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 -
My theory: most of what is now called "white supremacy" is just boomers attempting to prolong "boomer reality." (Obviously not all boomers)
What do I mean by "boomer reality"? Boomers are an American cohort born in unprecedented wealth when America was the only intact industrial power. They are also quite large cohort and were therefore over their lives able to use their influence to "fine-tune" America to their specifications. Boomers like to drive, therefore America is easy accessible via cars, not so much via public transport. This is also why gasoline tends to be cheaper in America than elsewhere. Boomers love to see their property values soar, therefore pretty much nothing is legal to build anywhere in America. (or so I hear)
What looks like white supremacy is boomers' dislike towards brown immigrants. But I would argue that the reason is not that they are brown, it is because they are not part of "boomer reality." Hispanics are more used to public transport (compared to white boomers) and are also okay with living in higher density. If lots of Hispanics materialize in America, and have a chance to vote for their preferences, this might result in more public transport (which boomers don't need) and more dense housing (bringing boomer property values down).
This also explains boomer opposition towards global warming. Global warming implies that car-centric culture might not be completely sustainable and anything that implies "boomer reality" might not be sustainable is an enemy.
I do think "boomer reality" is now very toxic, but here's how it is different from old white supremacy: Southern white supremacists cared a lot about their own legacy. They were thoroughly evil people, but they did care for their own white children (and noone else). White plantation owners could picture the world without themselves in it. Not the world without plantations (they fought a war over it), but one with different owners (their sons) running these plantations.
Boomers are fundamentally narcissistic and they cannot imagine anyone else as main characters of life, not even their own children. And that's the black heart of "boomer reality". Real white supremacy would be white male tenured boomer professor retiring and giving his tenured seat to his younger -- also white male -- protege. That's not at all what's happening, instead cushy tenured professorships are being replaced with insecure nontenured positions -- mostly held by brown and female people.
Calling this "white supremacy" almost gives it too much dignity. This is fire sale.
"White supremacy" is simply not the right terminology to describe what is happening. It is also unfair because younger whites are not profiting at all from "boomer reality". Accusing a poor white millenial of "white supremacy" is kicking the chained dog. I suspect the popularity of the concept -- alongside most of "awokening" -- is the result of elite millenials getting radicalized by realization that their Boomer parents intend to spend everything on luxury cruises and leave them with jack shit. In other words awokening is fueled precisely by a lack of actual, working white supremacy. (As well as a lack of any other safety net for precarious millenials)
(Don't get me wrong, I do think it is good white supremacy is no more, my point is that boomer narcissism is also bad, but in a very different way)
Why do I think my theory is correct? Because there was a similar generation divide in my native Serbia (then Yugoslavia) in the early 90's although generations were one step back. It was "Greatest Generation", Silent Generation and some elder boomers, versus younger boomers and x-ers (millenials were still young children or not yet born). The former still lived in "communist reality" while that reality begun to unravel for the latter.
One of the reasons why Milosevic ruled over Serbia for so long is because he promised the pensioners that their pensions will remain untouched no matter what. So there was a bloody civil war with younger generations being thrown into meat grinder which had comparatively little impact on the old people (not zero impact due to inflation, but lesser impact). What Milosevic promised to the old was continuation of "communist reality" till they die. And they followed him.
Not saying that the younger Serbian generations were completely innocent here -- there were some rabid warmongers there too -- but the whole thing would have been impossible without the compliance of the old people.
I don't think it is a coincidence that both Trump and Milosevic have promised to the old people continuation of their respective realities. Hence old people disproportionately voting for them.
Returning to situation in America, what I think is going to happen is that "boomer reality" is going to continue unraveling and it will be replaced with "woke reality." The advantage of woke reality is that it is cheap -- you don't need a car and a house to live it, just internet connection. Problem is that it is not all that much more real than "boomer reality". It is based on throwing around inaccurate inflammatory terms like "white supremacy" (as I explained) and on funding things like DEI offices -- which make people MORE racist. A self licking ice cone. None of it is as toxic as boomer reality, true, but it is still a type of unreality.
