I think I key point underrepresented is the government and other authoritative bodies (HOAs) stepped out of the way or weren't present to enforce laws and policies that ensure systemic racism and inequality.
The accidentally resilient design of Athens apartments
71–80 of 119 posts
Re: The accidentally resilient design of Athens apartments
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
Looking at the conditions externally should not be enough to contradict data Data can easily be used to lie or conceal, and if the observed conditions are clearly inferior, then the data is qualitatively inaccurate and/or incomplete.
Seems like a puzzle worth understanding. If the budgets & class sizes are similar, and the teacher salaries are lower in tough schools, then what is the rest spent on? In some countries I would guess that the budget is being pocketed along the way, but I doubt that's the case here. Is there sufficient extra off-the-books spending in rich areas to explain the difference? e.g. a volunteer donating to fix the AC? While…
A lot of schools use teachers aides to support kids with special needs, like Chicago has 12k teachers, 4k special ed classroom assistants, and 3.7k special ed teachers. So like the top line teacher to student ratio may be similar to a suburban school, but I doubt that the suburban schools have that high of a ratio of special ed support staff and teachers.
https://cps.edu/About_CPS/Financial_information/Pages/Employ...
Re: The accidentally resilient design of Athens apartments
#73That's where I grew up - amid the polykatoikies! It's very strange to see such a positive view of Athens. I mean, growing up, I can't remember anyone ever having a good thing to say about our own homes. Looking down from Lycabetus hill, Athens -rather the entire Attican basin from Penteli to Piraeus and from Parnitha to Hymmetus- looks covered with gray, frayed, books or document binders, or perhaps a mille-feuille w…
I'm not even sure that it's fair to say that Athens failed to preserve it's architecture and replaced it with the concrete monstrosities. Athens grew so dramatically that there simply wasn't much of a city to preserve: in 1822 it had a population of ~5000 families, in the 1907 census it had a population of 167k, by the 1928 census (after the Treaty of Lausanne) it had a population of 802k. So we went from a few thousand houses to 800,000 people in a century. There is really no way to preserve much with that level of growth, and it's not like those 4000 houses would have been worth keeping anyway.
Re: The accidentally resilient design of Athens apartments
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
My whole life growing up I was taught about how repressive the socially integrated model was, where everybody knows everybody, and how we should celebrate that the modern world has left it behind. As time goes by, I'm starting to realize that while it can be very repressive for people who don't fit in, in trying to discard that model outright we've lost something incredibly important.
I think what is important is that everybody find community. And it shouldn't be a surprise that that is easiest in the smaller settings that most humans have lived their lives in before the modern era. But we can have both. The great cities of the world have vibrant local neighborhoods AND "scenes" based on common interests. And for the smaller towns and villages the internet enables both online communities, and more…
Well, we've gone all-in on "digital community", which has the unfortunate outcomes of 1) easy to find your echo chamber of choice and 2) limited in-person interaction. In-person community can still be found, but it seems to be in decline. For example, teenagers are spending less & less time with their friends, and church congregations continue to shrink.
Re: The accidentally resilient design of Athens apartments
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seems like a puzzle worth understanding. If the budgets & class sizes are similar, and the teacher salaries are lower in tough schools, then what is the rest spent on? In some countries I would guess that the budget is being pocketed along the way, but I doubt that's the case here. Is there sufficient extra off-the-books spending in rich areas to explain the difference? e.g. a volunteer donating to fix the AC? While…
A lot of schools use teachers aides to support kids with special needs, like Chicago has 12k teachers, 4k special ed classroom assistants, and 3.7k special ed teachers. So like the top line teacher to student ratio may be similar to a suburban school, but I doubt that the suburban schools have that high of a ratio of special ed support staff and teachers. https://cps.edu/About_CPS/Financial_information/Pages/Employ..…
Thanks. Those are huge numbers, 40% of teaching staff who (it seems) don't count as teachers. Presumably these totals include richer & poorer parts of the city, and if it's skewed then the proportion may be even higher in the poorer bits? (Or will all the richer bits be outside Chicago school district?)
