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The rest of the world is building subways like crazy. The U.S. has pretty much given up
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this post was submitted on 06 Aug 2024
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Solarpunk Urbanism
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A community to discuss solarpunk and other new and alternative urbanisms that seek to break away from our currently ecologically destructive urbanisms.
- Henri Lefebvre, The Right to the City — In brief, the right to the city is the right to the production of a city. The labor of a worker is the source of most of the value of a commodity that is expropriated by the owner. The worker, therefore, has a right to benefit from that value denied to them. In the same way, the urban citizen produces and reproduces the city through their own daily actions. However, the the city is expropriated from the urbanite by the rich and the state. The right to the city is therefore the right to appropriate the city by and for those who make and remake it.
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I don't think it's the mayor and the city council that needs to be convinced. I think you need to convince me.
I just did a YouTube search for "NY Subway". The top 10 results were for 2 documentaries, 5 different felonies, and 3 repulsive conditions involving rats, trash, and human excrement.
As persuasive as you can be during your three minutes, that mayor and those council members will be inundated with these violent and disgusting behaviors as soon as you've convinced them to start looking into the issue.
So, are you actually opposed to transit, or are you saying that I need to convince those who are? Because, well, I'm trying. Almost everyone's life in the US has been made tangibly worse by car dependency in ways that we're so used to, that they're just these invisible facts of life. That includes people who actually like driving. So, whenever I see an opportunity in someone complaining about something related to car dependency, I take a moment to point out that it isn't actually normal and doesn't have to be that way. I try not to be too much about it; I'm seeing it as a long fight. Mainstream marijuana advocacy took a solid twenty years to get us where we are today; I imagine transit advocacy taking a similar arc.
The "transit" part is fine. Extraordinary. You don't have to convince anyone that it's a good idea to be able to get from A to B as quickly, cheaply, and efficiently as possible. Everyone loves the "transit" part.
I work ~260 days a year. That's 520 commuter trips. On how many of those trips am I going to witness something that will have me turning on my camera, and turning the video over to police?
The debate isn't about cars vs trains. The debate is about what deodorant you wear, what laundry detergent I use, what needles we step over, whether that brown stain is chocolate or excrement, and whether that urine in the corner is dog or human.
The "transit" part is great. It's the "public" part where shit always goes sideways. When we can fix the "public" part, nobody will need convincing on the "transit".