Any analysis of “urban planning” in the US, certainly when comparing it to Europe, without discussing the insane levels of black crime is totally pointless.
Middle class families can’t live around them, can’t send their kids to school with them, can’t let their wives walk around the streets unattended. You can *sorta* minimize this problem if you deploy a literal army to the streets (the NYPD has 35,000 officers) but otherwise the only possible response is to get away from them. Hence: cars and suburbs.
I applaud you for starting this journey, once you see it, you can't unsee it.
The right’s rediscovery of Traditional Urbanism is quickly approaching …
The DR will soon realize that the auto suburbs aren't the heart of western tradition, but the epitomy of disposable & atomized post-war consensus thinking….
Our real inheritance is in the sculpted space of our Main Streets, Piazzas and Forums of masonry across the West that are currently draped in the conquering flag of global homo.
I'm going to have to give this article some more thought. My gut rejects "walkability" as a skinny jeans ethic. Brings to my mind the push for cramming us all into coffin-sized living quarters and feeding us faux meat, etc. I have watched throughout my lifetime as cities, which were once distinct, become more and more homogenous to the point that, you are correct, Dallas is now indistinguishable from Knoxville, Santa Monica, or Phoenix due to corporate takeover. Also, gone are the sparkly downtown sidewalks, giant mid-century weird Michelin Man statues, random giraffe sculptures in front of businesses out by the road, 20 foot Pep Boys man, or giant Donut signs and sculptures of my youth, and even the Jack-in-the-Box clown was put down in exchange for generic font signage. Dang, they can't even spell out "Kentucky Fried Chicken" anymore!
Walkability is championed by some shitlibs and other morons but much like conservationism there is a core right wing value that has coopted by the liberal globalist religion of environmentalism.
Good human focused cities can encourage prosocial behavior as opposed to the current anti social crap. "Cyclists" are usually whiney laptop class dorks who draw revulsion from many people deservedly but riding a bike is obviously a fun thing to do and it would be nice if it was easier to get around town on a bike without having to worry about pitbulls and future astronauts.
This is all a practical matter. Ideology should have nothing to do with this. Results are all the matters.
The only people I see championing good urban planning are "left wing", whatever we mean by that term. As you say, urban planning should be void of ideology. Good cities promote pro-social order, and the fact remains that most of us live in cities. Urban planning affects all of us.
American cities have been in decline for some time now. I can give you some breathing room there. The fact remains that the only way we built cities up until the advent of the automobile was on a walkable scale.
I'd also argue that density is not a bad thing per-se. Some of the best cities I've been to are densely populated. But that density must be supported by good urban policy.
Well said. People talk about cars as providing freedom, which has some truth to it. But what about the freedom not to own a car? In most cities in America you don't have that freedom, unless you want to ride busses that will take you twice as long to get where you are going, while sitting next to vagrants, immigrants, and bums. Good public transport and good city planning are not left-wing.
It is hard to justify investing in long term planning of this sort under a regime that actively identifies those things which would be worth investing in and busses in humans incompatible with things worth investing in.
Our people wish to build, all we need is a regime that protects what we build from being burdened or corrupted by those we wish not to involve ourselves with.
Great article! The idea of walkable traditional cities belongs to the right indeed! In school, I thought that modern architects created great cities completely backward. They can't replicate the old world or even the conventional New York feel of streets because they can't answer the question "what people make this?" No amount of Transit Oriented Development peddled by lib City planning YouTube channels can get us to European-level beautiful cities. Why? Because they won't start with the people that made those cities: Europeans.
great piece and I agree with every syllable. I live in an old town in Mississippi. the downtown is all antebellum and the city does a great job of keeping out fast food, neon and that crap. But everything is well-made and pretty and designed for people. American cities are just hellholes. But I can sit on the front porch, see the old flag on the courthouse and forget the USA ever existed.
Any analysis of “urban planning” in the US, certainly when comparing it to Europe, without discussing the insane levels of black crime is totally pointless.
Middle class families can’t live around them, can’t send their kids to school with them, can’t let their wives walk around the streets unattended. You can *sorta* minimize this problem if you deploy a literal army to the streets (the NYPD has 35,000 officers) but otherwise the only possible response is to get away from them. Hence: cars and suburbs.
