441–450 of 570 posts
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(Deleted: not worth it)
What a horrid comparison to make between those crimes and a constitutionally-guaranteed right.
You absolutely don't have a right to suppress others with your ideology.
'Freedom of expression' has nothing to do with shutting down highways.
The problem would lie in this report [0], which is cited by the article and by the person tweeting about it.
Happy to be proven wrong; but I know the area quite well (I grew up in Italy), and I immediately thought that the satellite picture of Siena depicted in the article, and in the tweet, does not contain 30,000 people.
The entire "Comune" of Siena (roughly equivalent to a "County" in the UK or US) is ~53,000 people [1].
However, I would be surprised if the part of Siena depicted in the article, the city center, houses 30,000 people.
See for yourself. Here's Assisi, roughly with a similar density as Siena, which has ~4,500 people living in the city center [2].
Here's Siena [3]. Just by approximation, I'd say that Siena's city center is in the range of maybe 15k? Not more than that.
Also, it would be unfair to consider the fact that Siena's city center is also house for students, which live in different conditions than normal people. In that sense, even Harvard's dormitories have a high density, compared to any road structure in Texas.
Anyway, just trying to make you reflect on the numbers - I hope my calculations are correct; or at least, the reasoning behind it should be good enough. As said, happy to be proven wrong.
[0]: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
[1]: https://www.comune.siena.it/Il-Comune/Servizi/Statistica/Pop...
[2]: https://www.google.com/maps/place/53100+Siena,+Province+of+S...
[3]: https://www.google.com/maps/place/53100+Siena,+Province+of+S...
> 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…
The USSRs guidance computers were quite bad, and reentry would have scattered multiple payloads without those.
Having talked to people in the programs from before the iron curtain fell they got around this problem by building larger bombs so the radius of destruction was larger than the radius of uncertainty around a target, to the point that dead-reckoning was viable.
The maximum bomb size the USSR designed on top of Huston: https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?&kt=100000&lat=29.7589&l...
In short, were the USSR serious about dealing with urban sprawl it wouldn't have taken much effort to build weapons that could vaporize Huston sized cities.
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As a decidedly amateur historian with interest in this area, I think that claim is true on its own but also does not tell the entire story. It is true that decentralization was viewed as a major component of nuclear survivability, particularly in the earlier part of the cold war. This was the time period during which the FEMA (today's name) crisis relocation program was being devised, for example, and the high cost a…
Well, nowadays, designing a city around defense would seem ridiculous.
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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.
If the problem is change then you will always have problems.
It isn't change per-se that is usually the problem these days, but the rate of change, and sometimes the rate of change of the rate of change.
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IMO this is part of why why protests started marching down freeways. In LA, if you protest by marching down basically any freeway, you snarl up that freeway (and likely more) for tens of miles, at least (AFAIK). (the 101 between hollywood and DTLA is essentially a single thing, the 10 between DTLA and West Side, the 405 from culver city up to over the pass in sherman oaks...) AKA, the "center" isn't geographic, but..…
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.
The experience is so decidedly wonderful that if, for example, the protest were a Black Lives Matter movement I would change from a whole hearted support to complete opposition in every objective they promote.
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It's okay, the minor negative effects of that are never going to be more important than the ability to protest effectively. Just like nobody blames normal traffic for killing people via doctor delays.
> It's okay, the minor negative effects of that are never going to be more important than the ability to protest effectively. Are you even theoretically willing to discuss this in good faith? > Just like nobody blames normal traffic for killing people via doctor delays. That's because normal traffic jams aren't intentional.
What is wrong with your ability to have a discussion?
Edit: It's ridiculous to me that someone flagged this but not the person accusing me of bad faith based on absolutely nothing. Whoever did that, I beg you to explain.
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It's okay, the minor negative effects of that are never going to be more important than the ability to protest effectively. Just like nobody blames normal traffic for killing people via doctor delays.
"It's okay, the minor negative effects of that are never going to be more important than the ability to protest effectively." No way. You do not have the right to arbitrarily lock down traffic for some arbitrary reason. Wait until Trump supporters lock down traffic in LA all day because they legitimately believe the 'election was stolen'. You can protest in the park or city square or somewhere where it doesn't stop a…
Good for them? That's a valid protest. You don't have to stay out of the way in the free speech zone. (Not to say that separation is never appropriate, but not most of the time.)
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…
Kids need to bring stuff. That could be hockey equipment, a drum set, or a clean playpen.
Kids wander off if not contained. A kid may get off a subway at the wrong stop, lost in the crowd, along as the rest of the family continues on down the line. A kid may fall onto the tracks.
Kids should be kept from licking public spaces. Kids should be kept from eating food found on the ground. Kids should not be able to play with hypodermic needles.
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There's little reason why it would be impossible to have though. I live in a suburb. You'd be hard pressed to think of a type of food that I couldn't get within a 15min drive. Rotating sushi restaurant? Check. Lebanese bakery? Check. Canadian poutine? Check. Noodle restaurant - you want Japanese, Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese? Which of the half dozen hot pot restaurants would you want to go to? Don't forget to pick up so…
A 10 minute walk is more realistic to compare the two. Jumping to a 15 minute drive makes it very apparent you are an American.