Streets with Nooks and Crannies Are Beloved and Endangered • Hacker News Board

Re: Streets with Nooks and Crannies Are Beloved and Endangered

#31

Post by lotsofpulp » Fri, Oct 04, 2019, 3:30 PM UTC

throwaway2048 wrote: post #25

Invictus0 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just looked up the settlement: it seems crazy to me that the hotel could be held liable for the shooting. Is there really an expectation for the hotel to keep tabs on what its guests are doing? Edit: I looked into it further: MGM was insured for 751M for the payout and I suppose they figured an additional 100M to get it out of their hair was worth it. The existence of a settlement doesn't create a precedent, but I wo…

A settlement isn't a court deciding that they are liable, its the MGM Grand paying out rather than taking a risk of the court case (likely would generate a ton of bad PR).

I can’t imagine avoiding bad PR (for something that clearly wasn’t the hotel’s fault) is worth $800M.

They must have thought there was some possibility of legal liability, at least the the cost to defend with lawyers. But there shouldn’t be, in a sane world the suit would have been tossed immediately.

Re: Streets with Nooks and Crannies Are Beloved and Endangered

#32

Post by spanktheuser » Fri, Oct 04, 2019, 3:33 PM UTC

deogeo wrote: post #20

spanktheuser wrote: post #13

“Modernism is the problem!” harrumphed the American Conservative, forgetting as usual that X was also once very modern. ◔_◔

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 Newton. Opposition to Darwin continues to this day in some quarters. And antipathy towards modern advancements in reproductive health is still very strong.

In any case, if conservatives come at modernist styles of expression & ornamentation, they should bring receipts. Or their arguments will smack of the notorious cries of "moral degeneracy" for which conservative thought is justly infamous.

In this case, I feel like the author is found wanting and the article unworthy of HN. There are amazing, actionable critiques of dehumanizing trends in architecture and urban planning (Jane Jacobs, Christopher Alexander), but this is not one of them.

Re: Streets with Nooks and Crannies Are Beloved and Endangered

#33

Post by asokoloski » Fri, Oct 04, 2019, 3:34 PM UTC

assblaster wrote: post #4

newsreview1 wrote: post #3

Agreed. My city's local "planning commission" has overstepped many old timers long planned future family-development agreements because big money has come in wanting to develop large scale housing communities. The communities once plotted as kid friendly cul-de-sac, have become thoroughfares for big business by touting "connectivity needs". It's a joke, especially when you see that the make up of the planning commiss…

Meanwhile, other purists decry cul-de-sacs as a suburban abomination that inhibit walkability.

There is a third way. Suburban single-family zones full of cul-de-sacs are designed to be metaphorically put under glass and never changed. Building massive towers, on the other hand, is very drastic and has the potential to destroy the character of a community.

I like the approach advocated by the Strong Towns movement: allow the next increment of development by right, everywhere. So a neighborhood of mostly single-family homes should allow accessory dwelling units (mother-in-law apartments) and conversion to duplexes by right. A neighborhood of duplexes should allow conversion to triplexes or quadplexes by right. A neighborhood of those should allow conversion to even denser development like townhomes, and multiplexes, etc. This allows a town or city to grow gradually and naturally.

The way they put it is, "No community should have to experience extreme change... but no community should be exempt from change". Wanting to build massive towers to address housing shortages is not ideal, but it's an understandable reaction, when it's illegal to address the shortage by having every neighborhood in the city "thicken up" a bit.

This is how the great cities we love all over the world became great -- through gradual, incremental change and intensification.

Re: Streets with Nooks and Crannies Are Beloved and Endangered

#34

Post by journalctl » Fri, Oct 04, 2019, 3:40 PM UTC

DataWorker wrote: post #30

drewcoo wrote: 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.

Before there were cars there were horses. Some places are dense and cramp, the countryside is spread out. Talk of car cities or waling cities is mere confabulation. Some prefer dense cities, some the sprawling countryside of farms and having the nearest store an hour away. Why can’t people be free to live in less crowded, less crime ridden, less dirty and noisy locations if they prefer that?

Because sprawl has enormous externalities that the proponents thereof refuse to pay for, and likely couldn’t actually afford without massive subsidies. I know lots of people have a homestead fetish (which I don’t deign to understand), but it’s not sustainable.

