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The Future of Cities

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21–30 of 63 posts

Re: The Future of Cities

#21
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

And mostly, new construction is not for low-income people, just because it's new. Low-income people tend to live in older buildings that have depreciated.

[deleted]

Re: The Future of Cities

#22
post #12
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

> My personal approach is to build up better and better datasets (simulated, some taken from open datasets like the Building Performance Database) to slowly but surely force some evidence into these discussions. You'll fail using that approach. The NIMBYs don't make their decisions based on data. They make their opinions based on emotion. If you want to change their minds you need to appeal to their emotions. Run com…

> You'll fail using that approach. The NIMBYs don't make their decisions based on data. They make their opinions based on emotion.

Note that this is equally true of both sides. "YIMBYs" are just as guilty of this.

Re: The Future of Cities

#23
post #2

While I'm glad that this topic is getting addressed, that video was pretty difficult to watch. I know it would be unwise to spend extensive amounts of time on each topic in the video, but the way it was cut made it hard to think about the topic before moving on to the next part. Otherwise, this topic is likely what I want to focus my career in at some point, understanding how to improve the ways cities run, given how…

Philadelphia was the best-designed city, basically ever. Perfect grid, even spacing between residences, businesses, and parks, and you know what ended up happening? Nearly everybody piled up along the waterfronts, because that's where the action was. London, meanwhile, had never really been planned at all, and even well-intentioned planning often ended up straddling the line between disaster and farce. If you want to…

I have much sympathy for the natural development over top-down design, but I have to point out that being symmetrical is not the same as being well designed. In fact, I'd say it's probably a good indication of bad city design.

Re: The Future of Cities

#24
post #11
post #8

"We do damage to nature...and we do less damage to nature when we occupy less of it." Edward Glaeser is the man.

I have to admit this line of thinking never really resonated with me, and it resonates even less as I get older. My goal in life is not to have minimum impact on my environment, and yes, that includes nature . I think the nuance of the middle gets lost in these conversations. The right tends to think humans should have dominion over all (while ignoring the fact that we haven't "conquered" nature, and we have ample ev…

There are more humans right now than there ever was ever before. The biosphere that supports us is already being strained by all our activities. The simple fact is that humans by default do impact our environment very strongly and negatively, especially for all the other species that we share it with. And that is why we need to be careful about minimizing our impact, not eliminating it altogether.

>So no, I do not believe that "we do damage to nature", because besides it being a nonsense statement, even the kernel of truth in it is wrong-headed in my opinion.

It is the general consensus of the scientific community that we do. How is it a nonsense statement?

Re: The Future of Cities

#25
post #14
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to admit this line of thinking never really resonated with me, and it resonates even less as I get older. My goal in life is not to have minimum impact on my environment, and yes, that includes nature . I think the nuance of the middle gets lost in these conversations. The right tends to think humans should have dominion over all (while ignoring the fact that we haven't "conquered" nature, and we have ample ev…

everything from our pets to our lawns to our roads and farms does damage to biodiversity though, which ultimately makes all life less resilient.

Yay I'm not the only one! Preserving biodiversity is oft-unstated most important goal of environmentalism. It's our meta-darwinian imperative.

Re: The Future of Cities

#26
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And mostly, new construction is not for low-income people, just because it's new. Low-income people tend to live in older buildings that have depreciated.

[deleted]

Sure, the idea at least of Section 37 is effectively "local compensation". Too often it's "councillor's goodies for constituents money", and it's not much help when the Section 37 park gets built a kilometer away from the actual development. And often the locals don't want change anyways, so Section 37 stuff is not enticing. Makes sense in theory though.

Re: The Future of Cities

#27

> For a rich white dude up in a 50th floor penthouse, “the future of cities” might mean zipping around in a flying car while a robot jerks you off and a drone delivers your pizza. The guy must think people of color are incapable of attaining that level of wealth. Unintentional racism, but racism all the same.

Well, if you want to go there, it's also sexism. He said "dude". Does that mean he thinks women are also incapable of attaining that level of wealth?

I think he simply wanted to rely on a common stereotype to refer to ultra-wealthy people who live completely different lives and are generally out of touch with reality.

Re: The Future of Cities

#29

> For a rich white dude up in a 50th floor penthouse, “the future of cities” might mean zipping around in a flying car while a robot jerks you off and a drone delivers your pizza. The guy must think people of color are incapable of attaining that level of wealth. Unintentional racism, but racism all the same.

[deleted]

Re: The Future of Cities

#30

> For a rich white dude up in a 50th floor penthouse, “the future of cities” might mean zipping around in a flying car while a robot jerks you off and a drone delivers your pizza. The guy must think people of color are incapable of attaining that level of wealth. Unintentional racism, but racism all the same.

By that token is it also sexist because he said "dude"? Where do you draw the line?

Seriously, not every mention of race is racist. Saying this is racism cheapens the whole idea of racism and hurts whatever it is you believe you're fighting for by "calling it out". You're effectively putting a guy who mentioned someone's (hypothetical, as it's not even in reference to a real person) skin color in the same category as people who burn crosses, or deny people of color job opportunities based solely on race, or lynch children.

To put it in terms appropriate for HN you're adding an extremely small outlier to the data set of "racists" and thus bringing down the entire average.

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