You all do realize that suburbs existed before the invention of the car right? American infrastructure is bad but it’s not irredeemable, the assumption that we can’t provide public transportation to these places because of a lack of resources is malthusian. And sure some places like the American Southwest and Florida are legitimately over human population carrying capacity due to climate change but in general the earth as a whole isn’t, and cities like Amsterdam are just as unsustainable as Miami since even though has one of those le epic reddit notjustbikes cityskylines approved infrastructure, both are below the sea level.

I think in general our message should be abolish the need to own the automobile, any measures meant to limit car use should target the rich before the poor. And that trains are good, and that a high speed train across the United States would be a rather popular project in the eyes of even the chuds. And by god stop calling for the suburbs to be razed, stop trying to be zoomer Robert Moses.

  • flowernet [none/use name]
    ·
    1 year ago

    I've noticed this too. people are approaching millenarian levels of cope when they talk about how the suburbs will crumble apart in 15 years because they were built bad (median occupied home is 40 years old), making the urbanist utopia inevitable. "We have only to kick in the door, and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down", but literally.

    Reminder, we're not just talking about simple amelioration, they are actually championing that it's feasible for a complete redevelopment of the american city until it has a modest sembalance of Amsterdam. As far as I've sounded, step one in all these people's plan involves establishing a socialist dictatorship. I estimate the chance of founding atleast one socialist dictatorship in an American metropolis within the next 15 years to be 0%, but apparently that's a doomer take? anyway, even socialist dictatorships don't go that far. China in 2018 had $150 billion in active metro projects, and they got spooked by the debt burden and decided to scale back. It's cheaper to build in China, wages are lower, there is existing density, and a massive migration of people from the country to cities that will fill out whatever new construction they build. Then the US hasn't even put their shoes on yet, and there is supposed to be a plausible way to wipe out $52 trillion in the form of single family suburban homes?