One variable I am unsure of is how much of boomer wealth will millennials be able to actually inherit. Are boomers really going to spend it all on luxury cruises and nursing homes? If not, if millennials actually inherit something valuable, they might switch from woke into something similar to "boomer reality," possibly also justified by wokeness. Something something building more housing is racist somehow. Obviously I am not saying that EVERY millenial is going to end up like this, but then not every boomer is Trump voter.
But I am just a millenial from Serbia, and first to admit that I don't know jack. What do you think?
I'll take the opportunity to shill https://www.amazon.com/Boomers-Promised-Freedom-Delivered-Disaster/dp/0593086759
There are some great/awful stories in there. It has six chapters devoted to six notable boomers. For instance, Sotormayor's first attendance of the judge's annual party put on by the outgoing clerks (where they put on little skits and musical parodies). After they were finished, she stood up and said their skits 'lacked a certain something', putting on salsa music and encouraging the other judges to dance. This went against protocol and was extremely awkward for the others. RBG's husband had died 3 days earlier, yet Sotomayor told her that her dead husband would've wanted her to dance.
Sotormayor is also the one who confused de jure and de facto.
More options
Context Copy link
People seem to overestimate how old the boomers actually are. Many are in their 60s, which is not that old. When they came of age in the 70s-80s, much of modernity was already extant. Cars and highways were already thoroughly mainstream and ubiquitous. But generally, people become more conservative as they get older due to a combination of society moving left-ward and changing personal beliefs. A 90s Clinton democrat could actually be considered a Republican today.
I'm pretty sure that even back in the '70s there was a growing perception in the West that their car-centric culture as it existed was not going to be completely sustainable, but I'm also sure that was entirely due to the oil crises and the appearance of Peak Oil theory, not global warming.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I think it is more about the dissolution of regional distinctiveness, and lack of tolerance that follows from that, because every place and people is assumed to be the same, or should be.
My (boomer) mother grew up in a Southwestern American city with a lot of hispanics and very few blacks. She speaks Spanish badly, but my grandparents spoke it fluently (none of us are hispanic). When Bussing went into effect, she had to sit for an hour on a bus every day to move from one majority hispanic school to another, and the main change was not being able to invite her classmates over, because they lived too far away. Her opinion on bussing is that it may or may not have made sense in Alabama, but it was stupid and wasteful in her city. I took busses all the time as a teen, though they're hot and not very efficient. "Brown people" is a stupid category, but New Mexico and Arizona hispanics love their automobiles -- low riders, trucks, mechanic jobs, custom details, the whole package.
There was a woman in one of my social groups, born in Africa, went to a college in the Great Plains, living in a former Spanish colonial part of the American Southwest, going on about her experience as a Black American and her Blackness, and her sensitivity toward people curious about her background, and it was so very tiresome. None of her ancestors were American slaves, or suffered from redlining, or were discriminated against in any way. None of our ancestors owned a plantation. Nobody in our state was involved. And yet here we all were, unable to talk about any of our actual histories or the places we were actual from, because of her feelings of Blackness.
For a while, I lived with an Albanian family in rural Kosovo. Everyone was very nice to me, and I especially liked that I didn't have to drive or own a car at the time, and I could drink a 50c macchiato at a cafe over the course of an hour without anyone judging me for it. That was mostly because everyone was poor, though. They were upset over having their village shelled, and that for a while they had to teach their language in basements with only a single book for a room full of children. This may be peripherally related to pensioners, but it seems more related to feeling responsible for people who are deemed backwards. Which is, yes, also a problem in many American cities.
The American West has in some sense always wanted cars, even before they were invented. Horses were adopted with great enthusiasm the instant they arrived on the continent. And so were cars. Phoenix isn't full of cars and expansive, flat suburbs because of "boomers." It's full of cars and boomers and suburbs because it's in the middle of an enormous desert. Arizona spent 20 years building the CAP canal system, not for boomers to spread out (although they do), but because they're in the middle of an enormous desert. Boomers from Arizona and Texas drive RVs around for the same reason. i don't think this is necessarily grounded in unusual narcissism, but simply in unusually high wealth.
My mom also has anecdotes about bussing an hour one way to a distant schools with slightly different racial proportions. For seemingly no benefit to anyone. Having heard various bussing anecdotes has put me in a very cynical mindset regarding technocratic solutions to social problems.
