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use this to rant about you interests!! i may not reply but know that I will read every single one of them. no interest is to weird for me btw
someone rant about their interest
1 Kudos
use this to rant about you interests!! i may not reply but know that I will read every single one of them. no interest is to weird for me btw
1 Kudos
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keanu ☆
on public transport, specifically rail infrastructure: because of all the developments i just talked about, there was a dramatic decrease in rail lines. if you take columbus in ohio, its the biggest city and capital city of its state, but right now, there is not a SINGLE service to or from it. not ONE passenger train. just freight. most cities have at least one per day, and columbus is a bit of an extreme, but absolutely 0 is really appalling. i dont think theres any subway or light rail service either, just buses. things like that force you to have a car.
and in some places like chicago, you have a relatively livable city with lots of mid-density neighborhoods. there’s a problem though: it has a lot of high-quality transit lines, but they all connect in the city center. so if you wanted to get from a neighborhood to another one instead of to the city center, you’d have to take a bus or sometimes walk or drive, just because it would take far too long otherwise.
this problem is exarcerbated by funding problems: if we take toronto, it also has ok transit lines, but the rail lines are kind of subpar. it had the same problem as chicago: a network centered around downtown, but the schedule is also lacking: its mostly centered around a workday. a few trains into the city in the morning, and a few out in the evening. so if aren’t traveling for work, u can only travel with a few rail lines that are more frequent, or with a tram or subway line if ur lucky enough to live near one
by keanu ☆; ; Report
keanu ☆
oh and also there’s another side to suburbs: it’s illegal to build anything but sprawling neighborhoods bc of zoning regulations. so if you want a nice mid-density neighborhood like brooklyn in ny for example, it is absolutely outlawed in lots of places. this is also why houses are so incredibly expensive. you cant add supply so demand is going up and up and up. even if you want to live in suburbs, it definitely shouldnt be the only thing that can be build.
keanu ☆
so im interested in urban planning right. and its rly a blessing and a curse bc i can understand why certain cities thrive and fail. so i can look at american cities for example and see that they mostly all fail because of one thing: the explosion of popularity of cars in the 20th century.
before the 20th century american cities were like any other: organically grown and dense like european cities with lots of public transport. but when the car came, america FULLY embraced it and built highways everywhere, even around and sometimes through city centers. this either destroyed poor neighborhoods and/or cut the city center off from the rest of the city, which made downtowns rot. people didnt seem to like walking under or over highways to get to the city center, and public transport was seen as unnecessary. so funding was cut and it was all put into highways. with how easy it was being made to drive everywhere, developers made sprawling suburbs with hug
when I first read your comment I didn't understand it fully but after re-reading that actually sounds cool to think about. thank you for sharing!
by manny; ; Report
e houses with big yards and everything! but these car-friendly developments were horrible for people without a car, forcing everyone to buy one and everyone who couldnt had to suffer. all these cars obviously congested the highways and all roads, so they were widened and widened. but this had the adverse effect of what they wanted: the more lanes you build, the more convenient it is to drive for a few years, so people will be more inclined to get into a car, even if they weren’t before. this caused a vicious cycle, where basically all neighborhoods were sprawling and of low density. they couldnt even sustain themselves because they were so wasteful. so now america ended up with many cities and towns in debt, because they built too many of these wasteful neighborhoods, and theres barely any high-quality transit lines for the few people who don’t have a car. it is slowly getting better, but it’s painful to see how one wrong move just set off this chain of events that kinda doomed the american economy.
by keanu ☆; ; Report
ty! i think more people should know this because urban planning affects everyone, no matter where they live
by keanu ☆; ; Report