i think a factor in this is that these talking points are usually produced as a result of interacting with local governments that have low ambitions and tight budgets alongside being influenced by a tiny minority of fervent conservative retirees.

"it has been done in place X so it's doable" "it's not a radical solution" "it's market based" "we've done this in the good old days" "it's gonna save us money" "it's gonna help small businesses" "it's gonna help property values". it's all geared towards addressing the anxieties of the local councils. i think it's partly deliberate for the content creators in the urbanist space to self censor so that if someone takes their arguments to their local government they have a better shot of being enacted.

kinda unrelated but this trend of "urbanism" is kind of reminding me of the "flag community" in the sense that both of these communities in online spaces turned a set of guidelines for better design into dogmatic rigid rules that must be followed and evangelized to the point of sucking life out of everything. im sure Amsterdam is a fine city but every place can't be Amsterdam and not every city planning or architecture must be replaced by european ones.

[–] Le_Wokisme@hexbear.net 6 points 4 days ago (1 children)

and not every city planning or architecture must be replaced by european ones.

just about every place i've ever been would be improved by not being post-automobile american and if we're not gonna do land back any time soon we might as well have amsterdams instead of suburbs.

[–] AstroStelar@hexbear.net 4 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

My benefit-of-the-doubt interpretation was that they're saying there's other ways of building sustainable cities like socialist micro-blocks in various architectural styles, not simply a kneejerk defense of car-centric design a la "well some of it is necessary"

[–] Le_Wokisme@hexbear.net 5 points 4 days ago

sure, i'm just dying for any improvement

[–] AstroStelar@hexbear.net 6 points 4 days ago

I get you, it is the reason I hadn't really minded his rhetoric up until now and brought up the stuff about small businesses at the end or the use of the worst of North America as a reference point for declaring Europe a utopia: he's targeting average Americans/Canadians so I'm not expecting him to go "and all this is the natural progress of capitalism, so no mercy for the petty bourgeois". But this time I found him exceptionally reckless l, especially on his rose-tinted picture of Europe, that I could no longer ignore him. We have shitty suburbs and hypermarkets too.