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Streets with Nooks and Crannies Are Beloved and Endangered

theamericanconservative.com

111–120 of 148 posts

Re: Streets with Nooks and Crannies Are Beloved and Endangered

#111

"Building Living Neighborhoods" https://www.livingneighborhoods.org/ht-0/bln-exp.htm Christopher Alexander (of Pattern Language fame) > Our goal is to help everyone make our neighborhoods places of belonging, places of health and well-being, and places where people will want to live and work. This has become possible through the use of Generative Codes, Christopher Alexander's latest work in the effort to make possib…

Do you know where that Gurdjieff quote comes from? I've not heard it before.

IIRC "Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson". It's not verbatim.

Re: Streets with Nooks and Crannies Are Beloved and Endangered

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"get a reality check, this isn't going to work". If I gave out free hot tubs then there would pretty quickly be a hot tub shortage. The problem is that parking is the leasing of public land for insanely low amounts for private property storage. You are forcing everyone around you to pay for your private property storage because you don't feel like paying for it yourself. After all, can I pay the council the £100 a ye…

I'm not defending parking on street parking, and I am not saying we should force developers to add parking (I just find the fingers-in-ears ignoring of the issue frustrating), but with respect I think your views on the parking are a bit maladjusted. That's because you could use your same argument about any public service. We pay for it in spades through income and council taxes. Deliberately semi-quoting your argumen…

Every service you named has huge positive externalities for the community. Parking is the opposite.

Re: Streets with Nooks and Crannies Are Beloved and Endangered

#113
post #14

As often is the case, cars are the elephant in the room. In the alley? We have rebuilt our urban spaces for cars instead of people. Now we wonder at what we've lost but have trouble connecting it to the automobile because t's ubiquitous and most of us can't imagine it otherwise.

This is why it seems surprising to see an article like this in The American Conservative. I'd think those folks don't wan to give up their cars for anything.

> The American Conservative

Oh the irony.

Re: Streets with Nooks and Crannies Are Beloved and Endangered

#114
post #22
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ideas that have stood the test of time might be better than a flash in the pan craze.

Key word there being "might." It could also be that the new thing is way better than the old thing. Being traditional does not make something right. After all, slavery has been around for probably tens thousands of years, and only in the past few hundred has the common moral fabric largely agreed that it is a Bad Thing.

Being new doesn't make something right either and they have been less tested. Also, the Lindy effect suggest that ideas that have been around longer will also continue longer.

Re: Streets with Nooks and Crannies Are Beloved and Endangered

#115
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's almost as if 'Modernism' refers to a specific (albeit vaguely defined) style, and not to the property of being new itself. They're not ranting against semiconductors or antibiotics (both also relatively modern), are they?

Of course not, but these are not relatively modern. They're now part of traditional fabric of society for current conservatives. I think it's more apt to look at how conservatives of the time felt about new and paradigm shifting advances. They led the charges against the scientific revolution when it threatened to subvert authority & mechanisms of control, strongly opposing Copernicus, Bruno, Kepler, Galileo, and New…

> Of course not, but these are not relatively modern.

About as modern as the steel-and-glass/nookless style he criticizes, that gained prominence after the World Wars [1,2].

Ignoring the guilt-by-association/ad-hominem part of your post, what do you find so lacking in his critique? I'll grant that it's a long-winded way to say "it's ugly, sterile, and unpleasant to live in", but I'd say that's a valid (if subjective) complaint. What sort of critiques did Jane Jacobs and Christopher Alexander make? I'm very curious.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_antibiotics

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_architecture

Re: Streets with Nooks and Crannies Are Beloved and Endangered

#116
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not both? It seems to both be more profitable for the developer and better for the environment.

Because there isn't enough space. 4 or 5 parking spaces is the same footprint that a 1 bedroom apartment would consume, then multiply that by the number of floors which is often between 4 or 8 in the outer parts of "central" London. So 4 to 5x25000 for parking spaces, or 4 to 8x650000. Underground parking is possible but rare - you see it more these days, but then it costs significantly more than just a tarmac lot ou…

It sounds like the problem here is that cars just aren't feasible in semi-dense urban areas. Based on your comments you seem to feel that cars are pretty much the only solution to transportation.

I think this is a pretty poor way of thinking that leads to US style cities where there are these "dense" urban areas that have oceans of lifeless areas and greatly increased cost due to the amount of space taking by car parking/storage areas.

Re: Streets with Nooks and Crannies Are Beloved and Endangered

#117
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On addition some narrow alleyways are a bit dangerous —they are narrow and in the event of emergency they can find themselves blocked off (when fire escapes empty to them, as they usually do).

Tokyo seems to do just fine with innumerable tiny alleys that can only accommodate humans or the occasional bicycle. It’s all about balance.

Tokyo, and Japan in general, has a high degree of social trust and cohesion. That makes possible many niceties that are difficult to exist in places with lower amounts of social trust.

Re: Streets with Nooks and Crannies Are Beloved and Endangered

#118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sheesh, these “conversations”. Just “eliminating” parking at new developments does not eliminate the _need_ for parking. People still have to get to work, school, the grocery store. We had that happen near us 30 years ago by a developer who used a similar argument. A golf course was developed into 13,000 apartments with virtually no parking. Overnight, the surrounding neighborhood’s streets were changed. Once they ha…

I agree with the idea of impact fees being used to fund public transit but your first suggestion sounds very confrontational for a few reasons: First, why are only the people who "got there first" allowed to use the public streets for storing privately owned items? Second, why not require that people who do have parking are only allowed to own as many motorized vehicles as can fit in their parking and cannot use the…

Tokyo manages this problem before it ever becomes a problem: you can't register your car to a Tokyo address unless you can prove you have a parking spot. It could be a spot in your front yard (in this case probably the entire yard) or a rented space in a parking garage. If you can't afford a parking spot at market rate, then you can't afford a car.

Re: Streets with Nooks and Crannies Are Beloved and Endangered

#119
Yuri: There are a lot of alcoves in the Astridpark. You use this word, alcoves?

Ken: Alcoves, yes. Sometimes.

Yuri: There are not many people around in these alcoves at Christmas time. If I were to murder a man I would murder him here. Are you sure this is the right word, alcoves?

Ken: Alcoves, yes. It's kind of like nooks and crannies.

Yuri: Nooks and crannies, yes! Perhaps this would be more accurate. Nooks and crannies rather than alcoves. Yes.

Re: Streets with Nooks and Crannies Are Beloved and Endangered

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with the idea of impact fees being used to fund public transit but your first suggestion sounds very confrontational for a few reasons: First, why are only the people who "got there first" allowed to use the public streets for storing privately owned items? Second, why not require that people who do have parking are only allowed to own as many motorized vehicles as can fit in their parking and cannot use the…

Tokyo manages this problem before it ever becomes a problem: you can't register your car to a Tokyo address unless you can prove you have a parking spot. It could be a spot in your front yard (in this case probably the entire yard) or a rented space in a parking garage. If you can't afford a parking spot at market rate, then you can't afford a car.

More than that, registration is actually a national requirement for full sized cars (kei's don't need a registered spot). And the country as a whole generally does not have street parking. Conjoined, means that illegal/congested streets from parking isn't an issue
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