train-shining

  • Coolkidbozzy [he/him]
    hexbear
    74
    10 months ago

    No you don't understand, utilitarian city planning is stupid. We follow american values like 'cars' and 'redlining'

  • iridaniotter [she/her, they/them]
    hexbear
    69
    10 months ago

    It's really funny that a lot of (domestically) well-known American cities wouldn't even scrape Tier 3 in China lol

  • Catradora_Stalinism [she/her, comrade/them]
    hexbear
    51
    10 months ago

    The entire island of oahu has been waiting for decades for the single train system to be built AND ITS STILL BEING DELAYED!

    Its been billions of dollars invested.

    • GarfieldYaoi [he/him]
      hexbear
      35
      edit-2
      10 months ago

      On a more macro-level, look at the joke that is California's high speed rail project. It probably won't even be operational until 2030, and that's assuming they don't find yet another excuse to put off the project.

      At the risk of being a total LIB, many places in America would be so goated if this country wasn't so corrupt, incompetent, and proud of it. Imagine sitting in a passenger rail with a book and a nice cup of tea as you're watching the Cascadian country side pass you, interrupted by a couple villages here and there.

  • axont [she/her, comrade/them]
    hexbear
    39
    edit-2
    10 months ago

    Houston is possibly one of the worst designed and least appealing cities on Earth. There are some moderately ok places, like the museum district is ok. The underground walkway areas downtown are kinda cool too.

    Everything else is a complete mess of spaghetti roads, crumbling buildings, and an expectation that driving for 45 minutes on 70 mph highway is a normal commute to work. It's absurd how much of the money flows directly into some oil company's off-shore account rather than fixing literally anything.

    Houston is like all the worst parts of Los Angeles but without any of the interesting things.

  • buh [any]
    hexbear
    34
    10 months ago

    is that houston

      • Freeanotherday [he/him, they/them]
        hexbear
        40
        edit-2
        10 months ago

        Chongqing is only like 25 years old. Before that it was an industry zone in the Sichuan province. Lol

        It is actually a crown jewel of china's growth and focus on livability in their cities.

        • Parsani [love/loves, comrade/them]
          hexagon
          hexbear
          43
          edit-2
          10 months ago

          I didn't make the meme, I thought Chongqing was a weird choice when there are older or lower tier cities which still make Houston look like absolute shit and are far lesser known. But I'm a simple poster, I see train, I post train

        • @dolphin
          hexbear
          18
          edit-2
          10 months ago

          deleted by creator

          • Tankiedesantski [he/him]
            hexbear
            19
            10 months ago

            Apparently Chongqing was first settled sometime around 316 BC so... yea just casually older than most European countries.

            • Chapo_is_Red [he/him]
              hexbear
              15
              10 months ago

              Tbf, many European countries have cities older than the country

              • Alaskaball [comrade/them]
                hexbear
                6
                10 months ago

                Like Marseilles in France or name an Italian city (I like Taranto for an example)

          • Catradora_Stalinism [she/her, comrade/them]
            hexbear
            5
            edit-2
            10 months ago

            I broke it once and got literally trillions of political points, I was so close to completing the space projects. Once you get asteriod mining the game doesn't know what to do lol. It really comes down to those CO2 extractors like holy shit you may have energy shortages but you'll basically fix the environment. Besides that All nuclear/Air Turbine and solar power baby. Some renewable fuels may have bad effects, but its all right, your other achievements will outweigh it. Focus really hard on some projects in the beginning, I suggest rushing solar power improvements and battery enhancements. Also having the one that creates a automated economy is a godsend. As well as Stakhanovite Shock workers law, it makes people cranky but production is a must. It gets evened out by the automated economy anyway.

            The research is really good in the animal liberationist (for the vegan shit), the accelerationist (some may complain but idc), and the Eco Feminists (they invite you to mushroom foraging they're my favorite). Utopianists are there but they make people happy when you have them on your side. Fuck the consumerists, literally just completely ignore them. THEY WILL RIDE THE BUS AND BECOME VEGAN. Also just do everything the Fanonists want and don't do anything they'd hate. Authoritarian is just libshit caricatures, and are almost impossible to get in game (also following the animal liberationists really pisses them off), but can be attained for free at the beginning if you start in tutorial mode (you will have to go through the full tutorial). They are useful if you want to do a coup and just literally throw out the happiness meter and disable parliament. This is only as a last resort because it disables the benefits from those factions and also just kinda mean. Environmentalists got your back every time besides the accelerationist

            The game's politics have several holes and doesn't really address the national question at all and just assumes everyone went no borders immediately. It criticizes any space exploration outside

            The Earth Liberation front is annoying, but benefits of accelerated tech far outshine their efforts. Ignore them. Making people happy is tricky because the annoying treat lovers throw a fit when any actual changes are made. You can ignore them if you keep development high, and save up those Happiness centric laws.

            If you wanna have fun you can steal the wealth of the first world and even out development. Although the game says this is bad somehow but I do not care lol.

            uh as you see I played this instead of working

    • Mokey [none/use name]
      hexbear
      64
      10 months ago

      The same hong kong owned by western capitalist for 70 years right?

        • Mokey [none/use name]
          hexbear
          49
          10 months ago

          How are you a star trek fan and this stupid, do you just clap at the spaceships?

