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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   37946 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 27, 2023

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YIMBY sentiment on this forum has (I think) been mostly focused on increasing the density of existing residential zones. However, it may be worth noting that there is an alternative: converting existing agricultural or unused land to low-density residential use (i. e., continuing to "sprawl"). In this article, a former employee of the libertarian Cato Institute accuses that organization of focusing exclusively on high-density housing, and of smearing as racist people who are not interested in long-term high-density living and clamor for more single-family houses. (In his view, upzoning imposed from the top down is not libertarian, because the existing owners have a sort of property right in the zoning of their neighborhood as a substitute for deed restrictions that could or should have been used instead of zoning codes.)

Wouldn't that just worsen social car dependency?

Wouldn't that improve me being able to avoid urban decay ruined public transportation?

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-03-14/horror-the-deadly-use-of-drugs-on-metro-trains

If you really want to avoid them, you should purchase a plane ticket to the civilized world. In Australia people standing at train stations are there to travel by train, not take drugs. We don't even have a single open-air drug market, against the best efforts of our local decriminalization operatives.

Before Morales boarded the train to smoke his drugs, he was outside the station plaza in a brisk breeze as people whizzed by. Women held their children’s hands. Others talked on phones. Then there were those with drawn faces who looked as though they hadn’t slept in days. Many were thin and some, like Morales, had bloody marks on their faces or limbs. He didn’t sleep the day before but seemed happy to talk.

I love this implication that thinness is associated with drug addiction in the US, as opposed to being normal. What a sad article.

I can't help it Australia is better on this for the same reason it was worse on covid lockdown. The natural rights libertarians that make up the US haven't quite made their mind up about reconcile things like this. But then they don't think much about city problems because they are just generally not city people.

I wondered why America is so uniquely bad at doing cities. It's vitally important to get away from our underclass in a way it's not in NZ or Australia. Because the distance between the underclass disposition and everyone else's is not so insanely large, I figure. Does it really boil down to America's essentially open and nature? We really did get all the poor miserable huddled masses. We got the worst people of Europe. The version of myself that remained in Ireland is less beset with personality defects.

I have a friend who lives in Australia. He says he misses the US, where he grew up, because Australia is boring. Plus he really really really hated lockdown. I guess the grass is always greener...

I'd say that, historically, for some, the dream of America was to have your own little kingdom of sorts, a small slice of bountiful heartland to call your own. This was the agrarian dream of people like Andrew Jackson (IIRC, or was it Thomas Jefferson), and it has a sort of charm to it. That America had so much land for the taking made that dream possible.

This was the agrarian dream of people like Andrew Jackson (IIRC, or was it Thomas Jefferson), and it has a sort of charm to it.

Jefferson thought that farmers were more virtuous and more suited to democracy.

Corruption of morals in the mass of cultivators is a phaenomenon of which no age nor nation has furnished an example. It is the mark set on those, who not looking up to heaven, to their own soil and industry, as does the husbandman, for their subsistence, depend for it on the casualties and caprice of customers. Dependance begets subserviance and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition. This, the natural progress and consequence of the arts, has sometimes perhaps been retarded by accidental circumstances: but, generally speaking, the proportion which the aggregate of the other classes of citizens bears in any state to that of its husbandmen, is the proportion of its unsound to its healthy parts, and is a good-enough barometer whereby to measure its degree of corruption. . . The mobs of great cities add just so much to the support of pure government, as sores do to the strength of the human body. It is the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigour. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution. - Notes on the State of Virginia, 'Query XIX. Manufactures’.

Yeah, we have a small underclass that indulges in horrific bouts of violence and thuggishness. But they're out in the country, in remote towns in the Northern Territory or Queensland. Much less prominent than in the US.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-64389869

It seems humorous, but by "thin" they mean "starving because they are addicted to powerful appetite suppressants". I get to see these sorts of people too much. The drugs turn them into ghouls.

Public transportation ridership has crashed. So now the local public transportation system is more a rolling homeless hangout than a way for working professionals to go from home to office.

