#the urbanist

[transit-fag]

Oh new idea: the urbanist bucket list, one place in each US state and Canadian Province that is home to something interesting in terms of urbanism

[archiveofaffinities]

Squares: A Public Place Design Guide for Urbanists by Mark C. Childs, Diagrams of types of courthouse squares

[abnormalpsychology]

What are “anarchist calisthenics”?

[julietasgf]

usually I don't have much to complain regarding the thg universe worldbuilding, but the lack of mention of cities in the districts drives me crazy

[walkingdetroit]

Two Years in Detroit

Two years have flown by!

[ceilidhtransing]

It's astonishing the number of conversations about urbanism that get derailed by one person going “but what about my very specific situation!”

Look. No one is talking about forcing you specifically to never ever use a car if the life you lead needs one. There will always be edge cases like someone who lives on the very outer limits of a city but has to commute every day to their job thirty miles away in Middle Of Nowhere Village Farm (Population Two Hundred) which is too far to cycle and it's unlikely that there will ever be fast frequent public transport on that particular route so of course it makes sense for that person to drive. Even in well planned places there are still some situations that warrant a car. And, of course (though this is not really the group this post is about), there will be a very small population of disabled people - smaller than a lot of people probably imagine, but it definitely exists - for whom, no matter how accessible a mixed-use walkable neighbourhood you build, with tactile paving and level boarding and free seating everywhere and continuous pavements and safe segregated pedestrian paths and all that fantastic stuff, it will still be necessary to use a car a lot of the time.

But the existence of edge cases does not invalidate the project as a whole, and in fact it's a pretty conservative instinct to respond to an attempt to massively improve the general conditions of society with “but what about the way it will affect me?!”

I am very sympathetic to a lot of these people's fears and apprehensions, particularly those of disabled people who are all too used to urban planning projects completely forgetting they exist and severely limiting their ability to get around the world. I really do understand the feeling of “I can only barely get around as it is and I'm afraid that all this urbanism stuff will only make it yet more impossible for me to live my life”. But I suspect that a lot of this feeling comes from a fear of extremely poorly implemented “urbanism”, where things are - especially in North America - basically the exact same as there are now except you're forced to walk or cycle everywhere so you have an 80-minute round-trip cycle just to get groceries and the Urbanism Cops will hunt you down if you so much as think about driving. And while there's always some risk that good ideas will be absolutely butchered in execution by incompetent, careless and/or malicious officials, I do want to emphasise that no one is actually advocating for that kind of situation. An “urbanism” that leaves everything basically as-is except now cars are banned or something is no urbanism at all. And an urbanism that makes it infinitely harder for people to get around, rather than easier, is also no urbanism at all. Whatever your nightmare vision is of “everyone being forced to cycle everywhere” or “my commute now being 4 hours long because I'm not allowed to drive” or “now I'm trapped inside my house because I can't walk very far and my neighbourhood isn't accessible to me” is not actually being advocated by anyone.

Urbanism is about greatly improving the quality of life for society as a whole (as well as, you know, staving off the climate catastrophe), and within that framework there will be space for all the edge cases. Because that's what they are: edge cases. Even if 15% of people will need to drive to work no matter what, that's still 85% of people who won't. Even if 10% of people will need a car to go shopping, that's still 90% of people who won't. And the expectation - especially from people whose opposition is rooted not in genuine concern for accessibility but rather in pure myopic selfishness, like the business owners who go apeshit every time a bike lane is proposed on their street - that we should hold off on massive improvements for the vast bulk of society because “what about their specific edge case situation” is how nothing ever gets improved at all. “My personal need to drive means that everything should remain car-dependent forever.” “I can't ride a bike therefore we shouldn't invest in cycle infrastructure.” “My nearest transit stop is a half-hour walk away so instead of advocating for better public transit that works for my neighbourhood I'm going to insist that everything stays the way it is now.” Prioritising edge cases - often those of loud and wealthy conservative minorities - at the direct expense of the broad solutions that will result in massive quality-of-life improvements for almost everyone is deeply unfair, and doesn't result in anything ever getting better, but rather is a big contributing factor to everything staying shit forever.

[romaticiseadarkcity]

is there an urban planning discord group people could join? i know virtually nothing about the field but whenever i see urban planning posts they have me so interested

sharing this with the crowd because I know nothing about discord! there IS a tumblr community though, it's called Urbanists on Tunglr

[phoneography-blog]

[yglesbian]

the fact that walkable citys is a controversial topic in the us is so BIZARRE like thats an insane level of brainwashing if you think "we should depend less on cars" is debatable and not an obvious fact

[librarycards]

To be fair I have seen urbanists be ableist cunts. They also love to be wildly fatphobic. But I’m saying that as a fellow urbanist who wants to improve the state of the field. Also I’m sure you are not that type but I get nervous when progressives go for the “look at how outrageous this claim of ableism is” trope. even when the person they are arguing against is objectively wrong it kinda reads as salivating to critique the concept of ableism the way a lot of people go about it. Sorry for the rambling hope some of it was something.

i can see this. i am generally suspicious of claims that "ableism is exaggerated" for obvious reasons, but in this case - i notice again and again that the disabled people who are most outwardly pro-car are never the disabled people who could never afford one in the first place. interesting, i'd say, that people who show disdain for mass transit as an answer to car culture are never those who have been poor enough that the shitty, crowded, inaccessible bus is their only option.

the classism inherent in urbanism and the classism in disabled pro-car activism are, imo, twins, even as urbanists themselves practice their own genre of ableism alongside it.

[twiggybeing]

The 401 highway in Canada has the most traffic out of any road or highway in all of north America.

Because of this traffic, the average speed can drop to a stand still.

If Canada had high speed rail that took a similar route, it would be abled to transport people from different cities to Toronto's city center over 4 times faster.

The amount of cars this would take off the road would significantly reduce traffic, which would also make driving safer and faster.

The amount of time it takes to drive from Toronto to Vancouver with little to no traffic would be 41 hours of driving. If there was a cross country high speed railway that time could be cut down to less than 10 hours using the fastest German trains.

The upkeep costs for rail compared to that of highways are also much lower, and with bringing less cars into a city, it would need less subsidized parking lots which don't pay real estate tax, nor do they make room for businesses or housing.

[transit-fag]

The divisions of Ireland and the UK that will be used for the Urbanist Guidebook

[archiveofaffinities]

Squares- A Public Place Design Guide for Urbanists by Mark C. Childs, "Magic Square"

[abnormalpsychology]

Anarchist calisthenics & direct action, as talked abt by the Happy Urbanist on tiktok

[yyawnjun]

randomly appearing and disappearing 💔 I miss having a normal schedule,,