More options
Context Copy link
Thanks for your perspective.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Oh contraire, boomers IME tend to admit that things are incredibly hard for young people right now, high percentages are supporting children or grandchildren, and it being illegal to build things is a phenomenon of extreme bureaucratic inefficiency applied to environmental regulations.
This is correct and more strangely, it is the same young people who would be up in arms against any politician proposing a radical overhaul of environmental regulations.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The cruises aren't so much the issue, though. It's more the advent of modern healthcare means that an essentially limitless amount of cash can be consumed to extend a life at 0.01 QOL an extra 3 years, something that didn't exist in prior eras to anywhere near the extent.
More options
Context Copy link
I have respect for Indians that build a fiefdom of convenience stores to pass to their children, it's obviously a different mentality than the "make sure you get a college degree and save enough in your 401k so you can retire."
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Sure. Nursing homes, end of life care and healthcare costs in the last year of life. Those are heavy financial hits.
More options
Context Copy link
..
No way! The Civil Rights movement was correct. It also doesn’t imply either 1. or 2. It is perfectly possible to move to the Midwest and dodge all those dirty minorities. Curiously, this isn’t enough to earn you a nice school and job. It does depress housing prices, because for some reason, Bumblefuck, Kansas isn’t actually that popular.
I don’t think it’s accurate to call Hispanic immigration a product of Boomer anti racism, either. More a corporate/laissez faire policy.
I'd like to see you try to pass an Intellectual Turing Test for arguing why the Civil Rights movement was bad.
Por que no los dos? Almost all policies have a Bootleggers and Baptists aspect to them -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootleggers_and_Baptists
Not sure I can. I mean, you’ve already provided the standard argument: that minorities are responsible for (insert QoL decrease here). It could be a bit stronger, since I don’t believe you really demonstrated the link. If I had to pass the test, I’d start from your argument and try to explain how the Midwest is simultaneously cheap and very, very white.
As for Baptists and bootleggers, I have no trouble believing Boomer antiracists would be included in such a coalition. I just…don’t see much evidence of them. The Boomers I know are pretty conservative, and today that means skepticism on immigration. It’s the Gen-Xers who are more likely to take the neoliberal or progressive stance. And in both groups, old-school race blindness still holds more sway than antiracism.
Then again, I’m in a pretty conservative part of the country, surrounded by defense engineers and a family of rednecks. My finger isn’t exactly on the pulse of Boomer sentiment.
I grew up in South Carolina. Yes, yes I have. Around 60% black for my abysmal high school.
You proposed that black people are icky, so white people turned to the last refuge of legal discrimination: price. I think this is a flawed theory. If an all-white school was so valuable, the Midwest would look very different, as priced-out whites moved to the educational utopias of Ardmore and Lincoln.
What do the terrible schools of the Midwest and the Deep South and the rust belt have in common? They’re poor as hell. The unemployment and the addictions and the fucked-up families are not conducive to good schools or to successful citizens. They’re also not unique to black people.
I know the answer to all your questions. I also know you’re mistaking correlation for causation.
If black people caused poor schools, you would expect white-bread schools to do much better. As far as I know, that’s not true out in the boonies. The common factor is poverty, and I don’t think the Civil Rights Act is to blame for that.
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
I've not been above a bit of boomer-negging in my time, but I'd also add to this - what's the alternative? Sure, in previous times parents might strive to leave their children an inheritance. But this was really more a luxury of the landed and rich, the ones we pay disproportionate attention to, who leave the most records. I question how common inheritances of any size really were. And though I'm sure there are no surfeit of examples of boomers who sold their retirements for boats breast implants and booze, there also seems to be a prevailing norm of saving enough to at least scrape by on your own until you die.
Far more common was the burden of caring for ageing parents in their dotage, both financially and physically. It might just be my American individualism or whatever speaking, but, as much as I appreciate a culture that's invested enough in family and long-term bonds to respect and care for the elderly, there is something a bit perverse about landing whatever poor woman you arranged to marry your eldest son to serve you hand and foot during your last years. Fillial duty beats a lot of alternatives culturally speaking, but I don't think it beats what we strive for now.
