This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
California YIMBY, "Governor Newsom Signs Historic Housing Legislation: SB 79 Culminates Eight-Year Fight to Legalize Homes Near Transit" Also covered in Politico, LA Times, CalMatters, SF Chronicle, SF Standard, Berkeleyside, Streetsblog SF... this is a big deal. (Part of a long-running series on housing, mostly in California. Now also at TheSchism.)
To quote the Governor's press office, "HUGE NEWS!! YIMBY'S REJOICE !!". Signing statement here, press release from Scott Wiener here. Bill text here.
For more details about how we got here, see this recap from Jeremy Linden, the vote lists from CalMatters, and my previous recap from when SB 79 first made it out of committee. This was the last of ten veto points this bill had to pass, and it changed markedly over the process: most counties were exempted, ferries and high-frequency bus routes without dedicated lanes no longer count, projects over 85 feet must now use union labor, there are now below-market-rate set-asides, and other such bagel toppings. It only applies to "urban transit counties", those with more than fifteen rail stations; that's only eight of California's fifty-eight counties: Los Angeles, San Diego, Orange, Santa Clara, Alameda, Sacramento, San Francisco and San Mateo, but those counties contain sixty percent of the state's population.
But of those ten veto points, it passed five of them by a single vote. (It depends exactly how you count.) Every compromise, every amendment, every watering-down was necessary to get this across the finish line. Aisha Wahab, Senate Housing chair and villain of the previous post, switched her vote to support SB 79 in the final concurrence in the Legislature, as did Elena Durazo, Senate Local Government chair, who had also opposed it originally. This has, as noted above, been eight years in the making. It will largely go into effect next July 1.
Newsom also signed a variety of other housing bills, though none were specifically as important as SB 79: AB 253 allows for third-party permit approvals if the city drags their feet, for example.
This completes a remarkably victorious legislative cycle for the YIMBYs. Along with surprise CEQA reform, Jeremy White of Politico called it: "from upzoning to streamlining to CEQA exempting, the biggest housing year I've seen in 10+ years covering Sacramento".
California has a climate similar to Mediterranean countries.
Italy
built
this
Instead of being inspired by Italy:
california
built
this
Clearly there is a lot of California building regulation that needs to be tossed out. Especially LA is such a wasted opportunity and it could have been one of the nicest cities in the world.
It's the whole American car centered bullshit that led to California being the way it is. LA is completely unwalkable for example. The US has produced some of the best architects and urban planners in the world, it's a shame that the cult of the (oversized, let's not forget) car has left them in thrall to malign interests in the name of "convenience".
We need cars so that we can live in suburbs, and we need suburbs because all the urban cores were taken over by the black underclass after the end of segregation.
Repeal the Civil Rights Act and then we can talk about walkable cities.
So, this is exactly the sort of thing that can get brushed off as being simple bigotry; you just seem to prefer a level of segregation which cities don't provide. But I think it's worth thinking about.
When I wrote out my theory of The Four Failures of blue governance, the first thing I listed was Safety and Order, and I think there's a real tendency for people to talk past each other here; urbanists are particularly fond of saucy memes on that front, but you're literally half as likely to meet an untimely end in New York City as you are in rural America; the murder rate is comparably low, but car crashes make the big difference.
But that's unsatisfying in the same way that someone pointing out complete apathy in the face of brazen and repeated theft being given a lecture about wage theft; it's just whataboutism.
I came across this thread recapping Left Behind in Rosedale, which details how white people violently resisted the integration of their neighborhoods because they feared they would be the victims of violent crime, and then their neighborhoods were integrated, and the people who couldn't leave were violently victimized by the black people who moved in, and below that, the social capital, the ability to know your neighbors and go outside at night and feel safe, all of that just vanished. And it's left some kind of scar that the official narrative here is that white people resisted integration for absolutely no reason, and then we had integration, and the good guys won. Because that's not what people experienced. Just like the official narrative is that there was no reason for purity taboos either.
There are plenty of ideas about how to make things better well outside the right (The Atlantic ran this; Jennifer Doleac writes extensively on the topic; Noah Smith and Matt Yglesias do as well), and as far as we can tell, crime really is way down from the 90s. But how can there be any credibility without reckoning with the past?
Crime really is down compared to the crack era, and New York City is reasonably safe, even after COVID-era backsliding. It's not the only city in the country, though. Chicago in particular has a much higher murder rate, with Philadelphia not far behind. And not to leave red state cities out -- both Dallas and Houston are pretty bad. And Atlanta's will knock your socks off (well, strip them from your corpse, most likely)
Repealing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 probably is neither necessary nor sufficient. But you do need to refuse to allow racial considerations to interfere with stopping serious crime, which might involve some of the law around that act.
