jcrm

Yes? That’s how art has always worked.

Higher energy density is going to be needed for sure, but as a brutalism evangelist, I’m gonna take this chance to say we could just make the whole building out of concrete so it’s all one big battery.

I wasn’t talking about the feds, I was talking about provincial governments in Canada, which municipalities and local governments are fully controlled by. So that small change also can’t happen, because a premiere can just decide they want to override what the local government wants to do, and there’s nothing you can do about that except wait for an election. And even then, our electoral system is so screwed up that the Conservatives have a majority government (allowing them to do whatever they want) with only 18% of eligible voters casting a ballot for them.

Change is possible, but there’s a lotta steps we have to get through before urbanist advocacy is even going to be considered. Electorial reform bringing in MMPR is the first step.

I got in a fight with somebody on Instagram who decided to do a whole reel on how this is NJB “hurting urbanism”. I disagreed with them entirely, but I’m glad to not be seeing his awful points repeated here.

Are there problems with Jason’s view? Absolutely, but he’s also not speaking on behalf of anyone other than himself. There straight up are massive amounts of the US and Canada that I don’t think are ever fixable, short of razing them and restarting. And the problem with advocacy to fix them is that there’s so many issues that compound to make them horrible places, that no advocacy group will be able to win anything. Putting in bike lanes only works when there are places to bike to (and we can’t even seem to get good bike lanes right here).

He literally closes with “it can get better, but it cannot be fixed within your children’s lifetimes”. Specifically referring to the US there. He isn’t discouraging anyone from advocating, just explaining why he himself does not for NA.

It’s not phrased the best it could be here, but he isn’t talking about all of NA, but he is talking about a majority of it. There are pockets here that will get better, and are doing so, but there’s also massive amounts that just can’t get better without razing them. The exurbs being built on top of prime farm land in Ontario is a perfect example of this. Those places can never, and will never be fixed, at least not within my lifetime. And it is a waste of energy and time to try to fix those places.

That only applies when you don’t have people ripping out the trees every other election cycle.

because it is relatively cheap.

It is not. Car infrastructure is some of the most expensive there is. It’s cheap because it’s heavily subsidized. It’s popular because car manufacturers made it popular, with propaganda and lobbying for making cars the default form of transportation.

If your opinion is the obviously correct one where driving is the only thing accomodated for, why does the actual data show that the model for walkable cities with good transit have happier, healthier, more comfortable people, and are economically stronger than car dependent cities?

Given their name is “OpenAI” and they were founded on the idea of being transparent with those exact things, I’m less impressed that that’s what they’re upset about. The keep saying they’re “protecting” us by not releasing us, which just isn’t true. They’re protecting their profits and valuation.