Finally, though you note that the expectation of great returns on an expensive education were rather tragically misplaced, doesn't it make sense to give to your children when young rather than when they're old and past being able to use the resources for much of their most productive years? Inheritance is nice, but I think it's taken a backburner importance in people's priorities for a reason.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
On this forum, one of our principals is that claims which are inflammatory should come with a greater amount of supporting evidence. Yet you've provided none.
I'm a millennial. This is ridiculous. There's no evidence that boomers are more narcissistic than any other generation. In fact, I would say they are less so than later generations.
Theory, meet practice. I'd be shocked if this post was modded.
More options
Context Copy link
There's not "no evidence" in the sense that you can certainly find papers claiming narcissism has decreased over time. However, you can also find ones saying that it is flat over time, or has increased over time. E.g. https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/the_surprisingly_boring_truth_about_millennials_and_narcissism
The actual section is several paragraphs with a lot more details, but you get the gist. It then points out that the instrument used has a constant wording, which may be interpreted differently. Other sources don't provide a single simple answer, either, such as https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/12/191210111655.htm or https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20171115-millenials-are-the-most-narcissistic-generation-not-so-fast (which I think summarizes some of the same evidence as the first article).
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
God I seriously wish that some of these anti-car people could just spend a month actually living in the "car free" cities that they think everybody wants so they could realize how terrible it is.
People point at some fairy tale version of a Finnish city where there's playgrounds everywhere and people are walking around drinking espressos and beers and wearing scarves and children are laughing and playing with one another in city squares.
It's not the lack of cars that is causing this unless cars is some sort of euphamism and I'm just not pol-pilled enough to understand what you guys mean when you envision a car free city. My city is a "walkable" city. From where I am sitting typing this there are a dozen coffee shops within a 5 minute walk, countless bars and restaurants, shopping, there's a train that goes literally right in front of my house, and a stop for that train a block away. There are 5 parks I can think of offhand that are within the same 5 minute walk from my house.
Guess what? I still drive EVERYWHERE I go.
I can bike, but if I bike I have to carry a 20lb chain with me to lock it, and even then I worry about the wheels being stolen, the seat being stolen, the lights being stolen, or some other set of things being stolen. ALL of this has happened to me or people I am close friends with. I have had bikes stolen that were locked up, parts stolen off of my bikes, etc.
I can walk, but I have to take a bizarre circuitous route that avoids: the park, the local drug store, all of the bus stops, all of the train stops, and any convenience stores which are currently being used as homeless shelters and drug injection sites. Even still I've had friends robbed or beaten up walking through my city.
I could take the idiotic train that our city is so proud of (and everybody who can actively avoids), and be accosted by the schizophrenic psychopaths who are using the train as a refuge from the weather.
The parks are de facto homeless encampments, meaning if I want to take my kids to play, guess where I go? 30 minutes out into the suburbs.
This idea that "boomers like cars and ruined everything by making car centric cities" is absurd and I can only assume is parroted by people who never leave their goon caves.
This is an civility problem, not a walking problem. In South Africa they have problems with thieves stealing copper, poor maintenance of aging power plants... there's lots of load shedding. This doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with electricity or power grids in general. It shows that South Africa is not a well-organized country, amongst other things.
I live car-free just fine in a proper, civilized country. There are many civilized cities where public transport is full of working people as opposed to drug addicts. The solution to your city's problems is vigorous policing, removing the problem people.
I'd argue it's more of a law enforcement problem.
All the law enforcement in the world doesn't fix low trust societies. You need the stock of the people to be of a "better" kind where you don't really fear you'll get mugged/stabbed/raped for going on a walk with your two children in the middle of the day.
I mean. Is Eugene, Oregon c. 2015 a "low trust society"? If you get the wheels stolen off your bike, as I did, odds are it's not Tyrone from the 'hood doing the stealing. It's probably some white dude who may or may not have a meth habit. Not that much violent crime out there, but a hell of a lot of bike theft.
That's still a lost trust society just a different gradient of "low trust". In a "normal" high trust society you don't even need to lock your bike because there aren't any methheads around to do petty crime.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
But I think it' also true that high-trust societies are also prone to enact policies that result in lousy conditions such as this, such as deinstitutionalizing mentally ill people, lenient sentencing etc. Plus, I'm sure that White flight and urban decay affects high-trust societies as well.
