The last few months, I've started to really notice how shit the quality of most buildings and infrastructure is in the US. I know a lot of people in the construction industry and grew up in it, and it's really just amazing how everything is built to maximize short term appearance and minimize cost. EVERYTHING, even ostensibly "luxury" housing, is built this way. I used to live an apartment building that was only a few years old but when you looked at the details you could already see the thing was falling apart. I've seen roads get resurfaced only to see a bunch of cracks and pot holes show up the next winter.
So as America enters terminal decline, I fully expect the buildings and infrastructure around us is just gonna fall apart and look hideous. Especially the suburbs. I feel like most suburbs are held together with paper mache and veneer. And of course Americans will deny it's happening and pretend it's totally fine.
We stopped maintaining this stuff really with the onset of neoliberalism, and a lot of the really good infrastructure really dates back to the new deal era and is getting to the end of its lifetime. We don't make shit here anymore, so we don't need good infrastructure to support our manufacturing base.
That story about the two dams in Michigan collapsing should be a warning: This, much like the recent Texas disaster is a sign of things to come We have many new things poorly built and a lot of old things poorly maintained, both of which are facing extreme conditions largely due to climate change. A lot of cities and municipalities really can't afford to fix this stuff so help needs to come from state or really federal levels.
Suburban sprawl has bankrupted our cities, and is totally unsustainable
Maybe "build back better" guy can help this stuff limp along, but in typical Democrat fashion he's not really going to do anything on the magnitude that would do more than just kick the can down the road. The only proposal that seems to have taken this stuff seriously got called a "green dream" by Nancy Pelosi.
I also want to add that all of this is going to be worse because we never actually recovered from the 2008 crisis. The financial sector recovered, but people have not. The jobs are not back, and if the market stops fooling itself, the Coronavirus recession may actually catch up with us and all of this stuff is going to be exacerbated.
Sure enough and I've gathered that the parts of Glass Steagall that separated consumer banks from investment banks never got reinstated because of how the dems and gop bargained dodd Frank. So the key vulnerabilities that allowed the housing crash to take down the whole financial system, never got addressed. So like you said the situation never got fixed and imo the coronavirus is just a scapegoat (or more likely a catalyst) for the real recession.
God I used to work construction, I worked on “luxury” apartments all across the South installing blinds. It was eye opening how shitty quality this stuff was, I remember being able to look down the walls of these apartments that’s were 3-4K a month and the fucking walls weren’t even straight let alone the goddamn doors being hung right or the windows being the right size for our blinds.
I don't think it literally needs to be handcrafted, you can get a good result by building a modest home working closely with a contractor.
Just bought a century old house made from old growth lumber and the inspector was talking about how incredibly strong that stuff is and said it was in great condition. Feels kinda cool but also :deeper-sadness: about my inadvertent contribution to last century's deforestation of this beautiful land
about my inadvertent contribution to last century’s deforestation of this beautiful land
This should not weigh on you whatsoever. What you did do is not contribute to current deforestation, which unlike the past is within your control.
Congrats on the house!
You're putting material that already exists to use, that is a net positive for the environment.
It's good to know that curvy walls are common in both high and low end places. Wonder if it's just poor mudding that creates bows and dips or if it's really the construction of the wall itself.
I mean, not if you have competent carpenters who go off the actual size of their materials rather than what it's called. But that is a super common weird thing with a lot of construction materials and I'll never understand it.
2x4 are the only weird one, afaik. They're cut wet at 2" x 4" and air or kiln dried so therefore shrink.
I just assumed it was most if not all lumber. It will usually say a nominal and actual size on the label.
Hazardous Waste: D+
Progress toward mitigating legacy sites where hazardous waste was produced and improperly disposed of has stalled. Meanwhile, resilience is a growing concern at many hazardous waste sites. Around 60% of all nonfederal Superfund sites are located in areas that may be impacted by flooding, storm surge, wildfires, or sea level rise related to climate change effects.
And people here still think our nation should pivot to nuclear for our energy needs, with no consideration for how we currently handle the waste we've created.
And people here still think our nation should pivot to nuclear for our energy needs
I mean, we should, but we also need to do it properly. Like all things. There's no point in doing it if we do it wrong.
Yeah it's a bit more complicated than "do it or don't do it" akin to UBI: Yang needs to walk off, but I could get onboard if Bernie (or better) were to do it.
Literally the single issue that drove me to understand socialism (and then on to Marxism) cause socialists are the only ones who directly address the problem and want to work around it. There are a few different ideas about how to do that, but at least we are actually having a conversation.
Bernie doesn't want to do it exactly for the reason I'm saying. It doesn't make sense to look at how we treat infrastructure and then think plopping nuclear facilities all over the country will go over well, even if one administration lays the groundwork, future admins will set out with the goal of undermining it.