I applaud you for starting this journey, once you see it, you can't unsee it.
The right’s rediscovery of Traditional Urbanism is quickly approaching …
The DR will soon realize that the auto suburbs aren't the heart of western tradition, but the epitomy of disposable & atomized post-war consensus thinking….
Our real inheritance is in the sculpted space of our Main Streets, Piazzas and Forums of masonry across the West that are currently draped in the conquering flag of global homo.
What do American cities have that Amsterdam's cities do not? There's the problem with walkable cities.
A 3 or 4 strike execution policy for violent felons would go a long way to solving that problem.
I hope that conservatives and the right-wing broadly will eventually wake up and realize that automobiles are not their friends.
I'm going to have to give this article some more thought. My gut rejects "walkability" as a skinny jeans ethic. Brings to my mind the push for cramming us all into coffin-sized living quarters and feeding us faux meat, etc. I have watched throughout my lifetime as cities, which were once distinct, become more and more homogenous to the point that, you are correct, Dallas is now indistinguishable from Knoxville, Santa Monica, or Phoenix due to corporate takeover. Also, gone are the sparkly downtown sidewalks, giant mid-century weird Michelin Man statues, random giraffe sculptures in front of businesses out by the road, 20 foot Pep Boys man, or giant Donut signs and sculptures of my youth, and even the Jack-in-the-Box clown was put down in exchange for generic font signage. Dang, they can't even spell out "Kentucky Fried Chicken" anymore!
Walkability is championed by some shitlibs and other morons but much like conservationism there is a core right wing value that has coopted by the liberal globalist religion of environmentalism.
Good human focused cities can encourage prosocial behavior as opposed to the current anti social crap. "Cyclists" are usually whiney laptop class dorks who draw revulsion from many people deservedly but riding a bike is obviously a fun thing to do and it would be nice if it was easier to get around town on a bike without having to worry about pitbulls and future astronauts.
This is all a practical matter. Ideology should have nothing to do with this. Results are all the matters.
The only people I see championing good urban planning are "left wing", whatever we mean by that term. As you say, urban planning should be void of ideology. Good cities promote pro-social order, and the fact remains that most of us live in cities. Urban planning affects all of us.
American cities have been in decline for some time now. I can give you some breathing room there. The fact remains that the only way we built cities up until the advent of the automobile was on a walkable scale.
I'd also argue that density is not a bad thing per-se. Some of the best cities I've been to are densely populated. But that density must be supported by good urban policy.
Well said. People talk about cars as providing freedom, which has some truth to it. But what about the freedom not to own a car? In most cities in America you don't have that freedom, unless you want to ride busses that will take you twice as long to get where you are going, while sitting next to vagrants, immigrants, and bums. Good public transport and good city planning are not left-wing.
It is hard to justify investing in long term planning of this sort under a regime that actively identifies those things which would be worth investing in and busses in humans incompatible with things worth investing in.
Our people wish to build, all we need is a regime that protects what we build from being burdened or corrupted by those we wish not to involve ourselves with.
Read, "Geography of Nowhere" by Kunstler. Great book.
Get the book A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander. The entire book explores your thesis.
Great read, glad I ain't city folk :P
Great article! The idea of walkable traditional cities belongs to the right indeed! In school, I thought that modern architects created great cities completely backward. They can't replicate the old world or even the conventional New York feel of streets because they can't answer the question "what people make this?" No amount of Transit Oriented Development peddled by lib City planning YouTube channels can get us to European-level beautiful cities. Why? Because they won't start with the people that made those cities: Europeans.
I assume this is a one word essay and that word is “blacks”
American cities are going to suck as long as we lack free association.
great piece and I agree with every syllable. I live in an old town in Mississippi. the downtown is all antebellum and the city does a great job of keeping out fast food, neon and that crap. But everything is well-made and pretty and designed for people. American cities are just hellholes. But I can sit on the front porch, see the old flag on the courthouse and forget the USA ever existed.
looking forward to your next piece!