Re: Streets with Nooks and Crannies Are Beloved and Endangered

#35

Post by Dirlewanger » Fri, Oct 04, 2019, 3:41 PM UTC

spanktheuser wrote: post #13

“Modernism is the problem!” harrumphed the American Conservative, forgetting as usual that X was also once very modern. ◔_◔

Such is civilization. The eternal turn of the wheel. What was once exciting and iconoclastic is now drab and dated.

Re: Streets with Nooks and Crannies Are Beloved and Endangered

#36

Post by journalctl » Fri, Oct 04, 2019, 3:41 PM UTC

mc32 wrote: post #8

ineedasername wrote: post #6

"Why are nooks and crannies no longer produced? One reason is that their value is not understood, and in any case no longer taught as part of place-making." Many times they weren't deliberately produced, nor was their deliberate design taught: they were the result of accretion layers built up over time as new structures are built next to & on top of existing ones. They're not dying out through lack of appreciation, t…

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.

Re: Streets with Nooks and Crannies Are Beloved and Endangered

#37

Post by mattlondon » Fri, Oct 04, 2019, 3:46 PM UTC

CalRobert wrote: post #26

It's illegal to build things without enormous parking lots and roads around them in most instances now. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lvUByM-fZk includes an illustration of how this even results in the destruction of nice, walkable places when old buildings are renovated in to apartments.

Quite a lot of developments in the UK - certainly in London - are proposing zero parking.

We had a (now shelved) plan near where I live to build 700 2 & 3 bed apartments in a new development with zero parking spaces in the design. This strikes me as blindly optimistic that of those 700 apartments (that will likely have between 2 or 3 people or more per apartment on average, so somewhere like 1500-2500 people) absolutely none of them will bring car with them... not even spaces for people who need a car for their disability!

I think their usual rationale of being "environmentally friendly" is really wake-washing/cover for wanting to fit in more apartments that sell for £650,000-1,000,000+ each, vs parking spaces which only sell for £25,000 each.

(incidentally is there a word for this willful ignoring of reality, where people basically just keep on repeating the same false/questionable statements as if they were genuine facts over and over regardless of any reasonable evidence to the contrary? E.g. this insistence that something is for environmental reasons when it is clear to everyone that it is not, or the rhetoric politicians keep on wheeling out for e.g. Brexit. I guess "lying"is one word...)

Re: Streets with Nooks and Crannies Are Beloved and Endangered

#38

Post by ad-hominem » Fri, Oct 04, 2019, 3:47 PM UTC

chasing wrote: post #23

drewcoo wrote: 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.

Yup. It's the main reason many European cities and Manhattan feel so engaging and alive in comparison to other US cities (just using my experiences). In walking cities you interact with the city itself -- you can stop and look at things closely, walk into a small store you've never noticed before, run into a friend and chat, or pause and just people watch. In car cities everything's far off and viewed through glass,…

You're not "in traffic", you are traffic.

Re: Streets with Nooks and Crannies Are Beloved and Endangered

#39

Post by diminoten » Fri, Oct 04, 2019, 3:47 PM UTC

spanktheuser wrote: post #13

“Modernism is the problem!” harrumphed the American Conservative, forgetting as usual that X was also once very modern. ◔_◔

Yeah, I'm not sure I buy the premise that books and crannies are beloved in the first place. Maybe if you have no fear of being trapped or surprised as you walk down a street, but for the folks who don't want to get mugged, maybe wider, flatter streets are a good thing.

Re: Streets with Nooks and Crannies Are Beloved and Endangered

#40

Post by kevin_thibedeau » Fri, Oct 04, 2019, 3:49 PM UTC

assblaster wrote: post #4

newsreview1 wrote: post #3

Agreed. My city's local "planning commission" has overstepped many old timers long planned future family-development agreements because big money has come in wanting to develop large scale housing communities. The communities once plotted as kid friendly cul-de-sac, have become thoroughfares for big business by touting "connectivity needs". It's a joke, especially when you see that the make up of the planning commiss…

Meanwhile, other purists decry cul-de-sacs as a suburban abomination that inhibit walkability.

They are a sterile insular abomination when the only way out is by car to get anywhere useful. Then save some more money by leaving out sidewalks. Who needs those? The real problem is poor oversight of developers who think they know what they're doing when they draw their silly street designs on paper.