The Future of Cities
medium.com
medium.com
Otherwise, this topic is likely what I want to focus my career in at some point, understanding how to improve the ways cities run, given how they are more and more the drivers of not only the economy, but a lot of the culture and thinking generated in the world. (As someone who grew up in global cities such as Singapore, Paris, etc., I always felt that these cities had more in common with each other than with other cities in the countries they are in.)
I'm making my way through Jane Jacob's Life and Death of American Cities right now, and it has definitely changed a lot of my thinkings of how cities should be designed (more mixed-used, parks are not necessarily ideal, etc).
I wonder how a company could be created to tackle the issues cities are facing these days, working with local governments (or without if need be).
London, meanwhile, had never really been planned at all, and even well-intentioned planning often ended up straddling the line between disaster and farce.
If you want to laugh a lot and learn about ways that London has been "developed" over the years, check out this guy's videos:
An example from my hometown of Ithaca NY: this tiny valley was never built with cars in mind, and because there is a lake to the north and steep hills in every other direction, there are only about 6 ways in and out of Ithaca. Usually this isn't a problem but certain times of day the traffic comes to a complete stop as there is no physical way to relieve the congestion. If major charges to roadways were made, it could fix some of the congestion issues, but since nearly all travel through Ithaca revolves around The Commons (literally: one-way streets move traffic counterclockwise around the popular pedestrian mall), it could have a devastating effect on local businesses.
I am convinced that no single entity is capable of creating and executing a plan that improves an urban area in any more than a limited portion without significant and unforeseen consequences.
Speaking of slums: the original plans for public housing projects in big cities like New York failed to account for the lack of maintenance or the effects of drugs being sold or used on the premises, which matters a lot because one prolific drug dealer can drastically reduce quality of life for everybody in the building, especially if they are smart or small-time enough to avoid police interference, thus allowing dealers to become de facto authorities in the projects. That is an example of a planned (but unexpected) slum.
/s Actually the solution could come from another EM company in the form of self-driving cars, as it would alleviate congestion just enough for it to stop being a problem anymore. The traffic issue really only focuses on certain chokepoints in and out of the city.
You know the deal: everybody stopped at a series of red lights. Light at the front goes green, first car moves, second car behind it has space to move, and so on. If all the cars were able to start and stop in unison based on the state of the traffic lights then the congestion problems in Ithaca would disappear overnight. We aren't big enough to need (or be able to afford) massive infrastructure projects, and as I alluded to earlier, it probably wouldn't be worth the unforeseen consequences. Not to mention the downtown retailers are still reeling from the Commons reconstruction, which put way too many of my favorite stores out of business.
I think the nuance of the middle gets lost in these conversations. The right tends to think humans should have dominion over all (while ignoring the fact that we haven't "conquered" nature, and we have ample evidence of the carnage we cause when we think we have), and the left seems to take an Agent Smith view that we're a plague upon the planet and need to be contained, quarantined, and engineered until we no longer impact anything (while ignoring the fact that this flatly isn't possible, or even desirable).
So no, I do not believe that "we do damage to nature", because besides it being a nonsense statement, even the kernel of truth in it is wrong-headed in my opinion.
- because it's cool and fun to have all those cute plants and animals around
- because biodiversity reduces the chance of sudden ecological collapse that would leave us without food
- Biodiversity helps us understand life better by providing exceptions to dogmas
- Biodiversity is the crowning achievement of this earth and would take along time to recover. We can colonize other planets more easily than we can replicate our biodiversity on them.
>So no, I do not believe that "we do damage to nature", because besides it being a nonsense statement, even the kernel of truth in it is wrong-headed in my opinion.
It is the general consensus of the scientific community that we do. How is it a nonsense statement?
And since there doesn't seem to be any other form of consciousness other than humans around, I'm going to say that the nature is here for us. Extereme right view is obviously stupid because we need a stable environment to survive. Extreme left view is equally stupid, because it's self-destructive. We're the only part of nature that can care; the rest of it doesn't care, it simply is.
So my goal, and my POV on the goals for society, is to be a responsible gardener. To exploit nature in order to safeguard our survival and comfort of this planet, realizations of our dreams and desires. And that involves a lot of pro-environmental efforts, because our natural environment is pretty helpful and damn useful if we don't go around and indiscriminately destroy it.
Wait, did I miss when Detroit had toxic water now too?
The guy must think people of color are incapable of attaining that level of wealth.
Unintentional racism, but racism all the same.
I think he simply wanted to rely on a common stereotype to refer to ultra-wealthy people who live completely different lives and are generally out of touch with reality.
Well, yeah. Can you name any other race-gender combination aside from "white male" where negative stereotypes are tossed around as casually as this, by people who purport to be enlightened and fair-minded?
Seriously, not every mention of race is racist. Saying this is racism cheapens the whole idea of racism and hurts whatever it is you believe you're fighting for by "calling it out". You're effectively putting a guy who mentioned someone's (hypothetical, as it's not even in reference to a real person) skin color in the same category as people who burn crosses, or deny people of color job opportunities based solely on race, or lynch children.
To put it in terms appropriate for HN you're adding an extremely small outlier to the data set of "racists" and thus bringing down the entire average.
Would you consider the cliche stereotype "black woman on welfare" to be racist?
The author never said nor implied that white males are the only rich people in society. Whether or not money inherently makes you out of touch with the rest of society, though, I'll leave for another day...
There is insufficient evidence to support that claim.