There's Left Behind in Rosedale and Philly War Zone; I've heard stories similar to the latter about Baltimore also. "White flight" was in large part ethnic cleansing, and we're still dealing with the results of that.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The blacks don't help, but this isn't fully true. People prefer living in suburbs and driving cars because it's just better for them. Even if all black people were to disappear tomorrow, there would still be suburbs and cars. At most it would add a marginal amount to the populations of dense cities.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I will absolutely tear down civilization before I live in the world Europoors and "walkable cities" types want for me. If I have to visit the grocery store more than once a week you won't need to use public transit to see someone get set the hell on fire.
I just get my food delivered when I want once a week for the in-store price plus a nominal (literally $2) delivery charge, which is viable for the store because of how dense a city is.
I'm in the suburbs and I can get my groceries delivered also, though the charge is $15. Density doesn't make delivery viable; it reduces the area in which delivery is viable. When I can order shit from China for $11 (even after everything Trump has done) you know you don't need a dense city to do delivery. Though I admit it wouldn't be viable to do perishables that way.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I literally live across the street from a large grocery store in the densest part of one of North America's biggest cities and the only time I go more than once a week is when I forget something, in which case, it's really nice it's right there...
I genuinely don't know what windmill you're tilting at right now
"You'll live in the pod, eat the bug, and only shop at cornerstores that don't have all the groceries you'd like to buy in one trip" isn't a WEF conspiracy lol
More options
Context Copy link
As a European I am confused: Do Americans not have stores and supermarkets near them?
Depends on exactly where you live. Bear in mind for most Americans it's forty celsius outside for months at a time, so 'walking' is not quite the same thing as in Europe.
I can walk to two grocery stores near me. I grew up being able to bike to a grocery store and a convenience store- and I see the neighborhood preteens biking to QT for slurpees all the time. But most Americans drive to the store. So it's probably partly cultural.
More options
Context Copy link
Generally, US zoning strictly separates residential uses like single-family houses and apartment buildings and commercial uses like supermarkets and convenience stores. Ultra-dense places like New York City may allow apartment buildings and convenience stores to exist in the same zone, but they are relatively rare.
For a representative example of zoning that might be used by a random town in the US, see the International Zoning Code. For a comprehensive comparison of US and foreign zoning, see Zoned in the USA.
I watched a video and the first YT comment was an epiphany about the Residential/Commercial/Industrial zoning in Sim City:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=WNe9C866I2s
Not just bikes:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=bnKIVX968PQ
More options
Context Copy link
That would do it. Where I live the residential tower blocks often have at least one commercial outlet on the ground floor, such as groceries, barbershops, hardware store, etc. That's in the suburbs - in the city center the ground floor is often entirely businesses.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Klaus Schwab's nightmarish visage emerges on the projector screen, staring down on you like a god from on high
You vill enjoy fresh food from local stores rather than chemical slop from Walmart.
You vill have a healthy waistline.
You vill have a walkable neighbourhood with trees and park amenities.
You vill commute via bus, train or ferry in safety from lowlives - ve have dispersed them
And... you vill be happy.
Sounds like a setup for a common joke.
Schwab's vision comes to pass but
The food is the same, only more expensive, lesser in variety and the "local stores" are merely subsidiaries of WalMart
The waistline is also the same
The sidewalks are barely navigable due to the kiosks trying to sell you something, the crowds, and the homeless beggars
The parks are dilapidated, the trees are dead (having cracked all the sidewalks before giving up the ghost), and the parks are dominated by drug users and/or aggressive panhandlers.
The commute is by bus, but there is no safety.
And when you ask Schwab about the utopian world he promised... "Oh, zat was zhust ze demo."
“I will flee like a rat to the suburbs and abandon the civilization my forefathers built because getting rid of homeless psychos and dealing with violent crime seems like too much work”
Who can be surprised at 70 years of total failure on the American right when this is the common mindset? Out of sight, out of mind, and all the while you fade into irrelevance.
My forefathers never lived in those cities. Mostly they lived in rural areas and small towns. Well, some lived in Jersey City for a time, but you'd have a hard time finding its golden age to point to; it was a dump when they lived there too.
Even if I had a solution to homeless psychos and violent crime, I do not have the power to implement it. I am neither omniscient (to come up with the solution) nor omnipotent and neither is not a valid source of shame.
