Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Interchange in Houston is the same size as an entire city center in Italy

texasmonthly.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 570 posts

Re: Interchange in Houston is the same size as an entire city center in Italy

#101

Post by mixedCase »

kaesar14 wrote: post #33
mixedCase wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I don't think this direct comparison is valid (at least let's also have the per capita numbers, which I believe is around 60% higher in Houston if Google snippets are to be believed) one could argue that a portion of that GDP is enabled by road infrastructure such as this interchange.

America is the richest country on earth. It's such a kneejerk reaction of our countrymen to defend our insane way of life by bringing up GDP numbers instead of stuff like life expectancy, quality of life, access to equitable transportation. America being rich is known fact already. Edit: From your own happiness survey link - "The U.S. GNI per capita income is actually higher than in most of the countries ahead of the…

> It's such a kneejerk reaction of our countrymen to defend our insane way of life by bringing up GDP numbers

I'm not from the US. I live in latin america where people think like you do and feel everyone is entitled to a bunch of "essential" things by the state using public money, and here I am watching Argentina from the other side of the river as it beats its poverty high score every day right after Venezuela did the same thing with the same exact steps. Just now they socialized the Internet, cable and telcos, wonder what else is going to be "essential".

> From your own happiness survey link

That is not my link. It's not even in the same comment subtree.

> Don't give a damn about GDP.

Well, pick a country around here from the ones that share your line of thought and just move. If you can get me one of them unhappy green cards on your way please let me know.

Re: Interchange in Houston is the same size as an entire city center in Italy

#102

Post by ashtonkem »

heymijo wrote: post #78
swasheck wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve also read that it was the byproduct of post war migration of whites who wanted access to the city but were afraid of the concentration of black people who resided in the city interior. (Stamped from the Beginning by Ibrim X Kendi)

No discussion of sprawl is complete without talking about Robert Moses. American highways, and highways around the world sprawl as they do because of Robert Moses. Throughout Robert Cairo's 1344 page biography of Moses, the reader sees how Moses' racism and clasism impacted the massive influence he had on transportation and sprawl in America. +1 for Stamped. In addition, Redlining is a well researched and documented…

Robert Moses designed public amenities to be inaccessible to public transit specifically to exclude poor residents from reaching them. He went as far as designing some bridges to be impassable to buses, so that only those who could afford a personal automobile could reach the amenities on the other side of said bridge.

Re: Interchange in Houston is the same size as an entire city center in Italy

#103

Post by ghaff »

Const-me wrote: post #66
sithadmin wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I buy it; it sounds like a 'just-so' story. Sprawl is popular because it allows for larger properties at lower prices relative to dense urban development. The vast majority of real estate developers have likely never seriously considered factors like probability of a nuclear strike as a criteria for selecting land for development.

They considered transportation infrastructure. See National Interstate and Defense Highways Act of 1956: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Aid_Highway_Act_of_195... They also considered jobs availability. I wasn’t able to find good enough sources on the policies of the era, but many articles on the Internets say the sprawl of industries was caused in part by federal policies: https://www.jstor.org/stable/44250919

That's true although the history I've read suggests that Eisenhower wanted to do the Interstate Highway system anyway and framing it as being at least partly about defense made it easier to get the funding approved.

Re: Interchange in Houston is the same size as an entire city center in Italy

#104

Post by scruple »

tuna-piano wrote: post #55

It's interesting that protests generally happen in dense parts of cities. Now imagine a city without a dense part - protesting becomes more difficult. Myanmar's non-democratic military government actually moved their capital from a dense city to a new city so spread out and with no downtown area - potentially to prevent the ability to protest the government. https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/inside-burma-s-ghost-t…

Reminds me of Brasilia.

Re: Interchange in Houston is the same size as an entire city center in Italy

#105

Post by bobthepanda »

leetcrew wrote: post #98
adolph wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Some of Haussmann's critics said that the real purpose of Haussmann's boulevards was to make it easier for the army to maneuver and suppress armed uprisings; Paris had experienced six such uprisings between 1830 and 1848, all in the narrow, crowded streets in the center and east of Paris and on the left bank around the Pantheon. These critics argued that a small number of large, open intersections allowed easy contr…

is there any further explanation of this? it strikes me that narrow chokepoints would be more advantageous to the numerically inferior but better-equipped/trained force.

more advantageous to the numerically inferior who know the lay of the land, because it's much easier to conduct urban guerilla warfare in such instances.

Armies during this period were all still about marching in formation, which doesn't work well in confined spaces where you can't really keep a formation.