I don't think he sees "car dependency" as a problem.

Every city in America is a 15-minute city if you take automobiles into account. Thanks to automobiles, the typical U.S. urban resident lives within 15 minutes of more than 100,000 jobs, several different supermarkets that compete hard for their business, one or two shopping malls, parks and other recreation facilities, a variety of health care facilities, friends and relatives, and many other potential destinations and activities. Even the densest cities in the world can’t provide that kind of variety and opportunity within 15 minutes on foot.

An older article:

According to the 2000 census, Los Angeles is the densest urban area in the United States, and 89.5 percent of Los Angeles commuters usually drive to work. Just to the south, San Diego is only half as dense as L.A., and 90.9 percent of its commuters drive to work. Atlanta is only half as dense as San Diego, and 93.5 percent of its commuters drive to work. And Lompoc California is about half as dense as Atlanta, and 94.4 percent of its commuters drive to work. So doubling density might get a little more than 1 percent of commuters out of their cars. That’s not much.

Low densities, large parking lots, and other indicators of sprawl are effects of automotive technology. They don’t make people auto dependent; they enable people to be auto liberated. Density and various design features planners want to impose will have, at best, marginal effects on the amount of driving people do.

Thanks in part to cars, the average American takes only about three or four thousand steps per day and looks like a WALL-E character. I suppose that the standard libertarian perspective on this would be that the revealed preference of Americans is to avoid physical movement and that governments should try to accommodate that preference, but it's surely not how I'd like my city to approach things.

I walk a ton living in San francisco. But I also step over a lot of shit and see a lot of demoralizing stuff on the street. Couple days ago saw someone feeding a mouse near a dumpster to their pitbull.

I walked way more when I was in grad school and lived with my parents in a far exurb of LA. I almost never walk at all now that I live in a very "dense and walkable" urban neighborhood. Walking in the exurbs was pleasant, leaf-dappled, and contemplative. Every fifth house or so, kids playing in the front yard. Dogs running behind backyard brick walls and barking "who are you!?!"

Walking in the city is an exercise of stepping to the curb to let other people pass every 10 feet, having to rewind the podcast I'm listening to because of sirens, stepping over homeless, trying not to trip on the shitty uneven sidewalks, and not skewer myself on all the wrought-iron and chain-link fencing. Not appetizing at all.

Yesterday I walked to a large park down the street from my suburban house and kicked a soccer ball with my son. I am lean and my son walks, runs and bikes through large parks and trails with me regularly.

The suburbs are great for outdoors exercise. Rather than walking him past open air drug markets and homeless encampments, we're walking through clean parks and trails.

I choose not to be a fatty and the suburbs easily accommodate me. I do drive to work though, so I suppose I get fewer steps in than some alternative. But then I absolutely won't live by my office building and I will not subject myself or my family to the urban blight ruined public transportation.

I guess I'd say I'm revealing a preference for an active life in a clean environment. So of course I don't live in the local major urban center.

That’a certainly one of the drawbacks, but it’s also worth considering this in both historical and global contexts.

From historical perspective, Americans have been driving a lot for many decades now, but obesity rates have only shot through the roof relatively recently. This means that other factors contributing to obesity might have much bigger impact than driving.

Second, it is worth observing that European countries, which allegedly are more walkable, and where people drive less, are rather quickly catching up to obesity rates of Americans. The upward trend is clear and is not looking like it is plateauing in most countries. See eg. Germany or UK.

The fat people I know might very well walk to the store but prefer to drive. You only need to get fat once, for whatever reason, and walking suddenly becomes unfeasible. And there are many reasons for which people become fat regardless of whether their neighborhood is walkable. What's more, I suspect that the kinds of people who get fat are the kinds of people who would not want to walk in the first place.

Linking walkability to obesity is largely nonsense, in my opinion. I can't give you a definite cause for why obesity has become more prevalent, but it has little to do with sidewalks and distance to possible walking targets.

