Racing Turtles

walkable cities also means sittable cities send tweet

Fun Fact, legalizing ADUs and multi family housing on single family zoned lots will not led to you living in the Kowloon Walled city, densifying a city doesn't necessarily mean living like "sardines"

Like this is seriously a pet peave of mine, once I said that zoning reform is a good thing and someone came in and said they opposed it because they liked living in a less dense setting which is fine, but I am not saying it needs to be the East Village of New York with 40,000 people per sq.mi. I am saying that we should make it legal build this instead of a single family house.

Like tell me how your quality of life will in any way be harmed by a quadplex across the street instead of a single family house, that's right, it won't. Because every debate we have about the design of our urban spaces goes back to misconceptions, misunderstandings and classism. You don't want to have a less dense neighborhood because it affects you personally, you don't want density because you associate multifamily dwellings with the poor

this is so funny

"but uh when we advocated for indigenous sovereignty we thought you guys were just going to make a big park or something"

"fuck you. ultradense housing that bypasses your stupid zoning rules"

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Thanks for posting, OP! Fantastic news. This is a great example of why native plants are everything

Article date: August 22, 2023

pokemon single moms will raise their child in a quaint neighborhood of three houses and one of the nations leading laboratories

This kind of smart, walkable, mixed-use urbanism is illegal to build in many American cities

How to tell someone's feelings about urbanism in 1 easy step

Also probably check to see what their opinion on North American Car Dependence is and if they are normal about dense housing

You are right @autisticwreckingball the 15 minute city is a good starting point to see if someone is at least inclined towards urbanism because of how it is such a simple and basic good concept

@backsetx Then it's a great time for me to explain Dutch cycling infrastructure for you. Dutch cycling infrastructure is infrastructure where bikes are given priority and separation from cars is placed at a high importance. It is does by building separated lanes and bike streets. Here are some photos of it below

Adding on because I did not know this:

This is a good quick description of what I am talking about so I will reblog it for more people to see it

there is apparently a sizeable contingent of "walkable city" proponents who start frothing at the mouth and vocally supporting eugenics if you dare mention that many disabled and elderly and pregnant people need personal vehicles to get anywhere at all in a reasonable timeframe and that "paratransit" has always been a cruel joke.

this is why "15-minute city" is better terminology: if a person can't get there on foot in 15 minutes due to physical limitations, they should be able to drive there in (well under) 15 minutes instead, and this will be straightforward to accomplish because there will be quintuple the amenities and drastically fewer people on the slower, safer roads.

there will still be personal vehicles in a well-designed 15-minute city!!! you just won't be driving from the suburb part to the doctor part across 30 minutes of freeway traffic!

i am saying this because there are a lot of disabled folks who have entirely reasonable reservations about "walkable cities" not because of the name, but because there are some extremely vocal eugenicists out there who think if you can't bike then you simply don't belong anywhere in their walkable utopia.

this is the kind of walkable mixed use &c&c&c

No one should ever be more than a 15-20 walk away from

- food (staple foods, not fast food, candy, or other junk)

- their workplace (no long commutes)

- medical treatment

Anything more complicated, specialized, or difficult to put in an isolated or rural area should be accessible via reliable, frequent public transportation - busses, trains, or similar leaving every 10-20 minutes

This will work against ecological damage from overuse of the automobile and improve quality of life in general.

Easily my most controversial post ever.

not even an exaggeration

We need more of this but even bigger actually put whole community centers, gyms, schools, restaurants, theaters and hospitals in too.

this fucks so hard i'm gonna be walking funny for days

Jess kellgren-fozard recently talked about how even as a disabled person, she'd followed the English narrative to move into small town or rural semi isolation for 'independence'

Visiting family in Malaysia she realised what a liberation it was living in a big tower block with cafes and laundry and shops and everything in your building connected by lifts. How much more she could do. And how weird the idea of independence was linked to isolation and inefficiency in the UK.

My wifes (rural german) family think we're weird and or refusing to grow up because we intend to stay in the city. But it's bad enough getting round town to the doctors and clinics and shops as it is, at least they're all connected by bike or tube.

And it's not just about disability, but families and everyone else having easy access to resources and community. Things to do, third spaces, resource pooling.

If Americans think all this so bad why like cruise ships?

rationalist yimby btvs au where the popularity of single family houses and the promotion of homeownership are a result of vampire protection policies pushed by the occult division of the public health services, bc apartments don’t offer sufficiently strong magical protection against supernatural home invasion. willow designs bus routes that function as magical wards excluding vampires from within the area they enclose, which has the side effect of reversing the century old trend toward suburbanization and revitalizing city centers across North America

giles uncovers references to robert moses being a demon in disguise, leading to the the big reveal at the end of act 1 is that the planners responsible for single-family zoning made a pact with an evil wolfram and hart-style demon cabal to trade the safety of the suburbs for human sacrifices in the city center. at the end of act 2, it’s revealed that the charming dutch city-planner-slash-occultist who’s befriended the whole scooby gang is actually a plant, and he’s subtly altered willow’s planned transit routes so that if actually implemented, they will summon Ngwhlmoth of the Infinite Lanes, who will erupt forth from every freeway cutting through an urban core in america at once, devouring the country whole

the sequel fic is 200,000 extremely preachy words of buffy defeating mayor wilkins using the power of georgism

I know "walkable cities" is considered a buzzword and urbanists are increasingly seen as preachy liberal wonks, but we're literally right. If you spend enough time in an American city outside the literal bubble of your car you will see people carrying groceries along the shoulders of freeways, running for their lives to cross a street, or waiting for an hour to catch a delayed bus. If you read local obituaries about pedestrian and cyclist fatalities, they're not white tech bros in spandex but people in redlined neighborhoods without proper sidewalks. You spend enough time trying to own the urbanist nerds and oops, you start condoning a status quo that is overtly cruel and racist.

Do this tomorrow.

The best time to destroy a golf course was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.

everyone on tinder is like “dreaming of a big house with a yard in the countryside and a horse”, where are my fellow kowloon walled city fans at

look, i want a kowloon walled city place but i also want enough land to build a cult complex with multiple pieces of industrial equipment

okay, yeah, if I can’t live in kowloon walled city I want to live in a remodelled missile silo

i mean either way the point is having other people around

i don’t want a yard, i want a cafe next door where people are serving coffee

if i had a house id want them to set up a cafe on my front yard but that’s illegal for zoning reasons

A yard is just a bit of space where other people doing shit for customers has been banned. It’s just a legal status of enforced barrenness

I assume there would be a cafe in the cult complex