Re: Interchange in Houston is the same size as an entire city center in Italy

#106

Post by drewbug01 »

adolph wrote: post #90
tuna-piano wrote: post #55

It's interesting that protests generally happen in dense parts of cities. Now imagine a city without a dense part - protesting becomes more difficult. Myanmar's non-democratic military government actually moved their capital from a dense city to a new city so spread out and with no downtown area - potentially to prevent the ability to protest the government. https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/inside-burma-s-ghost-t…

"Some of Haussmann's critics said that the real purpose of Haussmann's boulevards was to make it easier for the army to maneuver and suppress armed uprisings; Paris had experienced six such uprisings between 1830 and 1848, all in the narrow, crowded streets in the center and east of Paris and on the left bank around the Pantheon. These critics argued that a small number of large, open intersections allowed easy contr…

Not directly related, but the US Interstate Highway system was at least partially designed with military concerns in mind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System#Hist... . I'm reminded of it every time I see military vehicles on the highway.

Obviously not the same thing that you're talking about here - but just interesting to me, and vaguely related!

Re: Interchange in Houston is the same size as an entire city center in Italy

#107

Post by bobthepanda »

swasheck wrote: post #30
blakesterz wrote: post #11

"Rather, Cold War–era urban design philosophy in the U.S. prioritized sprawl because older cities that had urbanized pre–World War II—New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Detroit—were seen as being susceptible to nuclear strikes. Less-dense cities such as Los Angeles and Houston were less likely to be targeted for a nuclear attack. Sprawl was a deterrent against Soviet aggression." That's the first time I've heard th…

I’ve also read that it was the byproduct of post war migration of whites who wanted access to the city but were afraid of the concentration of black people who resided in the city interior. (Stamped from the Beginning by Ibrim X Kendi)

Suburbs had been expanding quickly prior to this, but city centers actually start truly declining around the '60s and '70s after Brown vs. Board of Ed resulted in unpopular busing programs to desegregate schools, as well as the riots that proceeded MLK's death.

Re: Interchange in Houston is the same size as an entire city center in Italy

#108

Post by bmitc »

Aardwolf wrote: post #75

You can find as big highway interchanges in Italy too, e.g.: https://www.google.com/maps/@41.8177773,12.3911127,17z And you can most likely find small cities with 30K people in the US too (though I had trouble finding one of this size near Houston when scrolling through Google maps because the cities there look less dense and don't appear to have a discernible center at least from the look of the grid pattern of the…

Your link only shows a simple cloverleaf design, typically used at the intersection of only two highways or as an exit from a highway. Those are everywhere in U.S. cities, in certain regions as not everyone uses the cloverleaf. They are not super common in Texas though, which uses different designs. But either way, it is not close to the same size and complexity as the exchange, of which Houston has many, in the original post.

Re: Interchange in Houston is the same size as an entire city center in Italy

#109

Post by williamdclt »

oblio wrote: post #51
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've never been to Europe, I would really love to go some day, but I can only imagine the feeling of actually seeing these really old places/structures in person. European cities are also relatively young. If you want to see old cities, you should visit the Middle East or China.

Most Chinese cities are younger than Rome or Istanbul or Athens.

I suppose it's not a fair comparison, "most" chinese cities against the oldest european ones. How old are the oldest chinese cities? I'd love to know more about these

Re: Interchange in Houston is the same size as an entire city center in Italy

#110

Post by ucarion »

adolph wrote: post #90
tuna-piano wrote: post #55

It's interesting that protests generally happen in dense parts of cities. Now imagine a city without a dense part - protesting becomes more difficult. Myanmar's non-democratic military government actually moved their capital from a dense city to a new city so spread out and with no downtown area - potentially to prevent the ability to protest the government. https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/inside-burma-s-ghost-t…

"Some of Haussmann's critics said that the real purpose of Haussmann's boulevards was to make it easier for the army to maneuver and suppress armed uprisings; Paris had experienced six such uprisings between 1830 and 1848, all in the narrow, crowded streets in the center and east of Paris and on the left bank around the Pantheon. These critics argued that a small number of large, open intersections allowed easy contr…

This is pretty widely thrown around, but it should be noted that the central purpose of Haussmannization was public health and beautification: tearing down the slums, building proper infrastructure like sewers and aqueducts, and pretty parks and streets. The article you link to emphasizes this.

The wide boulevards did very little to prevent the Paris Commune, for instance. Napoleon III just wanted to build a second Rome, not some martial panopticon.

Post reply on HN