Is This Infrastructure Really Necessary?

hashmander

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this from Lerner pretty much sums up why change is almost impossible here:
“Every time, you always have a big resistance,” Lerner says. “When we first proposed the project, we tried to convince the merchants. We showed them designs, information ... it was a big discussion. Then we realised we had to have a demonstration effect.”

So Lerner took the plan to his director of public works, saying: “I need this [built] in 48 hours ... He looked at me and asked, ‘Are you crazy? It will take at least four months.’”

Regardless, Lerner and his team – impatient, wily or both – prepared to begin work at sundown that very Friday, waiting only until after the city’s courthouse had closed so that shopkeepers could no longer file their injunction.

“If I’d received a juridical demand to stop the project, we would never have made it,” Lerner recalls. “So we finished in 72 hours – Friday night to Monday night. And at the end, one of the merchants who wrote the petition to stop the work told me: ‘Keep this petition as a souvenir, because now we want the whole street, the whole sector pedestrianised!’”

The project encapsulates Lerner’s planning philosophy: act now, adjust later. “We had to work fast to avoid our own bureaucracy, and to avoid our own insecurity, because sometimes we start to think: ‘That’s a good idea but I cannot make it happen.’ So the key issue in Curitiba was to start – we had the courage to start.”

When I press Lerner on the political implications of this kind of strong-arming – which some have described as a “technocratic approach without participation” – he has a ready response: “Democracy is not consensus. Democracy is a conflict that is well managed. It’s about how you manage that conflict – sometimes for the minority, sometimes for the majority. But it has to happen.”

people are willing to put up with the delays and costs of widening the roads to accommodate more cars because they can see themselves benefiting from that even though it just means more people saying "hmmm traffic capacity was increased i think i'll get a car or move further out because the commute will be more tolerable." and everyone is back to square one stuck in traffic. but you say those delays and costs are for dedicated bus lanes and they say "how does that help me? i have a car, i don't want to ride the bus."

same thing with healthcare, once you have a system (however shytty) people want money spent to improve it. no spending on a new system because that's too abstract. that's how you end up with a system that costs so much and delivers so little. same for american public schools, can't start over and do it better so just spend more than every other country for worse results.
 
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Jutt

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this from Lerner pretty much sums up why change is almost impossible here:


people are willing to put up with the delays and costs of widening the roads to accommodate more cars because they can see themselves benefiting from that even though it just means more people saying "hmmm traffic capacity was increased i think i'll get a car or move from further out because the commute will be more tolerable." and everyone is back to square one stuck in traffic. but you say those delays and costs are for dedicated bus lines and they say "how does that help me? i have a car, i don't want to ride the bus."

same thing with healthcare, once you have a system (however shytty) people want money spent to improve it. no spending on a new system because that's too abstract. that's how you end up with a system that costs so much and delivers so little. same for american public schools, can't start over and do it better so just spend more than every other country for worse results.
Not to mention, people within or adjacent to the bureaucracy stands a chance to make a ton of money off of these half measure infrastructure projects. Contractors for paving, demo, etc even if the public stands to benefit people will rather collect a check in spite of the needs of the public
 

Swirv

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Racism effects everything, even this

During the suburbanization of america, local and federal governments strategically divested in said infrastructure (and or outright destroyed it...chicago used to have street cars as well, ask your parents ) to reroute the respective maintenance/improvement funds into the creating and paving streets / highways etc of WHITE suburbs.

And the siphoning of taxes was egregious....taxes collected in the Bronx could and would be rerouted to somewhere far like Syracuse to fund they (white) shyt. Outright criminal

This a very rough and superficial account of why our cities public transportation is shyt...but its most def something to look further into if interested...i was like goddamn when i came across it

And they sanitize it by labeling it "white flight"....hey white people just up n left !...nall the govt took on a very ambitious and financially burdensome campaign to relocate white people and allow american cities at large to atrophy, cause thats where the nigras at so who cares

Long story short; they did it to themselves
Race built this country and its undoing it.
Now the white folks want to return to cities smh
 

Swirv

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Reverse white flight is a bytch too. Now we see all these jobs that left for the suburbs start to trickle back into city centers :snoop:
Yup. There is no balance. One could say that black folks should’ve been buying up their neighborhoods in the 70’s-90’s but a lot of the time either the banks didn’t want to lend you the money or long time owners weren’t selling. I know some
Black folks with property in Cambridge and Boston and they told me they would’ve bought more if the funding was there.

