r/fuckcars / Not Just Bikes / Urbanists / New Urbanism / Car-Free / Anti-Car - People and grifters who hate personal transport, freedom, cars, roads, suburbs, and are obsessed with city planning and urban design

[Slap47]

Jason Slaughter moved to Amsterdam

I wonder who he is referencing....

 

[quaawaa]

View attachment 8673059

I wonder who he is referencing....

Video:

Spoiler: Archive

 

[Kyria the Great]

Honestly stable industry should be the main concern of a city alongside good public services to make sure people want to live there. Granted jobs and industry are generally outside the wheelhouse of Urbanism but I think does need to be considered as without some strong industries, cities die and all the trappings of cities mean nothing.

 

[quaawaa]

>I wish there were affordable walkable neighborhoods in the US
<Here are some examples of them that already exist:
>No, not like that!

Spoiler: Images in Tweets

Source (Archive)

Turns out a "walkable neighborhood" is actually a "rich European tourist district" and not a "neighborhood where daily necessities are within walking distance".

 

[Xarpho's Return]

Video:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=d7ZbGw20L_4

Unless your population never changes, you can't keep the same housing stock forever, you either need to go up or go out. I didn't watch the whole video but unless you wanted to bulldoze half the city for new bughives (which would harm the historic aspects/look and feel that people like Jason prize so much) you have to expand out.

I did watch it. It does note that Amsterdam faced the same problems America faced, despite the fact that the usual narratives ("it was the blacks!", "it's CAR PROPAGANDA!", "it's muh GM streetcar conspiracy!") don't hold up in Europe, but they still moved out anyway.

The difference is that in America the vacant housing was simply demolished, and, ultimately, redeveloped as newer, denser housing stock, whereas the Netherlands just poured tax money into rehabbing the old housing.

It also shows how weak the monocentric design model really is. What cities in the United States did, particularly the "new South" cities, like Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, and more, built basically "new downtowns" with new offices and other profit centers away from the older downtowns. Even a lot of the other big cities had suburban office complexes and new industrial facilities.

Amsterdam does the worst of every housing policy, not allowing redevelopment, not allowing sprawl, and designating certain percentages as "low income" which drives up the averages even more. There's also the socialism problem that when the government owns the land, there's no real tax income, they just act as landlords which makes them more susceptible to economic downturns, and so on.

The guy talks about how there's not enough to subsidize the housing and the fund is basically bankrupt...something that urbanists never talk about (the "ponzi scheme" they should be talking about is Amsterdam). The woman (I assume she's of the green-left party) talking at around 46 minutes is right that when they build new housing, it has to make a profit and like a lot of the inner cities in America only makes sense if it's super-upscale. In the United States it's because developers want to make a profit (and are often pushed that way by overregulation), in the Netherlands it's because they need the money for the general fund.

Considering that the political party is made of the socialist/communist groups it's amazing that this person has a better understanding of reality than the average Redditor, but one thing that NO ONE talked about in the video is immigration. Certainly limiting immigration into the Netherlands would do great things for the city, it's one "lever they can pull" without demolishing the existing buildings, sprawling outward, or making the problem worse.

It's not just the unwashed masses from the global south, it would be funny to see Jason get his visa revoked. No foreigners.

Honestly stable industry should be the main concern of a city alongside good public services to make sure people want to live there. Granted jobs and industry are generally outside the wheelhouse of Urbanism but I think does need to be considered as without some strong industries, cities die and all the trappings of cities mean nothing.

Urbanism though puts the cart before the horse on every circumstance. They point out a pedestrianized shopping street and think that the solution is to close off a street for instant revitalization. The reality is that those shops have to locate there first—and often that impetus is safety and low crime, which in turn brings economic prosperity.

Urban shopping malls built in the 1980s are a great example of how you can't build your way out of problems. The idea was pretty solid, build onto the historic downtown department store, add beautiful multi-level atrium, food court, maybe some integration with nearby hotels and office buildings, and some one of a kind stores as well. Almost all of them have failed. The first problem was that there wasn't really a reason to go all the way to the downtown area, as even in the 1980s some nicer department stores weren't a big enough draw to offset the problems of everything else. Then you had the actual surrounding areas that had people being poor instead of middle-class suburbanites and the result is that they ended up causing problems instead of spending money, and the parking wasn't free. Rather than just a simple parking lot, you went into some labyrinthine parking garage, paid for a ticket, and then went back to navigate out. Even if spending money at the mall validated your ticket, it's still needlessly complicated.