Re: The accidentally resilient design of Athens apartments
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think most people in the US find it more expedient to use cash for the land, rather than take in-kind compensation. Consider, for instance: where will you live while your apartment is under construction? And, can you actually trust the value that the developer touts, attached to the new apartment? Financing for this sort of up-front buyout will be readily available so there is no major barrier.
Credit is insanely available in the US. Developers can get a significant loan; which is a better deal than channeling your apartment through such a scheme (assuming selling is easy).
Right, this sort of scheme is a great way to get things done without a lot of formal banking & legal machinery. And it's pretty resilient: if building is interrupted by (say) political unrest, or there's an episode of hyperinflation in the middle, everyone understands the deal -- the landowner still gets his 2 flats when it's done.
Re: The accidentally resilient design of Athens apartments
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here is an article I found by The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/11/pta-fu... "PTA at a well-off school might raise a million dollars or more to pay for additional teachers’ salaries, band or orchestra instruments, a new library, iPads for classrooms, field trips, or other initiatives." "I later learned that most of the shiny extras (and even some full-time aides and specialty subject tea…
That doesn’t say anything about a Uber style bake sale lose money on every order scheme. PTAs accept donations. I agree with your overall premise, there was no need to make up a story around it.
This was hyperbole. I don't think I made anything up, I only exaggerated the concept of buying commercially produced muffins to be resold for 0 revenue to the purchaser.
A more grounded example of this behavior is well off parents buying their child's quota of items that are meant to be sold door to door out of a catalog to raise money. I don't know the name of this type of fundraising but this is a behavior I have witnessed many times. Parents buying overpriced crap out of a catalog so that their kid gets the extra credit and other perks offered by the school in exchange for this.
Re: The accidentally resilient design of Athens apartments
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
>In many states, the vast majority of school funding comes from property taxes. So schools in wealthy neighborhoods are better funded than schools in poor neighborhoods, and this guarantees homes in wealthy school districts maintain their value since everyone wants their kids in those schools. In the US, school funding is (on average) progressive because federal and state funding more than offsets any local inequalit…
Go look at the schools in poor Black neighborhoods in Cleveland, Chicago, Boston, Columbus, Detroit, Indianapolis, Cincinnatti. You will find buildings in disrepair, lacking basic things like air conditioning. Last year, Columbus City Schools cancelled classes several days because it was too hot. If you look at teachers' salaries, the city school districts pay significantly less than the surrounding suburbs, while ha…
> You will find buildings in disrepair, lacking basic things like air conditioning.
Offtopic, but schools are closed for the summer. How many US states need air conditioning in schools? Honest question as an outsider who's never lived in an apartment with AC.
Re: The accidentally resilient design of Athens apartments
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
Go look at the schools in poor Black neighborhoods in Cleveland, Chicago, Boston, Columbus, Detroit, Indianapolis, Cincinnatti. You will find buildings in disrepair, lacking basic things like air conditioning. Last year, Columbus City Schools cancelled classes several days because it was too hot. If you look at teachers' salaries, the city school districts pay significantly less than the surrounding suburbs, while ha…
> You will find buildings in disrepair, lacking basic things like air conditioning. Offtopic, but schools are closed for the summer. How many US states need air conditioning in schools? Honest question as an outsider who's never lived in an apartment with AC.
> Offtopic, but schools are closed for the summer.
A very substantial share of schools either have a year round schedule or (especially for secondary schools) offer a summer session if main instruction is on a traditional schedule.
Re: The accidentally resilient design of Athens apartments
#80Athens is an extremely ugly city. It's so ugly that, if you grow up there or live there long enough, the ugliness slowly seeps inside of you and empties your inside, too. Everything looks as if beauty has no role to play in our lives. The ugliness is not confined to the buildings, people dress in ugly clothes and are poorly groomed and rude. Working for a Greek employer is hell. People hate working and all the time t…
Have you ever lived on a different country? Despite it's ugliness, Athens is a vibrant and diverse city that never sleeps. Everything you need to do is close to your home. Jobs, night life, shops, bookstores, etc even a walk by the sea near mikrolimano. It's an interconnected community of human randomness that depicts the randomess of the real life.
I can confirm that most Greeks will agree with both comments above.