Using a car as a deadly weapon is the same thing as using a firearm as a deadly weapon.

That’s seriously how I spent my discretionary money in Chicago, before I had to drive.

Or more broadly, design so that people who tend to me more vulnerable in public space feel safe and comfortable.

Nearly 40% of people with disabilities do not drive. In many cases, planning for automobile dependency—i.e. reinforcing a system in which driving is the only viable option—disproportionately harms this people.

There are very few places in this country where a car is a luxury.

Yes!!

But if they spend $33,000 to put bike lanes on their Main Street there would be 3 months of public debate.

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They are Very Likely Titans

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The Tumbling Rocks

Like when Los Angeles realized that ED 1 (fast tracking affordable housing projects) was actually working, and of course quickly killed it.

Any B+ level *generalist* city planner would have brought this up in the first 10 minutes. Or a C- professional who works on these types of projects for a living.

Had we been planning for them for the last 15 years, working through logistics, thinking through unintended consequences, creating relevant regulations, reinforcing non-car alternatives, etc., maybe they could have been leveraged to decenter auto-centrism. As it is, I don’t see it.

Expecting me not to rob a bank is too high a bar, because I’m accustomed to a certain lifestyle.

Imagine the headline: Woman arrested after bullets fired into passersby in Central London

Why do we still have The Onion?

Just like the Cubs’ ongoing efforts to prevent rooftop viewers. Killing the goose who lays the golden eggs.

Honestly, we’re doing an extremely poor job of that nowadays.

We DO deserve libraries. Palaces for the people.

Prompt: the year is 2050. What viral post tells Generation Beta about how great the year 2025 was and how things were stolen from them?

So like Tuskegee, only in Africa.

What if you had a single payer for healthcare? Has anyone thought of that?

🎯

Or living in one of the tiny oases of walkability in DFW and wanting to compromise it to create more parking. Why not just move…a mile away? Or 5 miles? 10 miles? 20 miles? Have you seen this region?

West Virginia has low rates of homelessness. Why? They have high rates of addiction, but also low housing costs. Someone on the margins can at least find a room or a couch to crash on. Someone on the margins in Boston or the Bay Area? Not so much.

Worth adding: Billie Eilish actively works to cut driving at her shows through transit coordination and mode-shift messaging. This bottleneck happened anyway, at the infancy of AV technology. We should’ve spent 15 years planning for this. Instead, we’re about to slam headfirst into reality.

The fact that our cities haven’t been working through the logistics of self-driving cars for many years is inexcusable. As is the fact that the planning profession has almost completely ignored the issue (I’ll admit that I’m mostly guilty of that myself).

This is actually a brilliant idea that someone should figure out how to implement

Well put. Even “ask for a transportation study before making recommendations” would show more confidence than this. If professional planners don’t have expertise and judgement that we’re willing to stand behind, why should we even exist?

Cycling infrastructure is *so much* like this.

Great point. It’s natural for us to assume that the *primary* issue must be hoarding, or market manipulation, wastefulness, etc. when in fact the primary issue—in this case—is that there’s an actual artificially-induced shortage.

$350 in free food every month? To feed a household? Surely they must have a few weeks of Caspian Sea caviar stashed away somewhere.

I’m old enough to remember the good old days, when we had a handful of ultra-wealthy *corporations* controlling everything we watched and read - instead of a handful of ultra-wealthy men. Yikes.

Imagine 80,000 people all taking elevators down at the same time…to the same lobby, through the same exits, and mostly trying to drive out of the same area. Now imagine something goes wrong, and they all have to evacuate immediately. Even 1,000 people would be a stretch.

Yep. And largely vibes from decades ago, when we created rules that are now deeply ossified.

Just like SimCity was not based on actual US minimum parking standards, because it would have made the cities too boring to keep players’ interest.

36. Years. Ago. Wow, am I getting old.

And this is in Seattle, which I’d place in among the 10 least automobile dependent core cities in the US. If you’re not in a car—due to age, disability, income, personal preference, or any other reason—you’re considered a second-class citizen in this country.

Akin to faking a disability so you can use an accessible parking space. So, yeah, tacky is an understatement.

For those who don’t know, the standard building code in the US is published by the International Code Council (ICC), but the ICC’s codes are rarely used in full outside the US. The name gives them an unearned patina of global authority.

“Some people may be inadvertently adding to climate change by breathing.” Yeah, OK.

This engineer is basically telling everyone: Everyone exceeds the speed limit here, because the street is designed for them to do so. And instead of concluding Therefore we must redesign it, He tells the public that nothing can be done about it. Grotesque, infuriating incompetence.

Brilliant. 🎯

Imagine showing up at a public meeting and announcing that you think 54% of the people in your city are destructive scum.

I lived in an ADU in Chicago for 2 years. It’s basically the simplest increment of housing that exists—a small house on property you’re already living on—and they’ve made it onerous.

Even in cities with extensive transit systems, this is rare. In places like Akron? It's unheard of. And I predict it will work.

It’s mostly able bodied men in spandex on bikes! Where are all the normies? Um. Is your bike infrastructure safe enough that most people would feel comfortable riding in your city? Of course not! Only a daredevil would ride a bike here! 🤦