Come on, bros, you played SimCity, you know you need to start with industrial first to give the people who move there jobs, then residential, then commercial, and even then in those starting phases it's basically trailer homes, crummy rentals, or small cottages as far as residential goes, and little diners and gas stations as far as commercial goes. "Build it and they will come" style development (the phrase wasn't invented back then, but the concept was) is only in areas with great economies and even then a lot of developments simply failed.

Turns out a "walkable neighborhood" is actually a "rich European tourist district" and not a "neighborhood where daily necessities are within walking distance".

The better question is where do they exist in Europe? Every European example she had (and by extension others) are either obvious tourist destinations and/or hideously expensive to live in. Amsterdam, as the video shows, isn't affordable if you can't afford housing and have to be put in a waiting list to be able to get an obsolete rent-controlled apartment.

Speaking of Jason he has a new-ish (two weeks ago, if there was a post here I missed it) video on Stockholm's metro system, it's more of an advertisement for his new show Day Pass and he spends the time glazing the network and the stations (I guess he has...Stockholm Syndrome! ). I speculated if this was a newfound love of life or it's just a temporary fix, not sure. If he's done any crashouts on social media I'm not aware of it.

I didn't watch the video but he says at around 20 minutes "Riding public transit gives you an authentic view of the city and helps you better understand what life is like for the people who live there". I'm sure if anyone did that in America it would be depressing at best if you don't immediately think that life would be better if you exterminated the undesirables.

 

[quaawaa]

Speaking of Jason he has a new-ish (two weeks ago, if there was a post here I missed it) video on Stockholm's metro system, it's more of an advertisement for his new show Day Pass and he spends the time glazing the network and the stations (I guess he has...Stockholm Syndrome! ). I speculated if this was a newfound love of life or it's just a temporary fix, not sure. If he's done any crashouts on social media I'm not aware of it.

Tucker Carlson did it first:

Source (Archive)

I didn't watch the video but he says at around 20 minutes "Riding public transit gives you an authentic view of the city and helps you better understand what life is like for the people who live there". I'm sure if anyone did that in America it would be depressing at best if you don't immediately think that life would be better if you exterminated the undesirables.

Jason uploads full transcripts for all of his videos, so you can skim through them without wasting time listening to him drone on.

 

[Meriasek]

Turns out a "walkable neighborhood" is actually a "rich European tourist district" and not a "neighborhood where daily necessities are within walking distance".

It's a bit weird. The "mixed use" buildings they show are from the fancy inner city tourist areas, and even where they aren't they're more often not horribly expensive. At least those in historical buildings and neighborhoods.
On the other hand, having the daily necessities within in walking distance is fairly normal here in most cities and even villages. You can also find extremely walking-unfriendly areas, I've seen some villages in rural Italy where there were no sidewalks at all and driving was required.
Those historical narrow alleyways with flats on top and shops downstairs? Not that common, and if in a major city completely unaffordable.

 

[Althalus]

you'll still get KWC brought up in a positive context, despite the fact that it was a vertical slum that was probably a few years away from a massive fire or collapse (the third world's idea of expansion is "build more floors" with zero engineering

Not to take away from your broader point, but KWC couldn't grow forever, it was height-limited by the 80s due to being in close proximity to Kai Tak airport (probably why it didn't collapse). Kai Tak has since closed and been replaced by a better airport elsewhere, but when it was operating, the area in front of the runway (including KWC) had to be lower than surrounding buildings to give planes room to descend. This meant that pilots had to fly a specific circuit in between taller buildings to land, which wasn't even a straight line but included a sharp turn halfway through. Because of this, only specially trained pilots were allowed to fly the approach into Kai Tak.

 

[Irene and 22 others]

Mixed use buildings sound great in theory, but the reality is often less than desirable. A friend lived in a second story apartment above one that had industrial freezers that made constant noise. He moved out as soon as the lease was up and said he'd never live in one again. While they're certainly not all bad in that same way, people fail to consider the very real problems that are easy to overlook because they have no actual experience.