More options
Context Copy link
What does "stock" of the people mean here?
edit： I don't mean to sound baiting, I am genuinely curious. Like, breeding? Genetic superiority? Socioeconomic status? More genteel class manners?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
(load shedding refers to, "people in this area don't get to have power right now," planned by the power company so that they have enough power)
Why the hell aren't they calling it a rolling blackout like everyone else? Very confusing term
You wouldn’t want to be crushed by the darkness, so you lighten the weight on your shoulders. It’s a nice chiaroscuro reversal to think about by candlelight.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I'm with all the other guys posting down there: lived it, still kinda do, it's pretty neat. What gives?
For what it's worth, I mean that genuinely: how do you square multiple people telling you things are fine with your post insisting it is, in your own words, terrible?
More options
Context Copy link
This is nonsense and you completely lack perspective. I've never owned a car in my life, which is completely normal here, coming from a small European city.
More options
Context Copy link
I've lived in a city like this for almost four decades now. I own a car only because my wife loves her dacha and that's a quarter of a year spent in the exurbs where a car is a necessity. It's still a B-segment car and not an SUV.
More options
Context Copy link
Agreed, I commute daily via transit and my car is the last possession I'd give up besides my home. I'm as far from carfree as is possible to be.
More options
Context Copy link
I think a big reason that urbanism is getting so much attention since 2020 is that it brings suburban swing voters within striking distance of rioters. The threat of violence is a useful stick when there's a close election or politically charged trial coming up. For example, Rep. Maxine Waters called on protestors to get more "confrontational" if Chauvin was acquitted at his trial. So violence is a useful tool but the problem is that a lot of voters live in the suburbs which aren't as easily accessible to BLM or Antifa. Even worse: they often have separate police forces and DA's that would be less sympathetic to burnings and beatings. If you get rid of the cars you force people to move closer to the city center where you're able to more credibly threaten them.
More options
Context Copy link
I literally haven't driven a car in 20 years, ie. after I did my driving license (which I've since lost). I don't live in a fairytale Finnish city, I live in a normal Finnish city.
The OP's city sounds like a fine place to live without a car apart from schizo addicted criminals taking over all the public spaces. So perhaps the issue doesn't have to do much with cars at all.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
A lot of them have done so, probably most notably NotJustBikes, who moved to Amsterdam.
Most of these problems seem to be unrelated to the extent to which a city is walkable. Car-dependent American cities still have homelessness, crime, and drug use, while many walkable ones in Europe or Japan have much less. Walkability does not mean doing nothing about social problems; Amsterdam did a lot of work (see section 9) to clean itself up.
This is unnecessarily rude, but also seems to neglect history. Were cities already plagued by the same issues after WW2, when the exodus to car-dependent suburbs began, and is that why people started to leave? Have the policies imposed to make cities and suburbs more amenable to cars, such as knocking down urban neighborhoods to make way for highways, or preventing any housing from being built, contributed to these social problems?
(The actual thing to object to is that boomers aren't responsible for these policies for the most part--it's actually Silent and Greatest, until more recently.)
I strongly disagree! People won't want to walk or take mass transit if they feel much more likely to be victimized in doing so. This creates a spiral, where the most walking-friendly destinations and infrastructure end up neglected, making them even less attractive, and people who want to drive end up going elsewhere.
Yes. People began moving to suburbs almost as soon as they could get cars. Even before, with the "streetcar suburbs" proliferating in the 1920's. Then rising crime and unrest, and safety-hostile urban policies like blockbusting and forced school integration caused mass flight right when the new interstates made it convenient to do so. But notably this happened in the sixties when the boomers were still children or young adults. The highway builders and urban renewists were mostly members of the Greatest Generation. The Boomers just inherited their world, and actually put a lot of effort into fixing the bigger mistakes, leading to an urban renaissance in the 90's, at which point they seemed to have declared victory and turned their attention inward.
Agree and great comment. Just because I'm curious and skeptical, where does the idea of blockbusting come from? Did this actually happen a lot, was it rare, or was it (like poisoned Halloween candy) a complete fabrication?
