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 -
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.)
In America, there is no unmet demand for dense housing. There's merely unmet demand to live in New York.
The supply is there. There's plenty of dense, non-car housing available in America. Nearly every dense, pre-car city in America has either grown more slowly or outright lost population, and the fasting growing cities are car-centered ones [1]. Detroit, Chicago, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Cleveland, and Baltimore were all built before the car, and there are millions of high-density transit-oriented housing units available for nearly nothing.
Perhaps you don't like legacy cities. A dirty truth about America is that local governments are essentially owned by the local developers. Large developers are completely unconstrained by existing zoning laws. If it's brownfield, they get the code changed, and if it's greenfield, they write the codes themselves. America builds over a million new units per year. DR Horton, Lennar, etc. will build whatever makes money and buy whatever politician is necessary to do so, and all they crank out is a million+ SFR units per year, with a sideline five-over-one Texas Donuts. Give a developer an entire city, and they'll create Irvine and The Woodlands, not a mini-Portland (Donald Bren and Donald Horton could easily afford to do so, if they thought it would be profitable)
Let's finally watch people reveal their preferences. Work from home decoupled housing from jobs, allowing people to move to where they actually want, not just where their jobs are. There was no huge urban boom as people packed up their suburban lives to finally move into the city of their dreams. The opposite happened. People poured out of the cities and into the exurbs, and small towns everywhere have been overwhelmed.
I have nothing against cities. It's fun to be young, single, and mildly intoxicated in a city. It's fun to be an empty nester in a city.
Suburbs and small towns are designed for kids. When my kids were small, they could walk to the local park a few blocks away. When they were bigger, they could bike to the grocery store to buy ice cream. Now I drop them off at school in a car, but this is only because of sporting gear. This seems better than moving to a dense, walk-able neighborhood, and have my kid walk through dense masses of whores, addicts, thieves, bums, and lunatics.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_populous_cities_in_the_United_States_by_decade
"When my kids were small, they could walk to the local park a few blocks away. When they were bigger, they could bike to the grocery store to buy ice cream"
All of this is even more true about high density cities.
"have my kid walk through dense masses of whores, addicts, thieves, bums, and lunatics."
What you describe is not an endemic problem for high-density walkable neighborhoods. If some random noname russian cities can solve them, then it can be done in US as well.
Then solve them. If you do it, and living in a big city is as great as you claim, people will move there without you having to nag them.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link