What explains Europe? Is it the food? It can't be smoking or leaded gasoline that was keeping the obesity down over there (unless they regulated those things later than us).

This is not Europe, this is everywhere. As for explanation, I like how Charles Murray's wife has put it:

We decide exactly what we're hungry for and make it for dinner, every day, from a far longer list of favorites than people had 60 years ago. The perfect way to generate weight gain. And we are not alone.

Even if you refrain from eating snacks or sweets (and these also have been extremely optimized for palatability, with many different local maximums to choose from), we are no longer constrained by difficulty of obtaining ingredients, or cost for normal breakfast/lunch/dinner sort of food. Everything is available close by (or can be ordered online), and everything is very cheap relative to our incomes.

...That does make sense. We're more globalized, and we're also the opposite of starving, in general.

In this article, the same author considers various studies on alleged links between sprawl and obesity. According to him, one study (peer-reviewed in a medical journal) shows only "small but significant associations" between sprawl and obesity, and two other studies suggest that "obesity causes sprawl. That is, obese people choose to live in sprawling communities because such neighborhoods are better suited for their needs."

Of course, that article is sixteen years old at this point, and many of the links in it are dead, so maybe the conclusions to which he comes in it are wrong.

Furthermore, even in FRANCE, 69% of urban workers commute by car:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1017215/car-usage-to-go-to-work-by-residential-area-france/

Cars are so popular because they are incredibly useful and greatly improve the lives of those who use them. I find it curious that so much effort is spent trying to reduce the quality of life of car owners, and not in improving the quality of life of non-car owners.

This seems like a pure strawman. The bulk of the urbanist content I'm aware of is focused on things like "make walking safe", "have stuff closer together", "run more frequent trains" etc. that all are based around improving the QoL for non car-users. And you even have https://youtube.com/watch?v=d8RRE2rDw4k which is about how driving is better in the Netherlands! What, specifically, are you referring to?

Well, many of the stuff they champion as improving the QoL of non-cars also just happens to worsen the QoL of car users, e.g. Oxford's traffic filters plan. I think this difference is easier to see if we talk about the proposals they say don't increase the QoL of non-cars, even though they do. For example, Not Just Bikes complaining about pedestrian bridges, and claiming they're "only built for the benefit of people driving, not walking", even though that doesn't make sense. I highly suspect the real reason he dislikes them is because, as he says later, they don't hinder the flow of traffic, and therefore don't worsen the QoL of car users.

And then there's articles like this which directly address your (NJB's) claim that the Netherlands is the best country in the world for driving by saying "...and that's a bad thing."

Well, many of the stuff they champion as improving the QoL of non-cars also just happens to worsen the QoL of car users, e.g. Oxford's traffic filters plan.

If you look at the video I linked, he makes the point that requiring cars to sometimes take a slightly longer route makes it faster to drive, since some people won't drive, reducing congestion.

Ironically, sprawling suburbs often have these exact same limitations. Cul de sacs are very popular, and suburban roads are often windy rather than direct, because everyone realizes that having cars go through your neighborhood sucks--but for some reason we don't think about these forms of road design as "limiting freedom to drive" or whatever.

NJB's argument about pedestrian bridges seems to focus entirely on how they lower QoL for pedestrians, in direct contradiction to the claim that "so much effort is spent trying to reduce the quality of life of car owners, and not in improving the quality of life of non-car owners." You say this doesn't make sense, but he makes several specific arguments and you don't offer any explanation at all, you just make an assertion about his state of mind.

There might be people who hate all driving and want to ban cars, so fine, it's not a "pure strawman." I still think it's a weakman to boil all arguments in favor of urbanism down to "they just hate cars" so all arguments can be ignored.

Ironically, sprawling suburbs often have these exact same limitations. Cul de sacs are very popular, and suburban roads are often windy rather than direct, because everyone realizes that having cars go through your neighborhood sucks--but for some reason we don't think about these forms of road design as "limiting freedom to drive" or whatever.