For those who don't know, blockbusting was the supposed practice of real estate speculators putting black tenants (preferably violent ones) into a previously white neighborhood. When the white neighbors fled, the speculator would buy their houses for cheap and then rent them as a slumlord to new black tenants.
While Wikipedia says "blockbusting was very common and profitable", this feels like a just-so story. I wonder to what extent it really happened. It feels like an effort to blame evil white landlords for a process that would happen naturally anyway.
More options
Context Copy link
Something like this is possible, or even likely. Another point, often made by urbanists, is that having more regular people in spaces makes them safer, and feel safer, because of safety in numbers. However, mainly what I was trying to get at is that the policies that allow lawlessness to continue and spread are orthogonal to policies that favor driving/other modes of transportation, and so it is entirely possible (easy, even, aside from the political constraints that seem to be unique to America) to make walkable places that are nothing like what firmamenti describes.
Streetcar suburbs are the opposite of a car-dependent development and are not a problem.
I think you should re-check your history. Homicide rates declined from the mid 30s until the mid 60s, which is exactly when American governments started demolishing urban neighborhoods to build highways, subsidizing homeownership, etc.
If you're just going to drop a thinly veiled claim that being near black people is a public safety hazard, you should have some evidence for it. "Controversial claims require evidence" etc.
I'll nitpick a bit because why not. Even if streetcar suburbs still existed and functioned, their popularity would still mean White flight, or middle-class flight, from the urban core, resulting in the long-term decay of the latter.
This is obviously hypothetical, but I disagree. Taking a streetcar (or tram, bus, light rail, whatever) into the city, and walking to your final destination, is very different from living in a far-flung exurb that, at best, involves commuting for work (and by the 80s, often didn't even involve that much). And building such places is far less destructive to the city itself. One could argue this just subjects the middle class to the awful conditions of the cities in the 70s without any alternative; on the other hand, maybe if they stay, they vote for better crime policies, provide stabilizing social forces, don't displace lots of inner-city residents, and improve the tax base in the city. (My inner libertarian is outraged at that last one, but usually whenever the urban/suburban arguments start to happen on TheMotte, someone tells me that it's ok that car-dependent suburbs are subsidized because one function of government is to provide public goods for the benefit of all, so I figure what's good for the goose is good for the gander).
As far as I can tell, this "long-term decay" lasted a few decades and has generally been on the reverse since the 90s (in general; obviously some cities continued to decline, but e.g. NYC has had increasing population over the past few decades.)
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
They may be car-dependent now if there street cars are gone. In the one near me it does keep the homeless and adjacent criminal elements from the nearby city from riding public transit out to the suburbs.
If the street cars are gone (and not replaced with some other transit) it's not really a streetcar suburb anymore.
Perhaps. And many such suburbs were annexed by the city anyways. Point is that the strong impulse to live near the city but not in it predates cars. It was not cars that created the impulse to move to suburbs, or was the desire to move to suburbs that caused people to demand cars.
Suburbs are very old, but the cities they surrounded were never rebuilt to allow the suburbanites easier access to the detriment of the city's inhabitants. Certainly the streetcar suburbs we just discussed did not do that and did not require that. Cars' mere existence are not the problem; it's enforced car dependence: Knocking down urban neighborhoods to build highways to the suburbs (which already couldn't handle all the traffic even back in the 50s), building suburbs that can literally only be accessed or traversed in a car, preventing the building of any housing other than sprawling and expensive single family homes, etc.
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
I do, it is amazing. I haven't driven a car once in 2023. I used to have to drive a car everyday on the west coast. I can confidently proclaim that at least all NYC boroughs, Boston (until 2022 MBTA collapse), Mumbai, Madrid, Singapore & Paris can be lived in completely car free.
Note: I have nothing against cars. I literally have an automobile-engineering degree and spent a past life building cars at a big-car co. I love cars, I love road trips and I don't drink just so I can be the happy designated driver. It's just ....... Cars just make no sense as the primary mode of transport in an urban environment. Yeah you can have a car. A fast, spacious and small car. VW Gold R, Model 3 & the Mazda 3 Turbo are better SUVs than SUVs. You just don't need to drive it 99% of the time. Guess what ? The roads are still packed with cars. But now those who NEED to drive can drive, and the rest of us get convenient options.
