People Who Live In Suburbs: Classy, Icky, or Dudes?

has this been linked? if so, sorry

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/04/us/activists-fight-green-projects-seeing-un-plot.html

"In Maine, the Tea Party-backed Republican governor canceled a project to ease congestion along the Route 1 corridor after protesters complained it was part of the United Nations plot."

(xp) that video makes it look like being in one of the driverless cars would be absolutely terrifying

if i ran into that intersection to take a left i'd rather have a robot drive

related:
http://www.popsci.com/cars/article/2011-06/nevada-passes-driverless-car-legislation-paving-way-autonomous-autos

Kowloon's walled city is/was such a great obsession because it's what happens when growth occurs unchecked by laws and building codes.

― valleys of your mind (mh), Monday, March 5, 2012 11:46 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

lol the circumstances and factors that led to the building of the walled city would be very, very, very hard to replicate in the US. the lack of law/building codes played a rather small factor in the totality of its existence.

any suburb that builds light-rail will turn into kowloon in less than a year

like, the primary reason the population density of the kowloon walled city reached what it did is because hong kong is a city where 7 million people live in a space that is 1/4 the size of manhattan. the conditions that allow that to happen simply exist in very few places on Earth. maybe if Maobama tomorrow said that everybody in the US had to move to new york state under martial law, maybe.

I don't think the law/code absence made it exist, it's just such an interesting study in those things.

Nobody wants that place to exist in the US! I think people are in awe, but I have never heard of anyone advocating it as a model of anything other than a place that seems fictional but existed due to weird politics.

i want it to exist, in new hampshire

well it's not really 'natural growth' as it's an ex-military fort, favelas are prob a better example.

Then again, areas that require fewer building permits and less review in the US tend to have some really bizarre issues. I could totally picture the suburbs of the future having few government building codes, strong residential association codes, and absolutely horrible internal construction standards.

A coworker who's lived in pretty much the middle of nowhere explained once that his friend had briefly lived in a house with mediocre water pressure. The guy after him realized the main water shutoff valve in the basement wasn't all the way open, so he fixed it. Suddenly, he had a sopping wet wall upstairs between the living room and bathroom because some genius had run out of pipe and used garden hose to run water to the sink. Inside the wall. Coworker's friend was nearly sued, but he was able to point the finger to the house's original occupant...

okay mh but "Kowloon's walled city is/was such a great obsession because it's what happens when growth occurs unchecked by laws and building codes." seems to imply the opposite of what you said!

fwiw 'growth unchecked by laws/building codes' usually results in shantytowns which are not super-dense. hong kong is super-dense even when checked by laws and building codes, as I'm sure you're aware.

shantytowns are pretty dense!

yeah but not kowloon walled city dense!

no but denser than like, san francisco

the density that happens in hk only happens because growth happens vertically, not horizontally

yeah for sure, but that's not the only factor. like mumbai and kolkatta are denser iirc and not particularly 'tall' because people live 300 to a room.

but yeah kowloon sorta was the best of both worlds, poverty and height

india also has a billion people

I think HK's population density is under-calculated because the majority of land in HK is actually undeveloped, mountainous terrain. forget the exact number but I think something like only 10% of the total territory of HK is actually inhabited.

walled city was 3.25 million people per square mile. perfect density imo.

Then again, areas that require fewer building permits and less review in the US tend to have some really bizarre issues. I could totally picture the suburbs of the future having few government building codes, strong residential association codes, and absolutely horrible internal construction standards.

By "of the future", you mean "1986", right?

like the official density figure for HK as a whole is 16,000/mi^2 but I think that for the urban areas where people actually live, it's closer to the neighborhood of mong kok which is 340,000/mi^2* (and not particularly tall compared to most modern housing estates that have been built)

*holds the guinness world record for area w/ highest population density in the world

haha you are competitive about this. I'm trying to find a figure that adjusts for the green space.

I want people itt to know that my opinion counts

okay I calculated it myself using the wikipedia numbers and the densities of the individual districts of hong kong:

12995.9433 sq/km...which is about twice the regular density. still less than mumbai's regular density tho.

you have to remember there are like piles of 100s of poor people in mumbai, they don't need a skyscraper, they are like a human skyscraper

oops it was actually 20,805.77913, I fucked up some cells.

finally we're identifying some healthy density targets

To be fair, part of the reason Kowloon walled city thrived where it did was that for a number of years local authorities didn't police it, and by the time they did it was pretty difficult to do so. I've seen numbers indicating that there were thousands of police raids, but really no day-to-day police action. Some of the people there were crowding into this area because it wasn't regulated -- hence all the dentists and organized crime.

oops it was actually 20,805.77913, I fucked up some cells.

