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.
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.
Bamboo grows and spreads fast and is very hard to remove as it builds a strong network of underground roots. You need very heavy machinery to get rid of it.
The perfect plan. They definitely won’t have any heavy machinery when they show up to start construction on a new sports arena.
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.
That’s paired with an even greater portion turning far-left. Overall, Gen Z is far more progressive than reactionary, though there are radical fascists as well.
I haven’t seen any data or polling that supports this. A larger portion of young people are “more liberal,” but I’ve not seen anything that says that the extensions of the far, radical right have been met with equal (let alone greater) turns towards leftist political ideology.
Perhaps you just mean center-left people refer to themselves as “leftists” more often? That’s more of a result of the shift in the Overton window than any actual groundswell of leftist support.
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.
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.
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.