This can be achieved in smaller towns too. There is high car ownership in college towns (Amherst, Ithaca) and small town New England (Portland Maine), but people still walk around or take transit for most occasions. The car comes out when it's needed.
Many major cities now have bike sharing systems around the city which completely eliminates the need to carry your own bike around.
Sounds like Portland, Seattle, SF..... west coast cities are not walkable. They are not even cities. They are dystopian examples of human deterioration. West coast cities are exactly what happens when car culture is unwilling to cede any ground. Not a single wealthy boomer lives in the city core, because highways drop you in the middle of the city core anyway. All 3 of these cities are designed with meeting the needs of car based visitors more than the needs of the residents. And it shows.
I fully agree with you here. Progressives are idiots. Stringent enforcement of public-safety is first step towards convincing people to move out of cars.
It is true. They did ruin everything. It's just that it is a self-fulfilling prophecy now. Boomers created the wound and cars were the bandage. So if you ever suggest removal of bandage it gets met with obvious anger. But if you ask for funding to treat the wound itself, it gets treated with confusion and dismissal.
I have basically zero knowledge on this subject, but weren't Portland and Seattle founded and established way before car use became widespread?
Yep, the i5 and i90 literally tore through the middle of downtown Seattle. Seattle used to have a superior public transit network in 1914 than it does in 2022.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
cars are great for things that are time-sensitive or far away. Public transportation is so slow and a hassle. walking is really slow. i think having a car is nice because it gives options even if you do not use it.
Public transit is only slow if it is has to sit in traffic. In NYC, Boston & Western Europe, it is a lot faster to get around in public transit than in cars. The problem with cars, is that you have to build larger roads and parking spaces everywhere. That makes transit impossible. That leads to everyone using cars, which in turn requires larger roads and parking spaces. So now everyone wants to go somewhere by far fast, but that that has made traffic worse and the place you want to go to farther off. When you build for transit, everything is so close by that even walking is faster than a car.
Yes ofc. Agreed. For anything out of town, trains can serve a similar purpose. But I am not opposed to cars as an essential means of transport outside the city core.
All of this is especially perplexing giving the rampant drinking culture in the US. If the only fun event in most towns is drinking, then how can I drive to the spot ? I guess the obesity epidemic keeps the BAC levels low /s .
Only because NYC has managed to slow cars enough. Transit in NYC is slow in general, it's just not as slow as driving to most places.
LOL. Have you ever been to New York City?
I live in NYC.
What could NYC do to speed up cars more ? What has it done to slow cars down ?
NYC manages to excel by American standards, but that's a passing grade for global cities in the rest of the world. As compared to other cities of the world, NYC actually allows cars to take a highway straight into the downtown core of the city. Other cities cut off the highway at the edge of the ring road that surrounds the city core. Both Manhattan highways occupy the most expensive waterfront space in the world. If the 2 highways were fully moved underground, you'd be looking at one of the most expensive sale of airspace in the entire history of humanity.
Parking is free or dirt cheap in most of the city, while occupying area that generates far more revenue if given as restaurant seating space. Note there are 3 types of people who take cars into NYC. The first are people who are so rich, that they could have simply taken a daily cab instead. The second are slightly-rich people who commute into the city with a car, who should have to pay actual market rate for parking or have their employer pay it. The final are disabled people who ofc deserve to be accommodated, and should have separate reserved parking on each block.
Pack too many people in too little space.
Which excludes most of Manhattan.
But your claim was
Have you walked from Chelsea to Soho? I have, it takes a damn long time, and it's not a huge portion of the length of the island. If we're not talking just about Manhattan, crossing the East River on foot takes a long time itself -- the Brooklyn bridge is a mile long and the pedestrian path is often crowded. The Williamsburg bridge is even longer and has more of a climb. Cities aren't built to walking scale.
Yeah, it's 30 minutes. In those 30 minutes you see more inspired architecture and more Michelin starred restaurants than entire regions of the US. A good few grocery stores, a target, every fashion store that exists and some of the world's premier underground performance locations (Smalls Jazz, Comedy central). You'll cross effectively 100k people worth of housing, and all in a 30 minute walk, 10 minute bike share, or a 10 minute subway ride.