In that case it's not exactly about improving the quality of life of car users, just mitigating their externalities. Which, for the record, I agree with in this case.

If the route is only slightly longer though, I doubt it would make a meaningful difference in the amount of traffic. But this argument does have some merit to it and is why, for example, I-5 in California doesn't go through populated areas like Fresno.

NJB's argument about pedestrian bridges seems to focus entirely on how they lower QoL for pedestrians, in direct contradiction to the claim that "so much effort is spent trying to reduce the quality of life of car owners, and not in improving the quality of life of non-car owners." You say this doesn't make sense, but he makes several specific arguments and you don't offer any explanation at all, you just make an assertion about his state of mind.

Okay, I will elaborate.

He says they lower the QoL of pedestrians in contrast to the alternative that they will "just walk across the ground to get to where they're going", but this is a false alternative. The alternative to a pedestrian bridge is not being able to cross the road at all. And it's not like people don't use them; they're plenty popular and packed on weekends in Las Vegas. See also this response by Road Guy Rob (he misspeaks and says "crosswalks" instead of bridges, but the message is still the same).

When he points out that some pedestrian bridges and/or underpasses have crackheads on them, that's not the fault of pedestrian bridges or underpasses. That's just the fault of a city not willing to crack down on drugs and drug addicts. Otherwise, I could say that a city having alleys is bad because alleys are places out of sight where people deal drugs (and then claim that NYC is a great place because it has no alleys). It's actually quite infuriating that this is one of the only instances where Not Just Bikes will acknowledge that crime exists, because to my knowledge he doesn't acknowledge crime elsewhere in his channel, and crime (and policing) is probably one of the biggest differences between North America and the Netherlands (or, hell, even Portland, Oregon and Las Vegas; CityNerd's recent TEDx Talk talks about how he moved from Portland to Vegas but he doesn't acknowledge crime (i.e. why Walmart and Cracker Barrel have closed or are going to close all stores there) and gives other, seemingly-virtuous reasons why he moved).

And the bridge he derides as a "concrete ditch" actually looks pretty okay. But this is just a beauty/subjectivity argument, which I'm not a fan of.

There might be people who hate all driving and want to ban cars, so fine, it's not a "pure strawman."

What, like this guy with 1.2 million views? Or this guy? Or /r/fuckcars?

To some extent I have sympathy here because, to some extent, all movements are plagued by radicals and extremists, but my sympathy wanes when movements don't self-regulate in this matter.

I still think it's a weakman to boil all arguments in favor of urbanism down to "they just hate cars" so all arguments can be ignored.

Alright, well I'm not doing that.

In that case it's not exactly about improving the quality of life of car users, just mitigating their externalities. Which, for the record, I agree with in this case.

It may not be the primary intention, but it does help.

The alternative to a pedestrian bridge is not being able to cross the road at all.

I think there's just a very far inferential distance here. Why are the only options "bridge" or "nothing" in the first place? The thing being complained about is not that "a crosswalk would annoy those damned cars" it's that "pedestrians are forced to take a much longer and more difficult route to prevent cars from experiencing even the slightest inconvenience." It's not that making driving miserable is an end goal; it's that most American cities have unlimited appetite to add the slightest convenience for drivers at the cost of arbitrary QoL loss for every other form of transportation.

The very short mention about the drug users seems to be taken as more of a joke--as far as I can tell, he doesn't linger on it or claim it's because of the bridge. (He does actually talk about public safety around 1:50 in https://youtube.com/watch?v=oHlpmxLTxpw&ab_channel=NotJustBikes, with the concept of "eyes on the street".)

What, like this guy with 1.2 million views? Or this guy? Or /r/fuckcars? To some extent I have sympathy here because, to some extent, all movements are plagued by radicals and extremists, but my sympathy wanes when movements don't self-regulate in this matter.

