Will Poundstone
@PoundstoneWill
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Think of me as the William Kunstler of urbanism
Joined July 2022
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Pinned Tweet
One more aisle will fix it bro. You just gotta give me one more aisle
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The collapse of I-95 in Philadelphia is eerie as we are just 17 days from the 30 year anniversary of a similar incident on I-95 in Greenwich, Connecticut.
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@_Reaganite_
"If Hitler invaded Hell, I would at least make a favorable remark about the Devil on the floor of the House of Commons"
-Winston Churchill
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@kathbarbadoro
We're talking about a state so dishonest that it calls itself an island when it is not.
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@JhonBenHans
@needstoo1
We kind of do. The fact that we have no high speed rail for instance, is taken as a sign of poverty, when in fact it is the result of our high car ownership levels
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@urbanthoughts11
The people in those cars are going to and from different places and can' t use the same bus
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1880: One more track will fix it
1900: One more track will fix it
1920: One more track will fix it
1940: One more track will fix it
1960: One more track will fix it
1980: One more track will fix it
2000: One more track will fix it
2020: ???
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@bigmoodenergy
The average car today is quite a lot narrower than the average car of the 70s
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@bigmoodenergy
You are talking to a man with an encyclopedic knowledge of automotive history.
The best selling passenger car of today vs the best selling passenger car of 50 years ago. Cars have in fact gotten smaller.
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This would cause traffic chaos and in most cities it is topographically impossible.
Imagine how nice America would be if only 20% of urban highways were turned into canal greenspaces.
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Another day, another Twitter Urbanist who turns out to be a suburbanite
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It occurs to me that 15 minute neighborhoods defeat the whole purpose of a city, which is to provide a large catchment area for jobs, labor, services, and customers. If you don't want to be more than a 15 minute walk from everything, you might as well live in a small town.
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@LoicTheStoic
Also, 82 years ago from today is 1941. I rather think there were good reasons for Britain to be spending lots of money on war.
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Our ability to travel vast distances by automobile makes efficient centralized retail, which offers lower prices for consumers, possible. You can say goodbye to this marvel with 15 minute cities
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Have you ever met anyone who says "I sure hate slipping into my car's heated seats and letting my Spotify playlist take me home after a long day at work, I wish I could take the bus!"? Me neither
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Using your baby as a crumple zone. What a great idea
Something I haven't seen before. An electric assist wheelchair add-on with a baby seat in it. The perfect urban mobility device. 🙌
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This single freeway moves more people than LA's entire rail system
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Urbanist discovers... a suburban subdivision
This is the kind of thing I love to see when riding my bike home from getting dinner! A gathering of neighbors, kids playing, and an overall strengthened community. Streets are for people, not just cars. The car-only mindset sacrifices quality of life for the sake of mobility.
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Urbanists claim the photo on the left is more desirable than the right.
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Being an urbanist requires that you hold contempt for the preferences of a majority of the population.
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The purpose of a road is to move people and goods. By turning it into a cafe, it's not a road anymore
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@ImMeme0
@Jscott1145
So I assume you are against men and women displaying their affection in public?
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This type of smart, walkable urbanism is illegal in most cities.
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@sally_12grands
Actually what happened was maintenance crews a decade earlier paved over the storm drains for a repair project and failed to unseal them. That caused rainwater to leak through the expansion joints, which caused the pin assemblies holding the bridge together to rust.
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Do you guys realize this is the first truly novel muscle car design out of Detroit in almost 20 years?
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Car infrastructure is better looking than rail infrastructure
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Urbanists point out the high cost of owning a car but ignore how much it saves on real estate. Atlantans can afford 10 times more living space than Barcelonans because of it
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@HarryHamishGray
@hijacckk
It is. Having to wait for a train in the rain is a low standard of living
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91% of American households have a car. What gives the other 9% the right to dictate urban design?
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Sort of like how advertisements for bicycles never show rain or snow?
Your daily reminder that car adverts lie to you. They sell cars for cities but the adverts never, never, show any other cars also in the same city. And we wonder why people get angry when their expensive 'freedom' machine doesn't get them very far?
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For urbanists, the hardship is the point. Having to always struggle in your daily life makes you noble. If you'd rather go everywhere with your feet up, you're a bad person.
The best cities are the ones where driving a car is the least desirable way to get around.
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Fortunately, this time around, nobody has died or been injured, but the traffic disruptions are sure to be even worse...
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The best selling passenger car of today vs the best selling passenger car of 50 years ago. Cars have in fact gotten smaller.
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@AaronErickson
@Noahpinion
Before ChatGPT, we had Google, and before Google, we had the Encyclopedia Britannica. Just reading something isn't the same as learning it.
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The reality of "transit oriented development"
@vanillaopinions
@erickdmar
I live in a skyscraper in downtown LA next to a station served by the A, B, D, and E lines, and everyone in this building still drives 🫠
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That's a toll booth you idiot
JUST ONE MORE LANE BRO I PROMISE ONE MORE LANE WILL FIX EVERYTHING ONE MORE LANE BRO PLEASE I SWEAR ONE MORE LANE
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I don't know anyone who thinks their community would be more livable if it was harder to park
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@geraaham
@JhonBenHans
@needstoo1
I guess the people of Lagos own hardly any cars because of good urban design.
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I think I've found the widest freeway in Europe. It's in... Holland. It's 14 travel lanes wide, the same width as the Katy Freeway. It's the A4 near Schiphol Airport. And the Dutch are planning a similarly wide freeway at the A27 near Utrecht.
