Berkeley’s Hidden Network of Hillside Paths
atlasobscura.com
atlasobscura.com
It's hard not to feel admiration for the people that thought of adding paths with public rights of way to new neighborhoods before houses were even built. They envisioned a future of people walking through about and discovering the hidden corners of their fully built city. I sometimes feel we've lost the civic vision that animated much of America in the 1800s and early 1900s.
Woodsy, shady hillside paths actually are romantic, and in a normal, functional society, everybody should want one next to their property. Believe it, or not, most of Europe is actually like that.
Problem is not in the surplus of unmonitored public spaces, it is the crime that’s the problem. Focusing on policing as the chief solution is a losers’ game.
US is already policing the shit out of its population, and that is obviously not working out great for you guys, does it?
Advocating for more policing seems to me like insisting to crank up more of the same thing, even though it’s failing badly. It would probably result in more police violence and even more extreme (and likely unevenly distributed) incarcerations - both endemically American pathologies.