When you don’t control your housing you are at the mercy of the markets and owners.

It’s nice to see a lot of black property owners are holding on around Metro Boston area.
 

Sohh_lifted

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I'm decently versed in this. Its essentially a cousin of redlining, but with infrastructure projects. Neighborhoods were completely leveled for the sole purpose of building the interstate highway systems. They'd basically cut off a neighborhood with a brand new highway and one side would flourish while the other would suffer. This amplified the white flight epidemic as well, it pretty much fueled it because it gave white folks the excuse to leave the "slums" where they worked. I'd have to dig up my research and some articles but this and redlining and other urban development stuff have been a big part of my studies.

Perfect example of this is 95 destroying overtown and many thriving black communities in Miami. 95 tore through overtown...aint been the same since..
 

Domingo Halliburton

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I'm amazed this article didn't call for the privatization of the US highway system. Then again, I didn't read the whole thing and they sounded like they were coming close to it in a couple parts.
 

Cynic

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For those who are interested, here's a quick "old" video that explains the Curitiba bus system. At the time they had some radical ideas but it ended up benefitting the city in the long run.



Europe models this as well but with Brasil you have to remember the coast of automobiles there is skyhigh.
 

Jutt

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Europe models this as well but with Brasil you have to remember the coast of automobiles there is skyhigh.
Prior to instituting this system, the city planned on demolishing buildings in order to widen the roads in order to accommodate traffic.

This system was built to cure a traffic problem.
 

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First we can't have the same plan for all of united states, colder and costal climates have more severe infrastructure deterioration and are literally on the brink. Where as cities located in warmer climates have a larger variety of options that they can pick and choose from. For example an elevated light rail/subway would get destroyed by the weather in the north east and will need major rehab in 30 years, but could be a good solution in Phoenix. The best solution for moving people in the north east is to build transit underground but this is way too expensive by the time every one gets their cut. The next best solution is to build it elevated but again this gets expensive quickly because of more frequent maintenance. Putting it on street level is counter intuitive because now you have caused more traffic to cars and lets face it America was build for the car otherwise it would look like Europe with high speed rail. So the bottom line is you can't have it all you need to pick and choose whether you want to invest in building more efficient cities or expanding their interconnectivity (investing in rural infrastructure). You have to decide whether you will invest in public transit or the car.
 

Cynic

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First we can't have the same plan for all of united states, colder and costal climates have more severe infrastructure deterioration and are literally on the brink. Where as cities located in warmer climates have a larger variety of options that they can pick and choose from. For example an elevated light rail/subway would get destroyed by the weather in the north east and will need major rehab in 30 years, but could be a good solution in Phoenix. The best solution for moving people in the north east is to build transit underground but this is way too expensive by the time every one gets their cut. The next best solution is to build it elevated but again this gets expensive quickly because of more frequent maintenance. Putting it on street level is counter intuitive because now you have caused more traffic to cars and lets face it America was build for the car otherwise it would look like Europe with high speed rail. So the bottom line is you can't have it all you need to pick and choose whether you want to invest in building more efficient cities or expanding their interconnectivity (investing in rural infrastructure). You have to decide whether you will invest in public transit or the car.


Just have it in metro hubs and the surrounding areas ...eliminate the need to drive completely
by instituting bike lanes and bus lanes - rent a bike initiatives ...hell create speed trains
like Japan/China/Europe/Rwanda


Then leave the other spread out states to have their own shYt
 

Jutt

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Just have it in metro hubs and the surrounding areas ...eliminate the need to drive completely
by instituting bike lanes and bus lanes - rent a bike initiatives ...hell create speed trains
like Japan/China/Europe/Rwanda


Then leave the other spread out states to have their own shYt

This right here. This is what most people don't get. We've fallen so much in love with the automobile that we can't fathom a life without it. This is the only way to promote healthy transportation in major urban hubs.

Instead of accommodating the roads for more cars, we need to be accommodating the cities to the population. Widening roads/highways does not work, its a half measure that sucks up tons of money for nothing because by the time the project is finished, its obsolete and we're back at square one with traffic. Lose-Lose.
 
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