It would make a lot more sense if the upstairs apartments were for the people who worked at the business(es) on the ground floor, but downtown apartments that are situated above restaurants or other retail are typically some of the most expensive in a city and the people who work at those places some of the lowest earners so they wind up living well away in the cheaper parts of the city and having to commute in to work. Maybe there's a bus that they can take, but most of them will need cars to get to work.

 

[Bonesjones]

Mixed use buildings sound great in theory, but the reality is often less than desirable. A friend lived in a second story apartment above one that had industrial freezers that made constant noise.

When I lived in a downtown loft, noise pollution was always the worst part. Street sweepers at 4 or 5 am every day, garbage trucks at 6. Everyday. Weekends? Bars close at 2 or 3 but people yell on the street past that. Big holidays? It doesn't stop till the police run them off. All of it made worse by buildings over 100 year olds and nothing is standard sized. Custom windows that cost over a year in rent to replace means they just get boarded up and your power bill goes up.

It would make a lot more sense if the upstairs apartments were for the people who worked at the business(es) on the ground floor

It used to work like that because the business was family owned and you always had people on site to stop/deter break-ins.

 

[TowinKarz]

Honestly stable industry should be the main concern of a city alongside good public services to make sure people want to live there. Granted jobs and industry are generally outside the wheelhouse of Urbanism but I think does need to be considered as without some strong industries, cities die and all the trappings of cities mean nothing.

There is a mindset among not just bikephiles and urbanists, but the left in general, that industry isn't needed at all. They believed the "service economy" lie we were all sold in the 90's as justification for getting rid of the last urban factories, but where they differ from you and me is despite evidence mounting in the decades since that this was a bad move? That without working class wages? Working class neighborhoods dissolve into slums? They continue to believe, almost religiously, that a city just generates money based on the fact that a lot of people are there, they dont' have to actually DO anything or make anything. That vanity art galleries and coffee shops can sustain millions. And when those neighborhoods starting falling apart? The solution was obviously to pack them full of diversity because it was only proof that the white working class was LAZY if they went to shit that fast after we closed the mill and sent it to China.... they needed to learn to code, it would've been EASY.

pilots had to fly a specific circuit in between taller buildings to land, which wasn't even a straight line but included a sharp turn halfway through. Because of this, only specially trained pilots were allowed to fly the approach into Kai Tak.

The infamous "Checkerboard Approach"

You flew an ILS descent not to the end of the runway, but, a huge red and white target painted on a hillside and then? At the right moment? Turned hard right to hit the runway itself.

Look it up in flight sim online and wonder why nobody ever died in all the years they had to do it.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

Mixed use buildings sound great in theory, but the reality is often less than desirable. A friend lived in a second story apartment above one that had industrial freezers that made constant noise. He moved out as soon as the lease was up and said he'd never live in one again. While they're certainly not all bad in that same way, people fail to consider the very real problems that are easy to overlook because they have no actual experience.

I've never lived in a mixed-use building but I had a friend who worked in one. Basically it was a century-old warehouse building converted to other uses. He worked in an office on the second or third level, but he told me how working in the evening you could hear the people above come from home from work, and hear them in the loft apartments above, sounding like ghosts reverberating in the building. And that's just from walking around, imagine someone blasting music or jumping around.

It would make a lot more sense if the upstairs apartments were for the people who worked at the business(es) on the ground floor, but downtown apartments that are situated above restaurants or other retail are typically some of the most expensive in a city and the people who work at those places some of the lowest earners so they wind up living well away in the cheaper parts of the city and having to commute in to work. Maybe there's a bus that they can take, but most of them will need cars to get to work.

That's why even mixed-use tenants need some sort of parking for employees, as well as others who may want to stop there for lunch. Not to mention delivery trucks, which often need to stop outside because there's no other place, and then they bitch because sometimes this blocks the bike lane.

This is why businesses found the downtown areas less than useful, even for smaller trucks it's a pain to deliver to these businesses, and customers can find plentiful free parking.

Now this can apply to a lot of things but the urban parking situation is an instance where they punish you if you want to participate but cry about when you don't.

