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

texasmonthly.com

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

#381

Post by ska »

bluGill wrote: post #285
matchbok wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In no way do the suburbs have the quality and diversity of food that any urban core does. 0%. I've been in both, they simple do not compare.

My house has equal or better diversity of food than whatever city you live in. I cook it myself. If course my house needs to have a nice kitchen because I spend a lot of time there. Is the compromise worth it? I think so, but you may be different.

I love cooking also and primarily rely on it to feed myself and others. And I'll at least try to cook nearly anything. Guests routinely praise the results highly; so far as I can tell this is genuine.

There is no way in which I consider this a replacement for restaurants. Or vice versa. You can value both, one, or neither, but they aren't the same thing.

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

#382

Post by wolco »

dmurray wrote: post #315
CydeWeys wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes logical sense. You cause problem A by leaving, and then in coming back you cause problem B. The same thing happened with the Iraq War -- we caused lots of problems with the unnecessary invasion, then caused more problems by leaving. It's lose/lose. The only winning move was never to play. In the white flight analogy, the only winning move was never to seek segregation from moving out of the cities in the fir…

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.

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

#383

Post by imtringued »

dylan604 wrote: post #164
BucketsMcG wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what it's worth, the same thinking was behind the new capital of Myanmar, Naypyidaw. Paranoid military leadership who thought Yangon was too vulnerable to attack, so built a new capital way inland which is massively spread out to make it harder to bomb.

Such a weak argument as we (as humans) just got better at bombing things. More planes + more bombs = problem solved. "You build a bigger shield, we just build a bigger bomb" mentality has to be a core tenet of the military industrial complex.

Actually, modern warframe is all about completing missions while using less bombs and planes. Killing residents may cripple the economy of your enemy but finding the high value targets and only bombing those is cheaper and more effective.

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

#384

Post by romanoderoma »

jp555 wrote: post #12

GDP: Houston, Texas = ~$500B/yr Siena, Tuscany = ~$11B/yr

Houston homicide rate: 12.1 murders per 100,000 population

Nigeria homicide rate: 4.5 murders per 100,000 population

Siena homicide rate: It all depends on how you spend that money...

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

#385

Post by js2 »

jcrawfordor wrote: post #322
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…

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…

> crisis relocation (which, in an earlier form, was a major motivation for the Eisenhower freeway system, to the extent that it's probably fair to say that it was the main motivation with materiel movement as a second)

I've heard that before, but the DOT claims evacuation was a minor factor. From https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/interstate/interstatemyths.cfm#ques...

President Eisenhower supported the Interstate System because he wanted a way of evacuating cities if the United States was attacked by an atomic bomb.

President Eisenhower’s support was based largely on civilian needs—support for economic development, improved highway safety, and congestion relief, as well as reduction of motor vehicle-related lawsuits. He understood the military value of the Interstate System, as well as its use in evacuations, but they were only part of the reason for his support.

Defense was the primary reason for the Interstate System.

The primary justifications for the Interstate System were civilian in nature. In the midst of the Cold War, the Department of Defense supported the Interstate System and Congress added the words “and Defense” to its official name in 1956 (“National System of Interstate and Defense Highways”). However, the program was so popular for its civilian benefits that the legislation would have passed even if defense had not been a factor.

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

#386

Post by mmm_grayons »

asciimov wrote: post #378
crispyambulance wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I assume you have never lived in Houston. Right now at 5:30pm (17:30) it's 95F (35C). I don't wanna walk 20 mins anywhere in this heat, I don't wanna stand and wait on the bus in the heat, I can't go pick up ice cream from the store and walk it home in this heat. Surely you think, summer isn't that long, just tough it out a few months. Well I regularly run the A/C in the "winter months". Several years ago during the…

I am also Houstonian and can second this. The heat sucks and the humidity makes it even worse. And it goes on for much longer than most realize. They'll mention that other places also have a few hot days while ignoring that for the better part of the year (roughly April through October) it's not fun to be outside. I don't care if the grocery store is only a mile away, I'm still driving.

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

#387

Post by quantumwannabe »

helen___keller wrote: post #272

Most of these threads tend to devolve into attacking assumptions about how people want to live (high density vs low density, parking vs no parking, cars for every trip vs walking/transit most trips) I'll list out what I view as the two dominant views towards the development of a metropolitan region (I loosely define metropolitan region as a city and all the places around that city which can plausibly commute to a job…

Thank you for this comment. Your comment is the only one on this page that gives a fair look at both sides and is a breath of fresh air compared to all the negativity in the rest of the comments. I wish that everyone could live in an area that matches their preferences without someone else trying to destroy everything they love about their home because it doesn't fit a preconceived notion about what a proper city should be.

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

#388

Post by fanf2 »

ben_w wrote: post #63
jfengel wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What really strikes me is just how many ordinary buildings are older than our country. The monuments and palaces are one thing, but it's very common to eat in a restaurant or pub that dates to the 17th century. Not as a tourist trap or destination, but just as a perfectly ordinary building that has been retrofitted (sometimes awkwardly) with bathrooms and lights and such. I've been in 500 year old cottages that weren…

Anecdotes like this abound in the UK. The oldest part of the closest church to my childhood home was built in the “early 13th century”, according to its website. The cottages next to it (now a pub) seem to date to about the same time as the first British colonies in America. Then there’s Cambridge university, which celebrated 800 years since its foundation in 2009: https://www.cam.ac.uk/about-the-university/history/8…

I had a very feeble idea about the history of Britain - the sequence of the main events - when I left school. I learned far more from finding out about the architecture, dates, and benefactors of the various buildings in the centre of Cambridge...

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

#389

Post by refurb »

kaesar14 wrote: post #375
refurb wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't give a damn about GDP. Really? Because it's GDP that funds all those government services and social programs. I'm always confused when people don't give a damn about economics (i.e. during the Covid shutdown debate) when without economics you wouldn't have a functioning society.

That GDP makes men like Bezos richer and leaves the working class to beg for scraps

That explains why the government has continued to spend more and more money every year for the past 60 years.

Yup! GDP doesn't help at all! Only Bezos.

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

#390

Post by refurb »

romanoderoma wrote: post #371
refurb wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't give a damn about GDP. Really? Because it's GDP that funds all those government services and social programs. I'm always confused when people don't give a damn about economics (i.e. during the Covid shutdown debate) when without economics you wouldn't have a functioning society.

Is US society working according to their very high GDP though? Estonia GDP is measured in billions and yet their infant mortality rate is half than US despite their trillions of dollars of GDP

Be careful with your cherry picked stats. Countries don't measure infant mortality the same way.

Not to mention Estonia's lower infant mortality doesn't actually disprove my comment.

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