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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

#311

Post by pueblito »

abraxas wrote: post #210
wozniacki wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cities you list are not exactly diverse economic powerhouses in the same way even Houston is. A comparison of the "GDPs" of those cities would show that much. Also no one wants to walk through blighted or a high crime neighborhood. American cities have a lot more diversity than any of the cities you mention with income disparities separating various races and stocks of people. Homogeneity of the populaces involve…

Is this your long winded way of saying "I'm scared of black people"? There are plenty of very diverse races living in Europe and nobody is scared of them.

That is completely not what he said and you know it. You should be ashamed of yourself for taking a sincere and thoughtful reply and twisting it to call him a racist.

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

#312

Post by [deleted] »

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).

[deleted]

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

#313

Post by trthomps »

trophycase wrote: post #275
binarytox1n wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It all just ties together. Going to the grocery store every day is a big yikes because you can't walk around the block to pick up fresh produce for dinner

Yeah, I live a block from my grocery store in SF, and I still only go 1-2 times a week unless I need something fresh for today / missing ingredient, which is rare since I plan ahead and only buy things that will last at least a few days.

Living in a dense city like SF is great for somethings, but it sucks when you want to leave, and paying almost $400/month for parking isn't good either. Both lifestyles have their advantages and I think it really comes out to personal taste and choice.

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

#314

Post by dragonwriter »

CydeWeys wrote: post #308
cousin_it wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Deleted: not worth it)

What a horrid comparison to make between those crimes and a constitutionally-guaranteed right.

Would the moral status of rape, or, say, slavery be any greater if it was written into the Constitution? (Note that one of those was, extensively, written into the Constitution.)

If not, what is the point of your argument?

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

#315

Post by dmurray »

CydeWeys wrote: post #182
reddog wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

It makes logical sense. You cause problem A by leaving, and then in coming back you cause problem B. The same thing happened with the Iraq War -- we caused lots of problems with the unnecessary invasion, then caused more problems by leaving. It's lose/lose. The only winning move was never to play. In the white flight analogy, the only winning move was never to seek segregation from moving out of the cities in the fir…

In the same way, global warming is bad, but global cooling would be much worse. It's climate change that's the problem, disrupting human patterns that we've got used to.

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

#316

Post by refurb »

CydeWeys wrote: post #302
refurb wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. One way to solve this is moving away from the identity politics (why is that group moving here) and tell people who want to “maintain their neighborhood character” to pound sand.

What does "pounding sand" actually mean in this context though? Considering that the people in question are complaining because it's already happening to them? You can't just tell people to stop complaining about grievances.

People are free to complain. But the challenge is (at least in CA) is that the most minor complaints will hold up desperately needed housing projects.

Legitimate complaints (e.g. this will mess up traffic) are fine. "Neighborhood feel" complaints (e.g. this building is too tall, it doesn't fit the neighborhood character) should be met with "thanks for your feedback, but that's not a good enough reason".

Of course if there is widespread consensus among voters on how they want their city to be developed, fine. But right now, the current system allows a handful of very vocal opponents to development to derail new housing.

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

#317

Post by abraxas »

pueblito wrote: post #311
abraxas wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this your long winded way of saying "I'm scared of black people"? There are plenty of very diverse races living in Europe and nobody is scared of them.

That is completely not what he said and you know it. You should be ashamed of yourself for taking a sincere and thoughtful reply and twisting it to call him a racist.

I did not call him racist so don't put words in my mouth. I said that he sounded like he was scared of Black Americans which I think is rather obvious from what he wrote.

Granted I'm not an American and I have no idea how hostile race relations run in that country but I know that in most of Western Europe and in Canada most people have no issues mingling with other races and all neighborhoods are getting increasingly diverse.

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

#318

Post by rtkwe »

matthewowen wrote: post #296
xvedejas wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 gentrificati…

Seems like the way to disentangle the two is to look a the people replacing those that move out. If they're roughly the same economically then it's the churn of being a poor person in a capitalist society if the income is going up particularly if it's a sharp increase and rents are rising then it's gentrification.

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

#320

Post by 1propionyl »

r00fus wrote: post #300
teachrdan wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Or option C: greed.

Any way you slice it, nuclear deterrence, missile defense, containment theory and more generally any initiative motivated by the fear of imminent nuclear holocaust and the Red Menace were huge windfalls for industrial corporations from the end of WWII onward.

It was an effective way to siphon huge amounts of money from the postwar federal coffers for corporations that had made bank during the war, but were now left to justify why the government should continue shoveling money at them.

Now, this may not be the case for Houston's interchanges in particular, but it was certainly the case for many such endeavors going forward for decades. See also: SDI ("Star Wars"). And of course, there were other factors like suburbanization/white flight and the ascendant automobile industry. But all of these potential motivators were (are?) very entangled and hard to fully extricate from one another.

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