That's not really a worthwhile risk to take considering renewables are cheaper and better for the environment in CO2 cost.
And any cursory look at our history of "we need to do it properly" should show that practically, we won't.
Even if we do the massive PR push to make nuclear something people actually want and aren't terrified of, that continued pressure to maintain safe nuclear waste facilities for decades won't happen.
Can confirm. Work for one of the largest HazMat/Enviromental remediation companies in the US. A lot of our bigger sites are dormant because it’s not profitable to proceed with remediation if the at-fault party contests.
Also- most insurance companies have creative clauses in their policies that make it impossible for spills/contaminated areas to be 100% covered. As a consequence, the state has the obligation to mitigate but corners are cut everywhere because Environmental Services are usually some of the least funded departments in state budgets. Cleanup Funds are also finite and once the fiscal year’s coffers run dry, some projects are either completely abandoned or postponed until the fund is refilled.
Currently working on a couple of PFAS sites in NH. The sites are directly tied to St. Gobain Plastics. Due to outrage, the state passed tough legislation that lowered allowable ppb levels in soil. Guess who is now suing the state?
Superfund being another program that’s funding has stagnated too.
Between the Berkeley Pit and the Hanford site , I'd sure hate to be reliant on the Columbia River for drinking water in the coming decades.
I love the ASCE infrastructure report card. I think reading about in high school is part of what started me on my interest in "big government" socialism.
ASCE
Please keep in mind the ASCE is a special-interest group representing folks who directly benefit from infrastructure spending.
Read this , it's a pretty good take from a recovering engineer.
I work in the construction industry, the only building I’ve covered that looks like it was built to last is an employee building for a Union Train Yard.
Public transport stay winning.
Most of the buildings I’ve covered are basically skeletal tiers of concrete with façades that hang off the front, which only has the advantage of being changeable.
Go to Chicago and notice how all the old skyscrapers from the early 1900s are still in great shape
This. My dad’s apartment building is over a hundred years old and they have never had problems in the 45 years they lived there.
Those Midwestern cities which were built in the early 1900s knew how to build dense and walkable cities with buildings built to last.
dense and walkable cities
Or as they called them 120 years ago, "cities".
This is why I really want an old house, shit is built to last and built to be reparable
Be careful what you wish for lol. I live in an old ass house and the landlord barely takes care of it. Currently have an entire (small 5x5, leads to an exterior door) room that is not useable because 2 of the 4 walls are almost completely covered in mold and he won't do anything about it until winter's over.
They are but this is just after resurfacing in a climate that does get below freezingbut not much lower than that.
Live in the US's northeast, can confirm that potholes are just an annual thing that happens.
there’s a literally identical copy of that townhome community a few blocks away from me. Same design, same siding, same everything
There's even a clone of you in it
The roads in the Bay Area are just so incredibly, incredibly bad. There’s not even the excuse of inclement weather as to why they resemble OHV trails.
Tangentially related, but I still find it funny that the CalTrain Express project led to the introduction of a train service with “Bullet” in the name. It retains the mind blowing top speed of 79mph, and stops at fewer stations. Hence it being “faster”.
5th largest economy in the world. Pitiful state.
880 through alameda county lmao, just bumpers everywhere, several inch deep ruts from semi trucks, a gradient of faded former lane marker lines so you never know if you're actually in the correct lane. Real wild west moments
I visited Chicago for a couple days and I could not believe how absolutely dilapidated everything was. Just rotten wood, rusted metal, holes in drywall, broken shit everywhere, super fucking dirty.
Hotel was retrofitted from the 40's, with 90's bathrooms and 2000's carpet but everything else was 40's. Exposed pipes all over the place, and haphazardly closed off vent ducts from an old unused heating system. Air conditioner was puttied into the window hastily many years ago.
You'd go into a corner store or restaurant and they'd have like, a hole in the floor taped off, or missing ceiling tiles, almost every time.
Like seriously, I live near a substantially smaller city and they take care of shit there. You wouldn't eat off the benches or anything, but they do a reasonable job. Chicago is falling apart.
I want to learn to build my own home. I used to work in construction briefly and thought that'd be a good primer of where to start but everything was put together so shitty and with the cheapest of materials. It didn't teach me so much as it made me realize that literally everything in the US is just thrown together by the lowest bidder as quickly and as cheaply as possible. It gives me anxiety driving over any type of bridge or suspension or overpass knowing that at any point it could collapse due to the negligence in building it and the cost cutting measures in order to maximize profit for the companies behind it.
USA, Welcome to Eastern Europe. The big question is how peaceful it will all be.
Or come over to EU. I never thought Id live to have the possiblity for a mail ordered bride or groom from the US.
I've been looking for a way out. I wouldn't hate being a mail order groom.
