urbanism

this is the most boomerlogic policy one can imagine

When city-dwellers report feeling lonely, it could be an urban design problem. When cities structure themselves to make sharing easier, people thrive in every way—including socially. But what should cities build to foster sharing?

https://web.archive.org/web/20240915173553/https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/15/world/europe/tramdriver-competition-frankfurt-tram.html/

I would 1000% go to this

Also this cannot possibly be OSHA-approved

America is Becoming One Big Consumerist Theme Park

Theme parks are fun family-friendly destinations, but underneath the fantasy lurks a more sinister reality. In this video, we’ll explore the dystopia lurking beneath theme park utopias and ask: Are our cities becoming theme parks too?

:baudrillard-agony:

They're like brutalism haters in that while I personally enjoy it, they're not wrong. There's very bad examples of it. But also anyone who gets into hating it a lot seems entirely incapable of producing any evidence for it being so. They're like truffle pigs for getting it wrong. What the Habitat 67 is to architectural aesthetics is "guy getting run over by a car cutting the corner standing still at a red light" is to active transport

smth smth trying everything before doing the right thing

The new technology will make Zemu the first hydrogen-powered, zero-emissions passenger train in North America to meet Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) requirements when it goes into service early next year.

Developing a lightweight frame that passed FRA standards is a promising accomplishment because it provides a zero-emission alternative to the expensive overhead electrification that’s common in Europe, but is prohibited by the FRA on freight lines in the US. “Once you take that vehicle and you add hydrogen to it, you make it possible to have zero emission technology on the same corridors where Union Pacific and NSF run,” Killpack said. “That’s what’s really crazy and cool about this”.

Incredible, freight trains are prohibited from running on electricity in the empire?

In order for these small but promising steps to be economically sustainable in the long run, though, huge investment will need to be made to expand the infrastructure. “You’ve got to be selling at least hundreds [of trains] to start to get some scale economies and bring those costs down,” said Lewis Fulton, the Energy Futures Program director at UC Davis’s Institute for Transportation Studies.

(fucking bullshit)

basically by tying it to federal funding to force states to allow more housing to be built, which is how the federal government got the states to all raise their minimum drinking age to 21 in the 1980s.

semi serious question.

I stumbled onto my local metro area's reddit while trying to look up some historical photos and stared into the abyss for a few mins.

I resisted the urge to leave libreddit and make an account just to reply but, I ran into this post that is basically complaining about having a car in one of the most central neighborhoods in the city, and asking for advice on getting off street parking (in reality, anything that isn't an overpriced surface lot that offers no protection is going to be quite a hike away from their apartment, there's no way this will work out).

They claim they work in X first ring suburb where "there are no buses" and that's why they have to have this car, which is hilarious because they could one seat ride to half of that suburb in under half an hour from a bus that leaves from their front door. the other half it'd be a 2 seat ride but still under 45 mins, and obviously way cheaper than a car. There are also plenty of neighborhoods they could move to that would have less breakins and cheap off street parking, but they seem convinced that's not the case.

But I digress.

The fellow ers in there commiserating about how horribly expensive off street parking is (in a neighborhood that is basically in downtown) got me thinking... If we can't get city governments to do shit about on street parking and massively unsafe roads, is allowing the street to be so unappealing to park on that people have to actually pay for their giant waste of precious urban land, a viable option to improve things?

this expectation that you should be able to just leave your 2 ton death box lying around in public anywhere for any length of time and nobody will so much as touch it doesn't apply to any other kind of property (just look at bike theft), and it really fucks with people when you violate that. I feel like that's a usable weapon, in a way, against gentrification and car dependency and traffic violence.

Were kia boys doing praxis?