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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

#291

Post by NationalPark »

bluGill wrote: post #285
matchbok wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In no way do the suburbs have the quality and diversity of food that any urban core does. 0%. I've been in both, they simple do not compare.

My house has equal or better diversity of food than whatever city you live in. I cook it myself. If course my house needs to have a nice kitchen because I spend a lot of time there. Is the compromise worth it? I think so, but you may be different.

Well, most people don't have a family member who is an expert chef in hundreds of different cuisines and willing to cook up meals to order on a whim.

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

#292

Post by adventured »

coryrc wrote: post #246
smileysteve wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's surprising that sudden drastic changes in demand have sudden drastic effects on supply?

Supply is not increasing and that's just another self-induced injury by the USA.

Entirely depends on where you're at. Overall the US added nine million new housing units from 2010-2019, while adding only about 19 million people. For housing that's somewhere between keeping pace with and exceeding population expansion. Obviously not all of that supply expansion goes to family housing, however not all of it needs to either, given that's only a two to one ratio.

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

#293

Post by noirbot »

binarytox1n wrote: post #251
yason wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

supermarket has never been more than 2 miles away - certainly not a 20 minute drive and it's even within biking distance I'd consider that far, far away. My walk to the nearest train station is about one mile, takes about 15 minutes to get there on foot, and that's irritatingly far, too, considering the trip is two way and repeats every day. Something like a grocery shop should be accessible within decent walking dis…

American in Texas here - maybe this is a behavior encouraged by the very thing we're discussing, but going to the grocery store _every day_ is a big yikes to me. I go once a week and get everything I need for that week. Because I take my car, I can carry that amount of stuff.

Which has turned out to be a really great habit to have now that going to the grocery store regularly is pretty unsafe.

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

#295

Post by abstractbarista »

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…

That's one of the reasons I chose not to live in a city center.

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

#296

Post by matthewowen »

xvedejas wrote: post #207
rsynnott wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you have to detach the idea of _personal_ blame from it. They're both phenomena which cause problems.

I've always seen gentrification as more a symptom of a problem, rather than a problem itself. After all, it's not the appearance of a higher economic class that's bad; it's the forceful displacement of the lower economic class, which may or may not follow. I've seen both scenarios play out in both urban and suburban areas, depending a ton on willingness to allow new construction and pre-existing home ownership rates.

The displacement effect of gentrification is potentially overstated: https://www.philadelphiafed.org/-/media/community-developmen... is an interesting study.

In that case, vulnerable populations in gentrifying neighborhoods were no more likely to leave than equivalent populations in non-gentrifying neighborhoods.

For me, the obvious mechanism is that, well, it's true that people who leave may often blame gentrification / increased costs for their departure. But on the other side of it, without gentrification people may still have left, but for different reasons: to get away from crime, to go somewhere with more amenities. It's possible that these two tendencies somewhat balance each other out.

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

#297

Post by CydeWeys »

msla wrote: post #289
CydeWeys wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also gives a great sense of your own power (which is very important to protest movements) in marching along and shutting down a freeway, which you could never in any other situation just calmly walk down the middle of. Critical Mass is invigorating for the same reasons.

And people who need to get somewhere to save lives are suitably invigorated, I'm sure.

Yeah, actually. I saw a huge fucking grin on the face of the guy riding shotgun in the ambulance as the crowd of cyclists parted like magic in front of them and they had a personal escort of two vested corkers. Guy was even filming. They got where they were going faster than if the usual stop and go car traffic had been there.

The great thing about people on foot or on bike is that they can easily get out of the way of emergency vehicles, vs cars and trucks which often can't.

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

#298

Post by eplanit »

reddog wrote: post #173
dylan604 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Urban sprawl happened because people were tired of living on top of each other, and cities that had the room to expand used it. There was also another name used for that sprawl, white flight. I think we're seeing some of the results of that today.

I've always thought it was funny how whites moving from the city to the suburbs is bad (white flight) and whites moving from the suburbs to the city is also bad (gentrification).

That's the core narrative: whites are bad.

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

#299

Post by abraxas »

betaby wrote: post #284
mcguire wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Upside: an apartment in Warsaw is 2114 Zloty (about $600). Downside: it's 38 sq m (410 sq ft). On the other hand, 650-1000 sq ft apartments go for 4500 Zloty ($1200), so go pack your bags now! ( https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109102/poland-average-r... ) Want to buy? 2000 Euro / sq m. ( https://www.globalpropertyguide.com/Europe/Poland/Price-Hist... ) Budapest? Average apartment size in Hungary is 77 sq m. Aver…

I would say those are very expensive for the local salaries.

In those countries it _really_ depends what your job is. If you're a teacher or a bus driver then yes rent is too damn high.

If on the other hand, you have a corporate job at a branch of a western company it's extremely cheap. Software developers in Warsaw easily make 10-20K PLN per month thus having rent costs less than a quarter of their paycheck.

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

#300

Post by r00fus »

teachrdan wrote: post #122
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 schoolc…

Brinkmanship or security theatre?
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