There are a lot of people with power who support the homeless psychos and violent criminals.
Number 2 is true of "the American right" in general. "Red Tribe" / "Blue Tribe" derives from the old rural/urban split. And the left, largely through it's association with minority groups, has pretty much pushed the republicans out of positions of power in the major cities. Every once in a while New York City will elect an authoritarian Republican to sweep away some of the excesses, but they always return to form (and the city council and all other structures remain solidly Democratic). Other cities don't even do that.
Even if none of this was true and the cities didn't have crime and bums, they still have far too many people in far too little area. There will always be conflicts over the limited resources, and they will always be settled by the politically powerful in favor of their clients. So maybe instead of Ramón and Dante's gangs monopolizing the parks by pure menace and police indifference, it ends up being Ralph and Buffy and their friends who somehow manage to get a city permit for its exclusive use every weekend and all the holidays.
Rats, who thrive on the discards of human society, are known to prefer urban areas to suburbs.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The joke is that the US is already a mess from the perspective of outsiders. Economically and technologically advanced, socially backwards. Any actual improvement is so unimaginable to Americans they come up with these warped eschatological narratives about civil war or apocalypse, or they twist themselves around to see this weird lifestyle as normal and any change as a threat. Like a nation of people who tunnel and dig in refuge from a self-inflicted disaster, only to be dazzled and frightened when they see the sun or feel fresh air, rebelling against surface.
That's what the Europeans say as they stagnate in all ways. They can keep telling themselves that. Personally I enjoy watching people find out the opposite, as they realize the joys of having a place where they don't have to deal with their neighbor's noise, or worry about annoying their neighbors with their own. Of being able to get from one place to another without worrying about timetables, or transfers, or weather, or how to carry stuff with them. Of a grocery store that has everything they need for a week or more in one trip. Or even of natural areas larger than a square block and not filled to the brim with people.
Americans don't seem to believe this today but there are many outsiders who visit America and really dislike the country, not out of jealousy or poverty but genuine dislike for how society works. This was before Trump too.
New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco... they came, they saw, they don't like it.
Europe is stagnating. Why is this? In large part its due to US influence, US NGOs, US foreign policy. For better and for worse, the US leads the West. Yet there's this kind of schizo American attitude about their role in the world.
One day America is the best and greatest country ever, leader of the free world. The next day the lazy Europeans won't pay for their own defence (suppression of Russia) - they need to buy more weapons from America. Oh and go deal with Russia by yourselves, we're not interested in that anymore. Now it's time to bomb the Middle East and stir up some chaos there. Next, pivot to Asia - the vassals must enforce sanctions against China. Who cares whether this is in their economic interests. Australia needs to buy some submarines (we won't actually hand them over though because after taking their money to build the docks, we're still too clueless to build the damn subs). After that, everyone needs to copy American cultural norms and racial hysteria. Import some sub-Saharans, get some diversity (the refugees from our retarded wars we make you join will do for starters). Copy everything down quickly, you need to be woke... no now you need to be anti-woke. And why are you so poor, unlike us?
Europe and other US allies may well have retarded and despicable governments but the US has a special, higher level of responsibility for how it wields power.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Yeah I shop regularly at Costco. There's no "walkable Costco infrastructure". I'm not carrying a small bag with one day of groceries. I use my car instead.
There is actually one downtown Costco in Vancouver apparently.
It's still not really walkable -- although I think now there's literally condo towers right on top of it, so I guess if you were in one of those it would work. Otherwise it's several blocks from anywhere people really live. (and of course those towers are not great for going places other than Costco -- or the hockey arena I guess)
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
If your grocery store is 2 minutes down the road going to it multiple times a week is not an issue. In fact it's preferable because you can get stuff when you want it and not have it clogging up space in your home.
The problem with this is that now you are a captive customer to that one store.
I know this well -- I lived in a "walkable neighborhood" with just such a store. It had insane prices, long lines and shitty product. I did have a car and I make enough that food & sundries isn't a huge fraction of my budget, but seeing far poorer families get completely ripped off by these people was radicalizing.
This is like super-basic game theory: a situation where most customers can easily change which store they patronize is one in which stores compete on price/quality/service far more than one in which customers walk to one and cannot easily substitute.
Where on earth do you live that's somehow walkable but also has literally exactly one grocery store?
Walkability is enabled by density and density by definition means there's lots of stuff around, I am within 4 city blocks of 3 (soon 4) big box grocery stores, at least 3 fruit markets, and if you expand that radius to a ~15 minute walk you can add at least 2 more big box stores and 2 entire neighborhoods of places defined by their vibrant collection of grocers and other food stores.
