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

texasmonthly.com

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

#121

Post by throw_away »

bobthepanda wrote: post #105
leetcrew wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It was also in the context of a long history of barricades being put up by popular uprisings and stymying and trapping troop formations.

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

#122

Post by teachrdan »

xg15 wrote: post #111

> But it wasn’t strictly an “everything is bigger in Texas” ethos that caused Houston to sprawl the way that it does. 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…

Part of this is brinkmanship. Even if there was no practical way this would improve even short-term survivability, if the Soviets believed that the US believed this would work, that would be enough to show the US would not be cowed by their nuclear arsenal. It was also a way to reassure US citizens that we were not completely vulnerable to nuclear annihilation. Same with backyard fallout shelters and teaching schoolchildren to hide from nuclear explosions under their school desks--the original school shooter drills.

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

#123

Post by leetcrew »

throw_away wrote: post #121
bobthepanda wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It was also in the context of a long history of barricades being put up by popular uprisings and stymying and trapping troop formations.

I guess I'm thinking too much in terms of modern times, where police are mostly aiming to contain a larger crowd. didn't consider that demonstrators might actually intend to trap security forces.

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

#124

Post by maxsilver »

crispyambulance wrote: post #113
exabrial wrote: post #7

The elephant in the room is the assumption that _everyone wants to be stacked on top of each other_. I do agree that designing cities around cars has ruined a lot of nice places though.

> assumption that _everyone wants to be stacked on top of each other_ It's also an assumption that everyone wants to begin and end every trip, no matter how trivial, with a parking spot. It's an assumption that people will want to drive in traffic for 20 minutes minimum to get to a supermarket, do anything with their kids, or anything outside their property line. The notion of "stacked on top of each other" has unple…

> Would you feel "stacked on top of each other" in a Parisian townhouse with a magnificent shared courtyard, 12 foot ceilings, and everything you could possibly want a short walk or subway ride away?

No, I wouldn't feel "stacked on top of each other" if I were a multi-millionaire in Paris.

But, in the real world, your talking about putting families into 600sqft (at very best) boxes, with audible neighbors on every side of the unit, and no way to go anywhere (no parking, no meaningful transport, because 'everything we'd let you have is a short walk away')

If you actually do what you've described, and give everyone their own townhouse, you've just reinvented the modern suburb. Because that's what modern suburbs look like, everyone in a townhouse, or a townhouse with some small strips of yard around it.

> but there are many different ways to live in a dense city

Sure, but only if you are fantastically wealthy.

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

#125

Post by omosubi »

xg15 wrote: post #120
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…

Now that we have the ability to decouple most administrative work from location thanks to remote working, I wonder how long it will take for the first fully decentralised authoritarian government to appear. Can't have protests in the capital if you don't have a capital.

I guess authoritarians have risen to power over the internet but it's hard to imagine someone exerting that much influence over zoom

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

#126

Post by BucketsMcG »

xg15 wrote: post #111

> But it wasn’t strictly an “everything is bigger in Texas” ethos that caused Houston to sprawl the way that it does. 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…

For what it's worth, the same thinking was behind the new capital of Myanmar, Naypyidaw. Paranoid military leadership who thought Yangon was too vulnerable to attack, so built a new capital way inland which is massively spread out to make it harder to bomb.

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

#127

Post by [deleted] »

crmrc114 wrote: post #43
totalZero wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Houston, you drive. There is no reason to judge space in one place by the use patterns of a totally different place.

I have lived in walking cities, I prefer to have a car. I can enjoy my own music or podcast- my own schedule in the case of mass transit. I can also enjoy my own aircon and heat settings. I know lots of people want to bike/walk everywhere- that is just not for me. I think this comes up everytime someone talks about urban planning here. Some people just have no interest in living within high density areas- I am one of…

[deleted]

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

#129

Post by jackpirate »

xg15 wrote: post #111

> But it wasn’t strictly an “everything is bigger in Texas” ethos that caused Houston to sprawl the way that it does. 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…

I've also never heard this claim before despite quite a bit of work on nuclear weapons policy. I've asked a question about it on /r/AskHistorians to get more clarification: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ik1v9q/a_rec...

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

#130

Post by davegauer »

alpineidyll3 wrote: post #116

These highways suck to drive on and have as much delay as Illinois highways half the surface area. Its one of my least favorite parts about tx. The reason is largely that they just scaled up traffic patterns which are fine for 2 lanes to 6-7 lanes. It's absurd. The local legend in Austin is that the highway designer later committed suicide. I bike to work.

I heard the same suicide tale about The Stack when I lived in Phoenix. I wonder if this is a common urban legend?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stack

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