81–90 of 119 posts
>The municipality of Athens only practiced zoning for heavy industry, leaving people free to set up shop in a polikatoikia. Really, this should be the article. Zoning is responsible for resiliency and affordability. The actual implementation (Polikatoikias) is just an accident of fate.
Athens is an extremely ugly city. It's so ugly that, if you grow up there or live there long enough, the ugliness slowly seeps inside of you and empties your inside, too. Everything looks as if beauty has no role to play in our lives. The ugliness is not confined to the buildings, people dress in ugly clothes and are poorly groomed and rude. Working for a Greek employer is hell. People hate working and all the time t…
The busy parts of Athens are much much less dirty than the busy parts of Paris or London.
>People dress in ugly clothes and are poorly groomed and rude.
So it's like a typical big city then.
>People hate working and all the time they talk about how much they hate working.
So, these people are experiencing city life.
A couple of other points I'll give you, but I think this is mostly a case of the grass always being greener.
The part of the article that mentioned vertical stratification to avoid horizontal stratification hit a chord with me. I personally come from a family of great means but due to unique circumstances spent much of my childhood living in low income areas and having friends whose parents worked fast food jobs. I think it's the best thing that ever happened to me and I think we would have a better society if more people h…
That part jumped out at me, too. > “There were wealthier people on the upper floors,” says Dragonas, “people who had just arrived from the countryside further down and poor students in the basement. That sort of vertical stratification inside a five-story building helped Athens to avoid horizontal stratification — there weren’t really neighborhoods that were only rich or only poor. In the US before Brown v. Board, ma…
>The municipality of Athens only practiced zoning for heavy industry, leaving people free to set up shop in a polikatoikia. Really, this should be the article. Zoning is responsible for resiliency and affordability. The actual implementation (Polikatoikias) is just an accident of fate.
But the sentence you quoted says there was no zoning.
That's where I grew up - amid the polykatoikies! It's very strange to see such a positive view of Athens. I mean, growing up, I can't remember anyone ever having a good thing to say about our own homes. Looking down from Lycabetus hill, Athens -rather the entire Attican basin from Penteli to Piraeus and from Parnitha to Hymmetus- looks covered with gray, frayed, books or document binders, or perhaps a mille-feuille w…
You may have found it unbearable because it was just really hot, but it would have been far worse in a wood building with similar density. Concrete has very high thermal mass and when thick enough and thermally coupled to the ground, significant thermal resistance, so it acts like a cave. The bigger problem with concrete landscapes is the lack of air flow and shading that would otherwise be provided by clearings, trees and foliage.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>In many states, the vast majority of school funding comes from property taxes. So schools in wealthy neighborhoods are better funded than schools in poor neighborhoods, and this guarantees homes in wealthy school districts maintain their value since everyone wants their kids in those schools. In the US, school funding is (on average) progressive because federal and state funding more than offsets any local inequalit…
Go look at the schools in poor Black neighborhoods in Cleveland, Chicago, Boston, Columbus, Detroit, Indianapolis, Cincinnatti. You will find buildings in disrepair, lacking basic things like air conditioning. Last year, Columbus City Schools cancelled classes several days because it was too hot. If you look at teachers' salaries, the city school districts pay significantly less than the surrounding suburbs, while ha…
I don't know why this is, or how it is explained, if anyone knows I'd be all ears. It does seem like teachers get paid more in the suburbs, so that's not the reason. If I remember correctly, I saw some data suggesting that administration and building expenses are much higher, but it's hard to imagine they are getting their money's worth given the current state of things.
> To keep costs down, developers adopted a modernist construction model — the Le Corbusier-developed Dom-Ino system, in which reinforced concrete pillars freed a building of the need for load-bearing interior walls. A modernist, Corbusier-influenced building that actually works and that people like living in! Fantastic.
Athens is an extremely ugly city. It's so ugly that, if you grow up there or live there long enough, the ugliness slowly seeps inside of you and empties your inside, too. Everything looks as if beauty has no role to play in our lives. The ugliness is not confined to the buildings, people dress in ugly clothes and are poorly groomed and rude. Working for a Greek employer is hell. People hate working and all the time t…
That's where I grew up - amid the polykatoikies! It's very strange to see such a positive view of Athens. I mean, growing up, I can't remember anyone ever having a good thing to say about our own homes. Looking down from Lycabetus hill, Athens -rather the entire Attican basin from Penteli to Piraeus and from Parnitha to Hymmetus- looks covered with gray, frayed, books or document binders, or perhaps a mille-feuille w…
That's where I grew up - amid the polykatoikies! It's very strange to see such a positive view of Athens. I mean, growing up, I can't remember anyone ever having a good thing to say about our own homes. Looking down from Lycabetus hill, Athens -rather the entire Attican basin from Penteli to Piraeus and from Parnitha to Hymmetus- looks covered with gray, frayed, books or document binders, or perhaps a mille-feuille w…