More options
Context Copy link
I have not one but multiple stores within 2 minute walking distance.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This might work, but I doubt stores that close together can match the selection of the one I have to drive five minutes to. It probably takes a minute or more just to walk across the store. Some of it is duplicative (multiple brands of milk), but you'd still lose selection pretty fast.
Yes they can
Source: I live in downtown Toronto very close to three grocery stores only marginally smaller than the suburban ones
More options
Context Copy link
Living a block from (the entrance of) a Walmart is actually an amazing thing for QOL if you can manage it. I walked to Walmart a lot when I was living right next to one.
I think we should build housing on the roofs of megamarkets like walmart and costco.
There was a news story about this back in 2023.
However, Google Maps does not indicate that construction has progressed very far.
I live in a nice area specifically to get away from "low income households". This is such a poison pill.
More options
Context Copy link
I've lived on top of a supermarket before. It's not ideal because of all the noise, especially early morning deliveries. Lots of crashing and banging.
More options
Context Copy link
Huh, nice.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I don't wanna go to a tiny ass overpriced bodega. I want Walmart. Unfortunately due to physical limitations it's impossible to have everyone live 2 minutes from a decent sized store.
10-15 minute walk is doable depending on the urban layout but that's pushing the distance where you start considering driving.
Comments like this make me suspect anti-urbanists have no idea what dense urban areas are actually like. I live five minutes from a full-sized grocery with substantial better (and higher quality) selection than Wal Mart is going to give me. I can add about 5 min to add another two. All three deliver as well if I feel like contributing to the downfall of America, and I also have access to dozens of more specialized retailers.
This is half of why Americans are obese. (The other half is what they buy inside). If you're driving to avoid a 10 minute walk, it better be December in Minnesota.
Obesity is a complicated subject. To claim that this is even half the reason is a high level of hubris.
Obesity is a complicated subject in that the question "why do Americans live sedentary lives and have terrible diets?" is one without an obvious answer or easy solutions. It is not a complicated subject in that the proximate cause of the obesity epidemic is that Americans live sedentary lives and have terrible diets.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Or August in Texas.
More options
Context Copy link
A 10 minute walk is chill but a 10 minute walk carrying tons of groceries in my bare hands is not chill
More options
Context Copy link
There isn't a full-sized grocery store in Manhattan. There are a few in Philadelphia, but very few people are within 5 minutes of them.
“Full sized” in terms of product volume or selection? In terms of volume of fresh, OK quality food the average Manhattan Whole Foods has more than a huge big box store in a poorer part of the Midwest. It’s bleak out there, the fact that NYC doesn’t have 37 shelves of 48-pack soda isn’t a downside.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
A two-minute walk will very literally not get you across the parking lot of the local Wal-Mart Supercenter, but that's not quite a physical limitation. Let's take a closer look.
A two-minute walk is about 160 meters (at 3 mph), which means there is 80240 m^2 within a two-minute walk of any specific point. Given a population density of 100k/square mile (0.039/m^2) (fourth highest in the world), that would mean 3100 people in range of the store.
Locally, each Wal-Mart serves 100k people. You can play around with the numbers a bit by counting Wal-Mart or Costco or etc, and also reduce their required population, and also increase the density above 100k/mi^2 and also this, and also that, but it gets really hard to make up a >30-fold difference by playing around the edges like that.
A 10-minute walk would be approximately possible, but not two.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I have lots of room for food in my large house. I don't even go to the store and pick it up off the shelves myself, I order it from Wal-Mart and have them stuff it in the trunk for me. I will absolutely sell out to transgender wokies, or Sharia law types, or literal fascists before I carry home my one little bag of groceries with like a stalk of celery and a baguette sticking out the top like someone living in some Old World city originally designed for donkey carts.
Recently, I've been giving some thought to the question of what I would do if an intermediate amount of shit hit the fan, such that I couldn't just drive as much as I want but grocery stores were still available. The solution I hit on was the adult-sized cargo tricycle, which is an actual thing that multiple companies offer, and it seems like a decent option for transporting stuff in a degrowth future. Of course, then we're back to the problem of having a big bulky vehicle that needs parking space while you're shopping, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The solution in that case is carpooling. You can get an additional three or four Mad Max cannibals to the grocery store if you just allow them to hang from the sides of your dump-truck-with-a-flamethrower.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
[Standing ovation]
Right-materialists unite! Economic growth is all.
All I'm saying is, if you want me out of my hobbit hole you better bring a flamethrower.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link