Earlier quoted context omitted.
It isn't illegal to be hated, at least not yet. You seem awfully eager to coerce your neighbors into behaving in a way consistent with your personal values.
Conformity is a means of social cohesion, yes.
[flagged]
Berlin Google Campus occupied
161–170 of 187 posts
Re: Berlin Google Campus occupied
#162The whole protesting thing seems pretty tame these days. They list demands, but don't follow up with any threat? Why would anyone take the demands seriously?
the implicit threat is that they will keep showing up like this. eventually the police will seriously injure one or more and it will look really bad. this kind of thing actually concerns Western governments.
Re: Berlin Google Campus occupied
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
These are not anarchists. Just a bunch of bully.
On a positive note, Uganda sounds lovely: 'Uganda is a landlocked country in East Africa whose diverse landscape encompasses the snow-capped Rwenzori Mountains and immense Lake Victoria. Its abundant wildlife includes chimpanzees as well as rare birds. Remote Bwindi Impenetrable National Park is a renowned mountain gorilla sanctuary. Murchison Falls National Park in the northwest is known for its 43m-tall waterfall a…
Unless you are gay, in which case consensual sex is a life sentence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Uganda
Re: Berlin Google Campus occupied
#164Pretty interesting that Google is protested that much, while there are no actions of any comparable size against Zalando. Zalando also is a "big tech firm", and it already has and continues to change Berlin in exactly the way it is claimed of Google, on a much larger scale than Google will in the foreseeable future (since they already have their German HQ in Hamburg).
Zalando, especially the new office space close to the Lido, has been heavily protested against. The space has been squatted IIRC, but it’s harder to make news by squatting an empty plot. The space close to the Ostbahnhof is less contentious since it’s not right in the middle of a living area but in a newly built commercial zone.
But what they are protesting is not necessarliy the office building, but the influx of well paid tech workers that the companies bring with them. There, the building near Ostbahnhof or the Rocket Tower should be just as controversial. In the 3 years of living in Berlin, I feel like the recent Google protests are the only thing that got any significant attention.
Re: Berlin Google Campus occupied
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not like Google can influence Berlin zoning laws to build more apartments ...
Google could for example work with the locals to actually provide good for the quarter. The google campus replaces a space that was used for venues at least some of the time. For example it hosted a Christmas market every year for a weekend. Not much, but a bit of community involvement. Google could have worked towards making things possible, but google has, from what I heard even managed to anger other tenants in th…
[deleted]
Re: Berlin Google Campus occupied
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
B.S. You just need to re-zone massive sprawling single-family zones into mid-rises. The "american dream" of a massive house for every couple can't survive the 21st century without triggering a revolution.
Have you been in the area? There's no single family housing there at all for quite some distance (I'd say a few kilometers in each direction at least). It's mostly densely built-up with 3-5 story apartment buildings.
I used to live a couple of blocks away from the Umspannwerk. The area is almost entirely built up with 5-6 story buildings. Due to the latitude of Berlin, building higher would mean lower floors don't get any natural light in the winter. This is not something that people in California see as a concern, but it's extremely important for people's mental health that live in northern latitudes. In the eastern parts of Berlin that have high rise housing from the DDR time, the buildings are spread out so that the buildings don't make shadows on each other that last all day. Then you end up with these islands of people separated by big open areas. The density isn't much higher overall, and you don't get the cozy feeling of Kreuzberg where it's continuously built up, and there is street level retail on the ground floors.
As it is, Kreuzberg, the district we're talking about, the population density is 15,000/sq km, about half the density of Manhattan, and about twice the density of San Francisco as a whole.
Re: Berlin Google Campus occupied
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are good answers. But they're ones of housing policy and urban planning, not "#FuckOffGoogle", which serves literally no one.
Telling angry people that they're irrational and not entitled to their anger is not a good answer, either.
This is an incredibly condescending thing to say, and probably not helpful, but I'm going to say it anyway.
When my two year old gets angry and starts a screaming fit, I tell her she's not getting her way and screaming won't help, and practice taking deep breaths with her, and talking soothingly with her until she can calm down.
Being angry doesn't make a person right. A person being angry does not mean you should give into their demands. A mob of angry people is not more right for being large, scary and potentially violent.
Re: Berlin Google Campus occupied
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
Telling angry people that they're irrational and not entitled to their anger is not a good answer, either.
This is an incredibly condescending thing to say, and probably not helpful, but I'm going to say it anyway. When my two year old gets angry and starts a screaming fit, I tell her she's not getting her way and screaming won't help, and practice taking deep breaths with her, and talking soothingly with her until she can calm down. Being angry doesn't make a person right. A person being angry does not mean you should gi…
See, you misunderstand my point. When faced by an angry mob, you don't simply tell them they're wrong. That's not a smart tactic when people are emotional. Just stating facts won't cool anyone's passions or grievances.
Re: Berlin Google Campus occupied
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you been in the area? There's no single family housing there at all for quite some distance (I'd say a few kilometers in each direction at least). It's mostly densely built-up with 3-5 story apartment buildings.
3-5 story isn't very tall. Tear them down and go taller.
Please walk us through how "Tear them down and go taller" works in practical terms? Do you just throw those occupants out on the street? Families, the elderly etc?
If not where and how do you relocate them? Where does that money come from? How about the apartments that are privately owned? How does that work?
Re: Berlin Google Campus occupied
#170> New tech companies are driving the rents up in the area higher and higher. The endpoint of this process can be seen in San Francisco, which once must have been a halfway livable city. This is more the fault of NIMBYs and supply&demand-denialists who work hard to prevent new housing from going up. Yes, tech companies brought the demand because of good jobs, but last I checked, we wanted companies to offer high payin…
No, the data do not back that up: https://www.theurbanist.org/2016/05/27/rents-in-san-francisc... In order for new construction to materially affect rent rate we would have to build more housing faster than it has ever been done before, for decades to come. Leaving aside the question of whether it is desirable to convert SF into another Manhattan, we could actually do it: there are modern methods to build entire new…
How do people not earning $100,000 afford to live there? They commute 2 hours each way (for real).
I think it's unreasonable to expect a live-and-let live attitude to NIMBYs on online forums, while NIMBYs are pricing out the people who work in their neighborhoods through housing policy.
Sure there are other issues like global warming but it's not like having a place to live is a trivial issue. It's more than reasonable for people to care or be upset about it.
I'm talking mostly about the Bay Area here which I'm most familiar with, where a rule allowing you to build if you follow every law to the letter was shot down (building anything is a guaranteed long political fight), and minor things like having one apartment level above a shop are fought tooth and nail.
I actually can somewhat respect the position, that young people should just move away and other places in the country need to deal with growth. But I think to do that properly, you should still zone for a proportionate amount of housing as you do office space (jobs). And if you don't want growth, do little of either.
But approving lots of jobs, not zoning/approving the necessary housing, and then making excuses/blaming others as there's a shortage and prices/commutes go up - it's hard to see it as anything other than a massive political failure. Maybe calling this policy combination NIMBY is painting NIMBYs with a broad brush. But whatever you call it I think it's reasonable to be upset by it.