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The transportation mode of the future according to urbanists
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On July 14, 1990, the LA Metro Blue Line opened, thereby ending traffic forever in Los Angeles
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@wanyeburkett
"Housing is expensive in the US because we don't allow apartments"
Okay, what are home prices like in other countries with more dense cities
"American cities are congested because they don't have bike lanes or public transit"
Do Amsterdam and Copenhagen have no traffic jams?
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Why do urbanists hate single family homes? Because they hate families
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@urbanthoughts11
Nobody said they would.
What will solve the congestion problem is wider streets and lower population density
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Here's where Germany's most prestigious soccer team plays. They have 11,000 parking spaces.
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Freeways are multimodal. They carry Kias, Toyota, BMWs, Ferraris, trucks, buses, and ambulances
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@grescoe
Those 2 streets serve very different purposes. America has lots of streets that look like the left photo and Italy has plenty that look like the right photo
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@the_transit_guy
My thought is: imagine if we could have air travel replace all those routes and free up those rails to be turned into highways or walking trails
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Until the 1990s, we had a great network of payphones. Then Motorola bought them all up and scrapped them to render us dependent on cell phones.
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That's a pretty persuasive argument. Other good arguments: It keeps you protected from the elements. It allows you to travel an order of magnitude faster than walking. And it's a great private place to sit and relax
If all I knew about cars was based on what my reply guys say, I'd expect the following to be the most persuasive argument in use at car dealerships:
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As
@judgeglock
pointed out, one of the central claims underpinning criticism of suburbia is a complete lie.
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Imagine looking at this and saying "I'd rather take the bus!"
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New shopping mall opening next week near Turin in Italy. It will have 850,000 square feet of retail space, with 25 restaurants, 8 movie theaters, a hotel, and 4,000 parking spaces.
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@criticalurban
The traffic jams this will cause will give us a vivid reminder that freeways do in fact relieve congestion.
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@mattyglesias
So rather than a public parking lot that can be used by anyone, you'd rather they have multi-million dollar condos?
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Kevin doesn't like the fact that suburbanites are happier than he is.
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I'd say this is a more accurate depiction of where people want to live.
What architects think where people want to live vs. where people actually want to live
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And screw all the people who don't live near the station, right?
Quick reminder: this should be housing.
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Urbanist dogma is an exercise in doublespeak: adding lanes to highways makes congestion worse, suburbs where everyone has 4 walls and a lawn are soulless, 5 over 1 apartments without parking are livable. At some point, people with common sense need to fight back.
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@RichardHanania
The Venona Files establish pretty definitively that Oppenheimer was never a spy and refused multiple attempts by the Russians to recruit him.
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Thanks to the automobile, one need not own waterfront property to have convenient access to the beach
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I got in my car at 8:48 AM, turned on my music, then got out of my car at 9:27 AM after a 30 mile drive to the office completely relaxed and ready to start my day. The car dependent life is a good one
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When a place has parking, it is easily visited by people who live many miles away. When it doesn't, it becomes an exclusive club for those who live in walking or biking distance
In Copenhagen, like in so many great European cities, it’s a joy to simply wander and be inspired by the different ways a city can be designed for its people.
Rather than parking spots, why not have a harbor promenade with built-in trampolines for the populace? It can be done!
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For the same price as a boring and inconvenient train, you can have an exciting and convenient freeway
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My Dad commuted 100 miles a day in bumper to bumper traffic, that's 25,000 miles a year, in a Nissan Altima very similar to this one for 6 years, so his wife and kids could live in a pleasant suburban community
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Imagine telling parents from 100+ years ago that in the future they'd have machines that would let them take their children to any place they wanted to go at 30 mph at any time they wanted
Imagine telling parents from a 100+ years ago that in the future, their own toddlers will need to be leashed and wear special clothing so that the thousands of fast-moving 3-ton metal machines zipping across their neighborhood can safely detect their kids and avoid killing them.
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@Dresden77Rosa
@HarryHamishGray
@hijacckk
Yes, traveling at 15 mph in a private metal box with heated seats and a stereo is just awful
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That looks pretty car dependent to me.
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People didn't go to National Parks until mass car ownership
Cars Don’t Scale: National Parks. A new spinoff series.
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@criticalurban
That's an average. Sam probably grew up with yuppie parents who'd buy brand new cars every 5 years so he doesn't understand that one can buy a used car for barely more than a cargo e-bike.
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What is Fetishizing Poverty
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You ever think how crazy it is that we're supposed to feel guilty for wanting to live in a place like this?
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@urbanthoughts11
Those people are all going to different places, so they can't all use the same bus.
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Amsterdam is widening part of its beltway from 8 lanes to 12. And unlike in North America, none of the lanes will be reserved for carpools.
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The automobile allows us to appreciate the beauty of nature.
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@_dmoser
@GdlMovilidad
The people in those cars are all going to different places so they can't all take the same bus
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Structuring our society around cars means people of modest means can live on 8,000 square foot lots, it makes possible economies of scale in retail, and it means you don't need to move every time you get a new job. The 9% of people who don't own cars shouldn't get to decide...
The amount of people I have known in my life who are unable drive or don't want to, but are forced to navigate entirely car dependent infrastructure was a huge part of my awakening. Because once you see how society is structured around cars, you can't unsee it.
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