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

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

#451

Post by LoSboccacc »

donjoe wrote: post #352
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…

Quite interestingly, the social aspects of urban sprawl was completely left out when designing post WW2 cities. When people think about beautiful cities, they would mention Venice or Paris or Rome. All these cities were built for 'foot traffic' which still works perfectly fine nowadays. In those cities, the elderly and children do have an environment to move around by themselves and socialize freely. When it comes to…

> still works perfectly fine nowadays.

Rome is all but working perfectly fine, with commuter traffic locked almost daily by the tiniest fender bender happening on the highway around it

Venice is likewise a mess, situation was so bas they built an highway to go around the existing highway that corrected it to the nearby areas, and the lack of easy mobility in the city center is fuelling a severe living cost inflation

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

#452

Post by sudosysgen »

Kerrick wrote: post #366
macintux wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you’ve created a logjam however, how does the ambulance get through the stopped traffic? (I’m not arguing against protesting on the freeway, to be clear, just genuinely curious how often it helps vs hinders emergency vehicles.)

I've experienced this outside of protests. My wife and I were driving somewhere near downtown St. Louis, on a part of the interstate where there are tall concrete barriers between the directions of traffic. There was a complete log jam due to an accident ahead, and we heard sirens coming up from behind us to the left. We were in the left of two lanes. The right shoulder was either filled up or too small (can't rememb…

Damn, that's dedication. Kudos to the drivers!

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

#453

Post by sudosysgen »

jariel wrote: post #440
Dylan16807 wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You definitely get to supress infrastructure when you have enough people willing to protest.

I don't get it, are you trying to imply that protests should have no disruptive effect? That is a good recipe for complete political dysfunction. Civil disobedience is based upon disruption. It is our right as citizens.

Besides, if an ambulance or doctor needed to go through a protest, the vast majority of the time just asking gets them through.

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

#454

Post by mr_toad »

_8j50 wrote: post #142
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…

That would be a lot of ICBMs. The city center is not residential. Most people that work in the city center for city's like houston or LA commute from one of many different cities. Just to wipe out half of houston you would need to simultaneously strike at least a dozen different locations. The idea was, if there is a missile on the way or if other cities are being attacked, the sprawl would allow evacuating a lot of…

> No sense in wiping out every single city.

This was pretty much the strategy towards the end of the war. More than 60 Japanese cities were firebombed, civilian casualties probably exceeded those killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

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

#455

Post by sudosysgen »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #447
msla wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

You're accusing me of bad faith. When all I did was disagree with you. 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.

In the future, it's considered bad form to complain if your posts are flagged. That said, I agree that it certainly wasn't bad faith to argue that in some cases the downsides of protests are worth how vital it is, and it was a very cheap shot.

FWIW, my city had 35% of its population, over half a million people, entirely fill almost every street downtown, and there were no catastrophic events. Worse comes to worst, alternative routes will need to be planned. I think the most catastrophic thing that happened is that the cellular systems crashed, but for the most part GSM still held out so it was okay, and the stores had landlines that were used when worse came to worst.

Same during the Hong Kong protests, I never saw anyone complain about such things, and indeed I don't believe it had catastrophic effects.

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

#456

Post by joe_the_user »

S_A_P wrote: post #400
jcrawfordor wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is a really great response. I think there are a ton of both selfish and altruistic reasons for the urban sprawl that is Houston. I grew up here (Alief area) and that was the burbs when I was young. (It’s about 15-20 minutes drive from downtown) there was a 10 or so mile gap between where I lived and Sugarland. Now it all runs together. I now live due south of Katy in an unincorporated area about 40 miles away fr…

Cheap land and big house is a huge draw for sprawl.

The problem is this is a fundamentally unsustainable proposition. The US is hitting those problems now and it's not pretty. It's not just gridlock but problem that once things stabilize, maintaining sprawl costs more than maintaining a compact city[1]. The roads and the schools in the suburbs are often good only when they're new - once they age, the problem become visible (California is harbinger for the rest of sprawl land, this state has the older sprawl, remember). Poor services can cause an area of sprawl to become undesirable and then it's hard to recover - public transit is hard to add when distances are large but you can still wind-up poor people lacking vehicles in the hinterlands.

[1] https://usa.streetsblog.org/2015/03/05/sprawl-costs-the-publ...

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

#457

Post by Schiendelman »

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.

It’s not an assumption at all. We measure desire in dollars per square foot. People are willing to pay - to bid - more dollars per square foot to live in higher density.

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

#458

Post by sudosysgen »

souprock wrote: post #436
Flobin wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When a grocery store is very nearby and you go to the grocery store, you can get your produce fresher. And you don't have to plan your meals, which may or may not be a positive side (it is for me). Check out this Canadian talking about his grocery trip in Amsterdam: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYHTzqHIngk .

You can't get your produce fresher if you are walking, unless the current temperature just happens to be a few degrees above freezing. In much of the USA, your produce would freeze and thus become mush. In much of the USA, temperatures well above 90 degrees would wilt your produce. Also, all your frozen food would be ruined.

Err, no? I live in Montreal, I've carried produce and other kinds of food by bike or by walk in -30C to +40C weather. It doesn't take so long that your food becomes damaged.

If you're carrying frozen food, we have bags with insulation and reflective foil on the inside. Put your frozen food there and even in +40C weather it will take much more than 15 minutes to thaw. Besides, buses and obviously the metros are acclimatized to a temperature of more or less 25C.

It really is just a non-issue. I assure you your produce are left outside for more than 20 minutes. There is no impact at all on freshness, and walkable cities promote smaller grocery stores that tend to have fresher food.

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

#459

Post by conro1108 »

austincheney wrote: post #446
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.

As a commuter nothing would turn me against the protestors goals faster than clogging a freeway. I have a long and frustrating commute and the idea of that commute becoming a multi hour trapped parking adventure after a long day doing a job that is agonizingly depressing is quite souring. The experience is so decidedly wonderful that if, for example, the protest were a Black Lives Matter movement I would change from…

If interrupting your commute is enough to turn you to "complete opposition in every objective they promote," I have a hard time believing you were ever a whole-hearted supporter.

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

#460

Post by austhrow743 »

msla wrote: post #435
Dylan16807 wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

People pretending every life has infinite and unsurpassable value are the ones unwilling to discuss in good faith. There's nowhere to go from "people will die!"
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