        • MultigrainCerealista [he/him, comrade/them]
          hexbear
          36
          edit-2
          10 months ago

          They doubled the average size of new apartments by outlawing the appalling tiny units that the British establishment encouraged and by engaging in actual planning concerning land use, another thing the British colonial era ignored.

          Now it’s about 50-90 sqm for new apartments which is the same as other high density cities like Barcelona. New York for example is 50-70 sqm.

          They estimate a further gain of 10-20% in floor area per person by 2030.

          Thanks China!

          Your dumb ass should start questioning your assumptions because they’re wrong.

          • urshanabi [he/they]@lemmygrad.ml
            hexbear
            12
            10 months ago

            hey comrade, since you seem knowledgeable on the topic, do you know if there are any plans to further develop the new territories? I was in HK and I saw how much empty space and large single homes were there and I was astonished with the lack of development, not sure if there's a historical reason for that.

            • MultigrainCerealista [he/him, comrade/them]
              hexbear
              11
              10 months ago

              I’m not an expert at all but I know the plan is to keep most of HK as undeveloped woodland.

              It’s one of the things that surprises visitors, despite being one of the most densely populated places on earth, 2/3rds of HK is a nature preserve and they plan to keep it that way.

              Partly this is because nature is good and the city treasures the green spaces. Which is why you see those funny high rises with a square missing in the center, it’s not actually feng shui it’s because approval often requires that you don’t block the sun and views of the mountains.

              But it’s also in part because the mountainous parts are not very suitable for building and they’re prone to mudslides so building up on them would be a bad idea.

              It’s actually cheaper and easier to “reclaim” land from the sea which is where most new land comes from, but really it’s increasing density and building up that creates most new housing.

            • Awoo [she/her]
              hexbear
              5
              10 months ago

              Until 1947 colonial Hong Kong had a rule stating that you could not live on the land overlooking Hong Kong unless you were an expat (rich colonial capitalists).

              This caused all elevated land in Hong Kong to become high-value. Today it's all unbelievably expensive land. And only owned by millionaires and billionaires.

              The process for purchasing land in HK is also a tender process, the government announces land sales and then takes bids. Until 2018 all of these bids would go into a box and then the government selects the highest bid from the box. This upholds the "free market" philosophy of the region, which they're not allowed to change until the end of the agreement made in 1997 with Britain. In 2018 they managed to adjust it so that there was transparency on the bid amounts, so that bidders now don't go in blind and overbid in order to get the land, its intention is to stop massive price balloons caused by the black box that the process used to be but you and I both know it won't really solve the issue. The issue is the bidding process in its entirety of course, nobody can develop land this expensive and sell/rent property on that land to recuperate the cost of the land purchase without the properties that are built being absurdly expensive themselves.

          • commiecapybara [he/him, e/em/eir]
            hexbear
            7
            10 months ago

            I recently saw a mini-documentary about the segmented apartments in Hong Kong, and how because now they're banned, some of them have been made into mini-museums as a kind of walk-through PSA about the horrific conditions people were forced to live in only 20 years ago. As interesting as things like that and the Kowloon Walled City are from a historical point of view, I'm glad that the government turned it into a park and people have better living conditions now.

            • Awoo [she/her]
              hexbear
              3
              edit-2
              10 months ago

              Having examples for people to see is essential for making sure people remember what they came from and why they shouldn't want to go back to it. This is something I think communist countries need to get on more efficiently, museums of capitalism and its historical conditions. This is also very important to capitalism, with its museums to feudalism and (at least here in europe) heavy focus in education on feudal lives).

        • Tankiedesantski [he/him]
          hexbear
          32
          10 months ago

          You're absolutely right. The One Country Two Systems approach isn't worth the paper it's written on now that the Brits are flagrantly interfering with HK's affairs.

          The PRC should immediately integrate HK into Guangdong Province, arrest the real estate oligarchs and seize their assets.

        • Egon [they/them]
          hexbear
          31
          10 months ago

          Because you don't just throw people out of their homes without a viable alternative. Viable alternatives take time and resources to build, neither of which are infinite. As @Kaisen@hexbear.net has already explained, this is already being done.

        • Awoo [she/her]
          hexbear
          4
          edit-2
          10 months ago

          why hasn't China fixed it in the over 25 years?

          Because when China under Deng took it back from Britain by basically telling them "fuck off or we'll do it by force" and Thatcher agreed (knowing full well they could not fight to keep it and would have had very little support for that anyway other than the western shitholes which were more concerned about the USSR and other communist countries in europe than China at the time), one of the requirements of the deal that Britain made was to keep the current system with unchanged policies for 50 years. This was signed in the Joint Declaration.

          This blueprint would be elaborated on in the Hong Kong Basic Law (the post-handover regional constitution) and the central government's policies for the territory were to remain unchanged for a period of at least 50 years after 1997.

          So if you want to complaint to the correct people responsible the way it is currently, complain to the British.

    • Awoo [she/her]
      hexbear
      4
      10 months ago

      What part of One Country; Two Systems do you not understand? This is caused by Hong Kong being allowed to be 100% exploitative capitalism for the purposes of trade (and the agreement made with Britain) rather than socialism.