I read a few excerpts from a book in college that seems to cover the transition you're talking about. It's Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City. I read the parts about corporations working to create the term jay-walking and establish it as a crime both legally and in public perception.
Just as a note horses as transportation in cities didn't lead to clean air by any means.
Many major cities has horse manure problems (along with problems of
CW Animal abuse
horses being murdered and left to rot in the street
)
There was a market for cars (or at the very least horse alternatives), but it should have been public transportation instead of individualized vehicles. That's where the real evil/shittyness comes from.
All good. I spent a lot of time around horses as a kid and never thought about it until I read about it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-I8GDklsN4&t=3s&ab_channel=PEACEREBEL
My annual reminder for people to watch Taken for a Ride: The U.S. History of the Assault on Public Transport in the Last Century. Really good PBS doc about exactly what you're talking about.
cw: bloodbath caused by cars
https://archive.is/22mfs
Serious debate was held in courtrooms and in editorials over whether the automobile was inherently evil.
After World War I, as accidents continued to soar, drivers were being labeled in newspapers as "remorseless murderers," their danger to public safety likened to an epidemic disease. In Detroit and other cities angry mobs were dragging reckless drivers out of cars.
But muh single family dwellings! How will I live in an urban core without a 1/2 acre of yard?
What if we put all that yard space in big parks with lot of trees and grass and cool shit everyone can enjoy?
We have destroyed our environment to build sprawling plains of misery. :desolate:
Increased precipitation from climate change will mean increased surface runoff, so non-source pollutants will contaminate drinking water sources at higher rates, meaning more money and time must be spent on water treatment and lower quality aquatic ecosystems.
But this is only the second largest contributor of rising source water contamination.
The single largest cause is development patterns and sprawl, such as in Atlanta. Bad land use policy (i.e. paving everything and growing lots of lawns) leads to really bad stormwater effects - worse source water, higher probability of flooding, more expensive water treatment, etc. This is in addition to the fact that said sprawl significantly increases the levels of non-source pollutants because of, for example, higher vehicle dependency; or that said sprawl tends to mean less tree cover and therefore higher temperatures, which in turn increase the severity of precipitation events. Too bad it's like, impossible to fix.
Do you really think they are gonna pay money to improve water treatment instead of just telling everyone to buy bottled water? Full Country Flint Michigan speedrun incoming.
I think they'll improve water quality treatment up to a point - lots of places are using more activated carbon treatments as source water is degrading, for example - but after a certain point places will just import water like in parts of Mexico City. A lot of people observed the downsides of sprawl as it relates to transit, which is fair, so thought I'd add that it's also really bad for urban water systems.
I've been in Barcelona and it looks really really nice.You'd expect it would have huge ugly towers from comparisons like that but that's not the case, it's neat, contained, and pretty, with a lot of somewhat eccentric but fun architecture. I think US cities are like that because they are mostly parking lots and sprawling suburbs.
Wanna go to Barcelona so bad :deeper-sadness: i want to eat my weight in tapas
Yeah it was great. Also La Sagrada Familia is the most impressive building I have been in, it's much more impressive than it looks from photos, especially inside.
Does anyone actually say that? Because yeah I believe churches are pretty stupid but I also believe that church is mad cool lol
Well not just THAT one church, many churches are very cool buildings.
The "International Style" and its consequences has been a disaster for mankind
It turns out when you build a city up out of suburban sprawl & redlining, and then the city grows out into the surrounding cities and functionally becomes one city, but is unable to function like a single city because of suburban sprawl and racism, it's really bad for building cohesive rail networks.
when you ban building sidewalks bc black people might walk on them so you die of heart disease at age 50
just pink people things
MARTA fuckin sucks. It basically just makes a a plus sign across the city
If you wanna get urban blackpilled check out this map of metro Atlanta's streetcar network from 1940: https://i.redd.it/0dp9u5lth2931.png
This is what they took away from us so they could build six lane highways with bus stops on either side with no crosswalks inbetween. The sprawl also exacerbates the urban heat island effect which causes area's near/on concrete and impermeable surfaces to be up to 12 degrees F hotter than surroudning areas. What's even more fucked is that formerly redlined neighborhoods are far more likely to be located in urban heat islands. Greenspace is a commodity sold as being public, sustainable, climate-friendly, etc, but is used as an investment vehicle and amenity to the upper classes. This is adding to many of Atlanta's existing segregation issues. In my Atlanta zip code the northern area is far wealthier and whiter than the southern area, which is predominately low-income and black (but rapidly gentrifying). Just within this zip code there is a life expectancy gap of 12 years between these two areas.
I've lived in Atlanta most of my life and it is an incredible, beautiful city in spite of its history of autocentric, suburban-centric racism and capitalism. Unfortunately because of that it's also a case study of how shitty urban planning is literal violence on the people who can't afford to access basic services (transportation, grocery stores, greenspaces, clean air and water, jobs, walkability, safety, etc) . The politicians and paper-pushers who facilitate this have far more death and misery on their hands than any serial killers. they'd be in the gulags if there was any justice.
All my fellow /urbanism heads should follow @wrathofgnon on twitter. The guys a
conservativeinsane monarchist who believes that feminism will lead to the fall of western civilization but he’s got urbanism takes par excellance.Edit: oof, I actually liked this guy before doing some additional research. It’s a shame because his urbanism tweets are still top tier.
he calls himself a trad. "conservative" is underselling it a bit.
Your comment encouraged me to do some further research, and hoooo boy you weren’t wrong. I’ll be editing my original post.
Yeah, right?
I was following him for weeks before I realized that he was probably completely insane.
i lived in BCN for a while so I'm biased, but it truly is an amazing place.
the biggest problem in terms of urbanism is definitely speculation though. airbnb destroyed that city....
eh sorta. depends on who you ask lol
there is a formal decree pending, but its all sorta hush hush.
