this post was submitted on 22 Feb 2025
1362 points (97.6% liked)

Fuck Cars

10393 readers
880 users here now

A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!

Rules

1. Be CivilYou may not agree on ideas, but please do not be needlessly rude or insulting to other people in this community.

2. No hate speechDon't discriminate or disparage people on the basis of sex, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, or sexuality.

3. Don't harass peopleDon't follow people you disagree with into multiple threads or into PMs to insult, disparage, or otherwise attack them. And certainly don't doxx any non-public figures.

4. Stay on topicThis community is about cars, their externalities in society, car-dependency, and solutions to these.

5. No repostsDo not repost content that has already been posted in this community.

Moderator discretion will be used to judge reports with regard to the above rules.

Posting Guidelines

In the absence of a flair system on lemmy yet, let’s try to make it easier to scan through posts by type in here by using tags:

Recommended communities:

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
1362
The issue is not space, but how we move through it (lemmy.world)
submitted 2 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
153 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 hours ago (2 children)

This is Jackson Park golf course, owned by Seattle Parks and Rec. It is one of the cheapest ways to play the game in all of Seattle.

It opened May 12, 1930. That's before the Interstate and the light rail.

There are plenty of places to shit on golf courses. This one is probably a miss. Without mixed use space, this area has been a heavy car use zone with low walkability. The section from the freeway north of the park is also a steep hill, reducing the accessibility of the area.

Additionally, the plans provided do not meet the requirements for development. Specifically, how are you going to get a fire truck to the six story buildings in the middle. Is there enough space for.emergeny services to maneuver and to keep a fire from jumping buildings.

Talk and MS Paint is cheap. Good urban planning in not.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 hours ago

Reminds me of AtomEve's situation in Invincible. Everyone think they are an architect till shit isn't engineered correctly.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 hours ago

Okay, so put a road or two through the middle for emergency access. The walk ability part is supposed to be solved by the light rail they mentioned.

[–] RowRowRowYourBot 2 points 10 hours ago

Michael Moore in one of his books suggested we repurpose golf courses into public housing. They tend to be in better school systems to begin with so there’s an added bonus.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (2 children)

There isn’t any context on where this is, but:

  • there aren’t enough golf courses to really impact housing supply
  • parks and recreational facilities also serve a societal good assuming they’re accessible and serve the community as a whole
  • golf courses aren’t usually located along transit
[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 hours ago

1 and 3 are not good reasons not to try something like this. 2 feels like bad faith because this isn't either of those things, it's a golf course. Less than a quarter of golf courses in the US are freely open to the public, and a quarter of them are members only. That's thousands of golf courses that are taking up space/land and water and returning next to nothing of value to the community or the environment, or worse than nothing in many cases.

Source for numbers: https://mygolfspy.com/news-opinion/study-percentage-of-public-vs-private-courses-in-the-us/

[–] RowRowRowYourBot 4 points 10 hours ago

There are enough to reduce housing supply issues.

Private golf courses provide little to no benefit to anyone especially after we factor in the environmental costs.

Golf courses not being on pubic transit is the only part I agree with.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 20 hours ago (3 children)

Golf courses aren't inherently bad, but I think just about every one out there is weirdly exclusive and definitely wastes water.

Disc golf is a good example of a sport that doesn't monopolize space. It's built into existing trails. Generally speaking the public can't walk on golf cart trails (I'm sure there are exceptions)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (1 children)

I do. It is a giant waste of fucking space and resources so that some rich people can enjoy hitting a ball around.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 hours ago

The worst part is usually they take an undeveloped scenic natural space and turn it into a waste of water that pollutes from all the lawn chemicals.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 13 hours ago

There are city-owned golf course around me that I presume aren't that exclusive (I dunno, I don't play). That said, they're also implicated in draining all sorts of toxins into the local waterways.

I think they are inherently bad. They waste water, their turf needs constant care that puts nasty stuff into the rest of the water supply, and the space can't be used for anything else. It's not merely a game, either; it's the defacto way for rich people to network and talk about how they're fucking the rest of us.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 13 hours ago (2 children)

Disc golf is just sticking a few goals into otherwise typical park. You are gently tossing a soft disc over maybe 60-90 meters so you don't need to be extra careful to make the way clear.

Golf by its nature demands huge amounts of space for few people to enjoy. Further the landscaping and irrigation demands on a golf course are immense. You can't have too many things on a course or people walking around, because a pretty hard ball comes flying from 200 meters away.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 hours ago

Minigolf is the superior and family-friendly alternative to golf, TBH.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Correction: The discs are not soft. They are hard and can be sharp-edged as well. Keeping throws away from walking and bike paths is super critical.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 hours ago

Ok, guess I may not have exposure to the scene as much. My experience is probably more 'filthy casual' level, at a few parks and a corporate campus that seems to just have goals installed without much regard for where the trails are, and the few times I've participated it was just random folks with pretty mundane frisbees.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Same weirdos who defend the horrid use of land will say "Fuck off we're full" to immigrants trying to not die from wars and ethnic cleansing.

[–] zarkanian 4 points 10 hours ago

The US is very sparsely populated overall. Of course cities are densely populated, but that's because they're cities.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 19 hours ago

Just as soon as somebody buys the LA and and develops it into affordable homes. Because I'm sure as hell never gonna be rich enough to fix a stupid golf course into something useful.

load more comments
view more: next ›