A weakman can exist (that's the whole point) and be popular, but it's still the weakest form of the argument. The original claim was "I find it curious that so much effort is spent trying to reduce the quality of life of car owners, and not in improving the quality of life of non-car owners." There's quite a lot of the latter. I could say something like "people who like zoning are just racist and greedy." Probably there are some people who support strict zoning for those reasons; it wouldn't be hard to find example of NIMBY's using "home values" as an explicit argument. But there are certainly lots of other arguments, and it doesn't matter if the relative size of each group is 1:99 or the other way around.

What self-regulation do you want to see? I'm not sure I've ever seen anyone on this forum even go so far as to disclaim the worst NIMBYs. It's not like NJB or City Beautiful or CityNerd or Oh the Urbanity can do anything about /r/fuckcars or an opposing blog. Would you want to be grouped in with everyone who posts here on TheMotte, and have your arguments dismissed because of who posts here?

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Because non car owners are either poor enough that they’re unnoticed in public conversation, or they’re weird enough no one wants to talk about them.

Significantly improving the quality of life of non-car-owners, especially with the additional constraints that whatever you do has to work for everyone and not exclude anyone (including the unsheltered homeless), is not feasible. Making car owners lives worse is pretty easy. So if you actually just don't like people to have cars, it makes sense to use the stick rather than the carrot.

That's because many proposals for improving the quality of life of non-car owners, such as building pedestrian bridges, are ridiculed by urbanists for improving the quality of life of car owners too.

That's because many proposals for improving the quality of life of non-car owners, such as building pedestrian bridges, are ridiculed by urbanists for improving the quality of life of car owners too.

The issue with pedestrian bridges is that unless the road they cross is a freeway, they make the quality of life worse for pedestrians (and better for drivers) compared to a crosswalk, by adding an unnecessary vertical component to the journey. The bridge only helps pedestrians if the baseline is no crosswalk. Assuming that there is a pedestrian route crossing the road with sufficient traffic to justify building the bridge, this is not a sensible assumption. Pedestrians have the same right to cross a road safely that cars in a cross street do, and everyone agrees that cars in a cross street are entitled to some kind of arrangement allowing them to cross at-grade within a reasonable waiting time (generally 30 seconds typical, 60 seconds maximum) - usually a traffic light.

A crosswalk costs less than a pedestrian bridge - even if you install a push-button operated traffic light to fairly allocate priority between cars and pedestrians (as opposed to a zebra crossing where pedestrians have priority at all times). The additional cost to build the bridge has negative benefit to pedestrians (climbing the steps takes longer than waiting for the green man), so it isn't pedestrian infrastructure.

If your response is "But the crosswalk would never be built, but the bridge might be" then you have to ask why. The reason is probably "because it is politically impossible to ask cars to wait for pedestrians the way they wait at red lights for cars in cross streets". If your community is serious about that, then I suppose the bridge does benefit pedestrians, in much the same way that a mugger benefits you if he lets you keep your ID while he takes your cash and credit cards.

Unless the vertical component is excessive (e.g. several ramps), I don't think it's "unnecessary". The pedestrian bridges in Las Vegas have a simple staircase and elevator and they get plenty of foot traffic.

Pedestrians have the same right to cross a road safely that cars in a cross street do, and everyone agrees that cars in a cross street are entitled to some kind of arrangement allowing them to cross at-grade within a reasonable waiting time (generally 30 seconds typical, 60 seconds maximum) - usually a traffic light.

Okay, but this conflicts with many of the positions espoused by urbanists I've seen that say that pedestrians and cars are different and therefore should be treated differently in some respects. E.g. urbanists ridicule when pedestrians are told to make sure they look both ways when crossing the road, even though when cars cross the road, they are taught (at least in drivers' ed) to look both ways too. The standard here doesn't seem to be consistently applied.

In any case, underpasses (which don't have a vertical component) are ridiculed by urbanists too. They also ridicule even at-grade solutions like HAWK signals.

If your community is serious about that, then I suppose the bridge does benefit pedestrians, in much the same way that a mugger benefits you if he lets you keep your ID while he takes your cash and credit cards.

This analogy does not follow. No one is being "robbed" here in any metaphorical sense.

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