other books.)
- esseph 1mo agoIt's part of a very popular song from the 70s by Joni Mitchell called "Big Yellow Taxi". Counting Crows did a cover in 2002.