― iatee, Monday, March 5, 2012 4:33 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

HK would def make this list then

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_proper_by_population_density

To be fair, part of the reason Kowloon walled city thrived where it did was that for a number of years local authorities didn't police it, and by the time they did it was pretty difficult to do so. I've seen numbers indicating that there were thousands of police raids, but really no day-to-day police action. Some of the people there were crowding into this area because it wasn't regulated -- hence all the dentists and organized crime.

― valleys of your mind (mh), Monday, March 5, 2012 4:37 PM (49 seconds ago) Bookmark

this is all true, but by far the biggest reason was the population pressure of HK. absence of the rule of law doesn't by itself lead to the most densely populated area in recorded human history, it would just lead to a shantytown.

yeah those examples in france are basically just neighborhoods in paris and paris' perceived density is lower than hk so xp

related:
http://www.popsci.com/cars/article/2011-06/nevada-passes-driverless-car-legislation-paving-way-autonomous-autos
― iatee, Monday, March 5, 2012 1:39 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

06/23/11 at 4:49 pm
I personaly don't see the need for this because in the end all machines can be hacked,damaged,and be injected with a bad viris. this is just my opinion but if people actualy paid attention to the road and did not drink 5 pints of alchol and then decide to drive home, accidents like this would never happen. i feel the same way to the proposition of inserting machines in the body. instead we should be geneticaly enchced it will feel more natural and wont need a power system.

otm

the man makes a solid point

There's a bunch of open space around where that was though, dayo! If it weren't for the bizarre lack of ownership or whatever, it would have spread horizontally as well as vertically.

right - but because of the historically unique circumstances it couldn't. so I"m not sure what point, if you have one at all good sir, you are trying to make.

I never said it was absence of rule of law by itself! Just that those were two factors. Sorry, I just kind of misread it as you taking me literally that it was just those two things. There were a shitload of things, I was just throwing out a couple that people fixate one

*on

oh I didn't see this in the times article kinda cool

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/images/newsgraphics/2012/0301-crowded/0304-web-CROWDED.png

errr guess not

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/03/01/realestate/manhattans-population-density-past-and-present.html?ref=realestate

lol la

Matt Yglesias has a new e-book "The Rent Is Too Damn High" - I haven't read it but apparently he argues that building codes that prevent vertical growth in urban areas are harmful to the economy:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/03/06/the_rent_is_too_damn_high_available_today.html

yeah I prob won't read it cause duh but everything in the book is probably true

another pov:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/markbergen/2012/03/05/the-stagnant-city-how-urban-politics-are-pushing-rents-up/

more on that:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/markbergen/2012/03/06/why-a-city-needs-a-nafta-and-a-nader/

the breitbartians have gone to the review section, incidentally...

http://www.amazon.com/Rent-Too-Damn-High-ebook/product-reviews/B0078XGJXO/ref=cm_cr_pr_hist_1?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0&filterBy=addOneStar

By Ben - See all my reviews This review is from: The Rent Is Too Damn High (Kindle Edition)

I'll be honest. I was completely blown away by all the male nudity in this book. I wasn't expecting 20 pages filled with naked pictures of the author in various poses. I found the photos that included animals to be in extremely poor taste.

small-time (former?) big government contrib really goes in

1.0 out of 5 stars A boy should never forgive his cheating father, March 6, 2012
By
Morgan Warstler
This review is from: The Rent Is Too Damn High (Kindle Edition)
One has to forgive Matt for the circumstances that he grew up in.... as soon as he admits he is guilty. His father, Rafael Yglesias, was a serial cheater who documents in auto-biographical form how little respect he had for Matt's mom Margaret Joskow.

Growing up in that, needing to normalize and privately even "valorize" it, leads a young man's brain to create neural networks that make socialization antithetical to identity.

So we end up with a sociopath who covers his tracks with high-minded technocrat caring, whose policies and opinions lash out at any and all who'd look down their nose at his family life (ie the majority of rock ribbed Americans).

Forgiveness is a basic human trait, one that most world religions preach. But forgiveness comes after admission of true guilt.

Matt's life work to date is about trying to weaken the bonds of American values, because according to those values, he's not from high quality stock.

ugh