Tag: urbanism

Future Slums

The McMansion will become the new multi-family home for the poor. “What is going to happen is lower and lower-middle income families squeezed out of downtown and glamorous suburban locations are going to be pushed economically into these McMansions at the suburban fringe. There will probably be 10 people living in 1 house.”

the “suburbs == slums of the future” meme is taking hold. many low-density suburbs and McMansion subdivisions, including some that are lovely and affluent today, may become what inner cities became in the 1960s and ’70s-slums characterized by poverty, crime, and decay.

Free Transit

If you were to design the ultimate system, you would have mass transit be free and charge an enormous amount for cars.

+1!
2008-01-12:

A group called the Nurture Nature Foundation, founded by New York labor lawyer and negotiator Ted Kheel, will soon release a study showing how New York’s subways and buses could be free. The tradeoff? Making auto trips into central Manhattan more expensive–much more expensive.

now this would be real progress: $16 tax on cars entering the city
2020-03-20:

These agencies’ leaders envision fare-free transit achieving 2 urgent goals simultaneously. First and foremost, the move can help protect transit passengers and employees. Free transit can also offer another benefit: a financial cushion to riders struggling during the pandemic.

this would be a good time to stop the insane nonsense of only allowing access to the bus in the front door, and even worse, carrying a bunch of coins.

The Option of Urbanism

In The Option of Urbanism visionary developer and strategist Christopher B. Leinberger explains why government policies have tilted the playing field toward one form of development over the last 60 years: the drivable suburb. Rooted in the driving forces of the economy—car manufacturing and the oil industry—this type of growth has fostered the decline of community, contributed to urban decay, increased greenhouse gas emissions, and contributed to the rise in obesity and asthma.

why doesn’t nyc have 30M people? you could build much denser.

Buffalo

The truth is, the federal government has already spent vast sums of taxpayer money over the past 50 years to revitalize Buffalo, only to watch the city continue to decay. Future federal spending that tries to revive the city will likely prove equally futile. The federal government should instead pursue policies that help Buffalo’s citizens, not the city as a geographical place. The best scenario would be for Buffalo to become a much smaller but more vibrant community—shrinking to greatness, in effect.

Buffalo had past glory? why wasting money to ‘revitalize’ a place as opposed to helping people directly is a failed cause. I concluded after my visit that it is a basket case and best dismantled.