30 minutes in the traffic in LA, and you're still in traffic while having burned 200 fewer calories.
More options
Context Copy link
...this is what makes a city, a city. Are you just opposed to the existence of cities?
I think it's clear from the other poster's previous comments that they mean a combination of walking and transit; not that you can walk literally everywhere. No one who lives in NYC would walk all over the entire city. I think you can understand this and are trying to make gotchas rather than engage in good faith.
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
This is probably nothing new, but I'd argue that cars are great (i.e. efficiently used) for one thing, that is, for a nuclear family to move between two locations, as long as both our outside urban cores.
More options
Context Copy link
Poorly designed transit is slow. Walking is slow when things are far apart. You can absolutely design cities so that other options are faster than driving... especially since if everyone is driving, you inevitability face heavy congestion, especially within cities. When I was in Switzerland the trains ran beautifully (even during construction) and were probably much easier than driving would have been.
Cars are useful for some things but it would be nice if I didn't have to own one just to get around town, and could get by using one rarely enough that I could make do with the various car rental apps.
More options
Context Copy link
I agree. However, it is a large capital investment, so once you make the plunge to buy one, it makes sense to use it whenever it would be marginally advantageous to do so.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Can you expand this? I've never heard somebody blame the drug/homelessness/theft/inner city problems on cars before. Is the idea that you should force people to live among the filth, because then they would be more motivated to fix it?
That's my bad. I conflated multiple things together and wrote a confusing mess.
I meant that serving the interests of commuters rather than tax-payers of the city has led to cities being carved up in ways that is hostile to the city's residents. This is a pure urban planning complaint, and not an inner city related problem.
Agreed. I am blaming it squarely on incompetent city govts. SF, Seattle and Portland's local govts have done everything in their power to make public spaces feel unsafe and public transit feel unusable. To be fair, if you've ever parked in the downtowns of any of these cities, cars don't feel much safer either.
It is a good question. Because dumping an interstate through the city must've cost around $25B in adjusted costs (using BigDig as reference). Surely that is enough money to solve a homelessness issue for any competently run city govt. Sadly, SF is the diametric opposite of competent. So we have a human constructed hellscape that progressives are convinced is what heaven looks like. I like that about New England liberals. Lot less incompetent.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
What city do you live in?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I think that if we simply had race-neutral policies that we would see equality after somewhere between 100 and 500 years.
More options
Context Copy link
I definitely agree with the last point- politically active millennials are disproportionately absolute loonies and everyone is afraid of the near-fossilized boomers losing power because as entertaining as a Marjorie Taylor green speakership would be no one wants it, while ‘the left eats its own’ cancel culture is that generation trying to seize power.
More options
Context Copy link
The Triumph of Janet (and follow-up with a mad Boomer who turned out to actually be called Janet ranting about the yoof at the Conservative party conference) has rapidly become the canonical British complaint against "Boomer Reality" after going viral on Substack.
A more intellectual version makes the case that the underlying problem is the moral failure of Thatcherism. Margaret Thatcher thought that subsidising Boomer asset acquisition would cause the beneficiaries to become bourgeois and develop the bourgeois virtues, but it actually caused them to become landed gentry in denial and develop the gentlemanly vices (without the noblesse obilige or martial tradition that kept the real landed gentry safe from the guillotine). Sam Freedman sees the core belief that defines boomer reality as "the asset wealth I was subsidised to acquire is something I deserve because I am more virtuous than younger generations". At this level of generality, I think the argument applies on both sides of the Atlantic.
Thank you for those links. Really fits into my speculation.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This is a lot of words to essentially say that people tend to vote in their own self-interest, unless I'm missing some more salient point in there.
I don't think the initial claim ("most of what is now called "white supremacy" is just boomers attempting to prolong "boomer reality."") is even particularly true, because I don't think most accusations of white supremacy are even aimed at boomers; they're aimed primarily at millennials who reject wokeness as far as I can tell. If only because most of those accusations happen online where the boomers, well, aren't.
Conversely, popular millennial leftist politics are just as inherently selfish as boomer politics, it's just that it's based on appropriating wealth from other people instead of conserving existing wealth.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link