This is the city of utrecht. One of the biggest cities of the Netherlands. They started restoring the city center about 15 years ago. The traffic was either put outside or reduced. Biking, trams and buses take care of mass transit. It’s parts of the cu2030 project (stations gebieded) https://cu2030.nl/ if you want to know more. the project has been a great success and is used as a blueprint for other cities in the country.
Thank you for sharing!
My city is planning to make a sports area in a patch of vacant land in the middle of town, the plans show that the frickin' parking lots take up about 50% of the whole site! They are also building brand new baseball fields there even when we already have 3 right now that's only 1.63 km away. They haven't started any construction yet so I'm contemplating a Lil sabotaging, maybe plant some bamboo in that area idk.
A local tower development - one as high as 92 storeys - is also getting a community centre in the middle. The community centre is 8 storeys, with parking underneath THAT.
in short, put the parking underground. I came to say that. If they don't have a solution that involves parking safely out of the way, then it should fail at city hall.
When the local hospital built a new tower, I was surprised to see they used NONE of the 60-80 feet under-neath the new block for parking. And by parking, I mean 2000 10x20 partitioned but unsegregated underground storage areas that can be used for cars, hoarding of medical equipment in a pre-pandemic phase, or for emergency ward space later. So, everything you'd want to do with your parking lot, but also out of the elements and well-served by power, lighting and security.
What does planting bamboo do?
Attract pandas, which are a protected species and thus cannot be relocated and prevent construction in the immediate area. Oldest trick in the book.
The true definition of baboozling
We ain't doing shit "when the boomers die" except fight over water and resources on a dying world. Like, I appreciate the optimism, but...
Besides that a significant portion of the youth is turning hard-right as we speak. Young progressives always think all young people are like them.
a significant portion of the youth is turning hard-right as we speak
Normal thing to happen when the enthusiasm of youth is blunted by betrayal and rejection and defeat.
Like, fuck Fascism, but I can't really blame a guy who has soured on the whole "Hope and Change" thing. Then having your brain hooked up to the YouTube algorithm of Andrew Tates and JBPs just blasting away all the braincells that aren't killed by booze and vaping...
The allure of Fascism is the promise of a big ethnic club to end your sense of alienation and despair combined with a near-to-hand enemy you can lash out at with the consent of the police. The Methamphetamine of ideologies - powerful highs and hard crashes. Its what you take when you're scrambling at the edge of a psychic pit.
Not only that, cities don't even want to pony up the cash for repairing potholes let alone massive landscaping projects.
We can plant trees ourselves. Community gardens, etc.
That is my hometown Utrecht. It used to be a canal but was partially changed into roads in the 50s. Luckily it has now been changed back to a canal again. Was quite a project but it's an amazing improvement.
Of course it's in the Nederlands. Jullie hebben bijna altijd alles goed, bijna...
We laugh, but there are a lot of plans across North America to revert the overuse of car infrastructure. Even Quebec small town, who love saying they're the opposite of Montreal, are desifying and giving up on doubling lanes on roads, adding bike paths and attempting to work with what they have to reduce solo car usage.
I feel like this picture is misleading. The first one was taken a lot further away from those towers and you can see most of the trees were already there. The first picture is also taken in rainy weather which makes everything seem way more dull than it really is. It's hard to tell what has actually changed between these two pictures, if anything at all.
River. It's the river. Kinda hard to see if you don't know what to look for.
so I found this location on Street View and there have indeed been some changes since 2014 and now:
I thought we were just going to immediately live somewhere affordable, then change jobs...?
When most of the humans die 😂
There's small documentary about this canal on youtube. It's fascinating. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fePpwYCs_JM
Why wait? Let's do it right now!
NIMBYism
Reminds me of the time when a pedestrianized shopping destination was gonna be built somewhere in the London borough of Westminster, but it wasn't allowed because the "locals were opposed to it"
I can't remember much about that, there's probably a Jay Foreman video that talks about the boroughs of London that mentions it.
ITT: Doomer posting
Yeah, but if we aren't going to die next Thursday we will have to work do improve shit, and working is hard. Let's wait for some violent event happening so we don't have to think about shit
Doesn't matter. You and everyone else will too by then. No doubt.
What the hell is this thing?
To me it looks like a hand drawn red circle. Could be produced with a mouse in a drawing program, too.
It was an art installation but it's not there anymore.
It looks like a covered dock where the cover happens to be a piece of modern art.
Any way to escalate this? Uh, my manager was asking about it. Yeah.
You'll have to tell the community of gen-Zers that they're not allowed to live under that bridge first.
You know that you don't have to wait til they die, right? We can expedite the process if we have the....(coughs) "armory'" to do so.
It ain't gonna happen. I don't mean to downplay what a shit gen the Boomers were but let me tell you, there are still boomers in Gen X and Millennials and this bullshit is going to persist unless lessons are learned and people stop touting and financing and voting for toxic politicians and corporations running the show. Is it getting better, maybe, but the assholes are going to continue to land in power and gain popularity because people are dumb and narrow-minded. I already see it in others from my generation and I don't think we're headed for the anti-boomer utopia we're all wishing for, maybe better than their generation but a long way to go still
Boomers hope this won't happen because it would underscore just how bad they were for the entire world.
Why wait ?
Where's the apocalyptic wasteland?
The first picture.
To the boomers, its the second picture.
Why not just make a green space? Whats the point of bulldozing and flooding the land underneath the highway? Did a representative for the mosquitos make this meme?
No, you don't get it. The highway is still there, its just been flooded from global warming
Okay so in case you're serious: The water was there first. They filled it in and built a road before reversing that.
IIRC it was a river before it was a highway, and they decided to restore it to it's natural state.
You mean bulldozing and flooding the land that they drained and paved? It was a canal before it was paved in the 70's
They're Dutch.
They get all antsy-in-their-pantsy of they can't see water from where they're standing.
We're going to move to a new city? I say we do that now, no need to wait for the boomers to die.
That two tower building is pretty distinct, and it's in both pictures
Note how it's the same church.
It's the same spot, just after the road was ripped out and replaced with the canal
This is really an aesthetic question, and aesthetically I actually like road infrastructure, it feels cyberpunkish to me. And the problem with cyberpunk being dystopian is about the economic/politic systems, not architecture
This is not Cyberpunk, it's plain old brutalism. And it's ugly and depressing, every surface sealed, not a leaf in sight. Cyberpunk doesn't mean depressing concrete hellscape, this is also Cyberpunk:
To play devil's advocate (but not really because I actually like brutalist architecture), brutalism can look ugly and depressing, sure, but does not have to. I find that brutalist buildings go remarcably well with vegetation. See:
Aside from the fact that green zones are better aesthetically received on average (there are always exceptions), they also remove a lot of pollution, noise, and as a bonus generate some oxygen, greatly improving city climate, mood of the residents and life expectancy.
You can like what you want.
But I would like to point out that excessive road infrastructure ones with a lot of negatives for the general population.
Dunno about a canal in a populated area, that's breeding grounds for bugs. Definitely down with fucking the car-centric building we have now though.
It's mostly only standing water that breeds insects. If the canal is moving it should be fine.
They did similar things in Seoul (albeit not nearly as beautiful), and I've seen them in Japan. You're not going to have many bugs, because at the end of the day it's still only a dozen meters wide in the middle of the city.
Bugs are good! More biodiversity!
Looks like some housed platform, it has right of way signage and a buoy line boundary. Maybe a drain that's dangerous?