It used to work like that because the business was family owned and you always had people on site to stop/deter break-ins.

Exactly, a lot of the smaller downtowns found in big cities, the families often lived in a small apartment above the business in question or otherwise connected to the business; they had a reason to be there. My experience in driving around larger cities with mixed-use, there's an obvious disconnect between the ground floor retail and the people that live in the apartments, which makes sense because a business can't survive on its own building alone, it needs to have others with it. This creates a chicken-and-egg problem, with enough apartments in the area, they can start to feed off of each other, but it's difficult selling space in a ghost town. (This assumes there's no pre-existing foot traffic around it, like near a college campus).

The solution to this (and re-densifying in general) is to have the first mixed-use tenant in the area with generous parking around it, putting money into the area and convincing owners to make other similar projects.

 

[Lobster Cult High Priest]

It's kinda funny because Britannica Politica's documentaries to literal war torn countries like Iraq and Afghanistan, every time they still have a bunch of people drive, and not even low-tier cars either, just kinda mid-tier. Which is made even more bizarre by the fact that they're able to afford them with 1 income per family (women aren't allowed to work) and still be able to own a house on top of that. Like, what the fuck. Are taxes on cars like 90% of the price or something?

At least in subsaharan Africa tons of cars have Ontario and Quebec plates since there is rampant auto theft in Canada that no one does anything about (besides cops telling you to leave your car keys by the door)

 

[Lady Bizness]

Just saw a new one on one of my social media feeds about adding lanes to freeways. Of course it all started with people claiming LA traffic worsend with adding lanes, but other people added context that explains why traffic remained bad. There was a lot of other things going on at the time, plus maybe an alternate route is better once a number of lanes is reached because merging over becomes too much. There was also talk about some recent widenings somewhere. All had tolls or were restricted lanes so they had very little impact on improving traffic.

These thoughts could not stand so some genius comes up with this: Think of traffic like water. Water takes the shape of any container it fills. So if you widen the container, it will spread out. If you widen the freeways, the traffic will also fill the new lanes.

Do I need to explain to anyone here how double digit retarded that take is? And yes, it had way too many positive reacts for my comfort.

 

[Sleazy Car Salesman]

Think of traffic like water. Water takes the shape of any container it fills. So if you widen the container, it will spread out. If you widen the freeways, the traffic will also fill the new lanes.

I mean, they aren't entirely wrong but that's due more to left lane hoggers then to anything else and that's already illegal anyways.

 

[WhatInTheActualFuck]

>tfw this thread is splitting into bike haters and transit haters
>just like /r/fuckcars but on the opposite side of the autism spectrum
View attachment 8525490

I'm kinda fine with transit, even if most of the projects are fucking stupid because the only people that suffer on mass transit are the riders. Cyclists on the other hand are everybody's problem, whether in a car or not.

 

[Kyria the Great]

I'm kinda fine with transit, even if most of the projects are fucking stupid because the only people that suffer on mass transit are the riders. Cyclists on the other hand are everybody's problem, whether in a car or not.

I'm alright with transit as it serves its purpose, what I don't like is the glazing of it without speaking of its downsides or using transit as a tool for gay ass political games as it's usually with these types. They don't want to make people who use transit's lives better, they want to make car owners lives worse.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

These thoughts could not stand so some genius comes up with this: Think of traffic like water. Water takes the shape of any container it fills. So if you widen the container, it will spread out. If you widen the freeways, the traffic will also fill the new lanes.

The problem with the induced demand theory is that there is a general trend of traffic and volume but then that gets oversimplified into bad takes like this.

Not to mention that traffic is not water and does not flow the same way. If it was, for instance, narrower streets would have fast speeds, which they don't.

 

[Sunflower Samurai]

Public transit is one of those things very few people would have an issue with if it worked right, but it doesnt, and thats where the true grievances come from, but thats pretty much most public services. I think many wouldnt mind paying if they actually looked nice and worked as promised

 

[Dante Alighieri]

Public transit is one of those things very few people would have an issue with if it worked right, but it doesnt, and thats where the true grievances come from, but thats pretty much most public services. I think many wouldnt mind paying if they actually looked nice and worked as promised

They also have to arrest the niggers