The hate for rural/suburban areas is really bordering on malthusianism with the assumption that relocation to cities is the only option. (hexbear.net)

submitted 1 year ago by happybirthdaygonzolo@hexbear.net to c/urbanism@hexbear.net

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You all do realize that suburbs existed before the invention of the car right? American infrastructure is bad but it’s not irredeemable, the assumption that we can’t provide public transportation to these places because of a lack of resources is malthusian. And sure some places like the American Southwest and Florida are legitimately over human population carrying capacity due to climate change but in general the earth as a whole isn’t, and cities like Amsterdam are just as unsustainable as Miami since even though has one of those le epic reddit notjustbikes cityskylines approved infrastructure, both are below the sea level.

I think in general our message should be abolish the need to own the automobile, any measures meant to limit car use should target the rich before the poor. And that trains are good, and that a high speed train across the United States would be a rather popular project in the eyes of even the chuds. And by god stop calling for the suburbs to be razed, stop trying to be zoomer Robert Moses.

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[-] bidenicecream@hexbear.net 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The "leftists" on this site (and I hesitate to use that term without wanting to CW myself) like to imagine a world where all the suburbs magically disappear. It's kind of similar to how libs would totally push the "make all homeless disappear painlessly" button if they could. You got the life-long city-dwellers who say "um, ackchually, if everyone just rode bikes we'd all be okay. It's what I do when I ride my bike in Brooklyn to hang out with other hipster losers" These types you can safely ignore, because they have no idea on how to deal with the transportation issue. You also have the "I grew up in the suburbs/rural areas and I WANTED TO ESCAPE SO BADLY SO I DID AND I'M NEVER GOING BACK CUZ FUCK THOSE PEOPLE I DON'T WANT MORE EMOTIONAL LABOR" types. Ironically, it's exactly these people who are needed if anything is going to truly change, because they have first hand knowledge on how to deal with the suburban/rural types. Remember, all the successful socialist revolutions came from the rural peasantry, not the cosmopolitan coffee drinkers. So why not take a look at how places like the Soviet Union or China dealt with creating transportation infrastructure instead of wanting to unironically burn all suburbs down. For future suburbs, yeah, design them better. But how do you deal with existing infrastructure without wanting to just burn it all down? How fucking stupid and idealist. OP is totally right on this one.