Because they genuinely are a contributing factor to the problems of income inequality and gentrification, along with the long running corruption of the government and defense spending.
Let's turn back time to the 1950's.
America is riding high. We're King Shit of Fuck Mountain. Every economy but ours is stuck rebuilding from the war and will be for years to come. And what do we decide to do? We build suburbs. A LOT of suburbs. Malls. Airports. Jetliners. Highways. Cars.
Ford and GM, collaborating with Standard Oil and the Pentagon, get a little bit cocky. Collectively they conspire to buy up and put out of business hundreds of metro mass transit systems (mostly streetcars, intraurban rails, and electrified buses). The car makers want to make cars as fashionable as clothes; they want to see a new car in every driveway every two years, annually if possible. The Pentagon wants EVERY FUCKING CITIZEN to be able to get out of the cities before the bombs hit. And the oil companies, well, just want to sell a lot of oil.
By the 70's the first signs of trouble are beginning to appear. The mass proliferation of cars and urban sprawl without effective mass transit is beginning to show in overloaded roads. Office parks start appearing, accelerating in the 80's, on the outskirts of suburbs causing an urban ring and the rapid collapse of the inner city as old, high employment heavy industries collapse or offshore.
Cities bifurcated into those top few that had been able to retain their mass transit systems in defiance of the conspiracy to end them, and those that didn't. Buses are not as effective as dedicated rail systems. They don't move people fast enough, or in large enough quantities, to deter cars. Instead, they simply become an option for the poor (and inevitably earn a reputation as such).
Today, it's basically too late to fix. Any effort to add electrified mass transit where the provisions for it doesn't already exist is essentially doomed by litigation and land prices.
In some large cities, the process has repeated again, causing another urban ring of post 90's construction. Minneapolis for example has urban ring elements at the 494, and another all the fuck way out at Burnsville.
US cities beginning in the fifties formed a secondary ring of urbanized office plazas, industrial parks, malls, and big box strips outside of the urban core.
THIS GROWTH PATTERN WAS UNIQUE TO MIDCENTURY NORTH AMERICA AND IS NOT SEEN ELSEWHERE.
The effect of it was a routing efficiency problem that makes it difficult to offer effective mass transit. In a traditional (ie, non-North American) city, radial routing tends to work very well. In North American cities, routing bifuricates into radial routes AND lots of circumference routes.
For example, Tokyo is one massive spiderweb of expressways with many independent commercial districts.
Almost all of which would fit neatly within Dallas's I-635 loop.
If you've ever been to Dallas, you know there's like two more fucking loops outside the 635. I don't think you understand just how fucking huge American cities are.
Consider this: The M25 Motorway, which encircles ALL of London, is 117 miles long. The Kansas City I-435 + I-470 + HW-291 loop, which doesn't even successfully loop the city anymore, is like 20 miles longer. It takes at least two fucking hours to drive all the way around the outskirts of Kansas City, I know it cuz I've had to do it a bunch of times.
The crime in the inner city FOLLOWED the development of the suburb.
Mass transit is a money pit
Yes, in North American cities. Because of the ring of office parks that cause radial routing to the city center to fail at providing effective routing to where people actually want to go, because they need more orbital routes.
You think I'm blaming the suburbs and the cars.
I'm blaming the office parks.
You can build suburbs and make mass transit work, Europe does that all over the place. But you can't build a secondary ring of commercial/industrial activity outside the CBD and expect mass transit to function properly.
Now here's what I want you to do. I want you to freeze that mental image of the Docklands in relation to Westminster in your head, right.
Okay?
Now I want you to go look at Denver. Northfield? Commerce City? Arvada? They're all like five miles outside the core.
Chicago. Cicero is like five miles from downtown. Schamburg, you're already on the far side of O'Hare. AURORA. YOU'RE A QUARTER OF THE WAY TO FUCKING IOWA IN AURORA!
If the problem didn't exist people wouldn't be burning down cities.
The trick is in what we do about it.
The thing about the libertarians and conservatives is that they have right answers on high level policy. But on the zoomed in scale of urban planning, they have essentially no answers at all.
And I mean that very literally. Conservatives don't think about the future impact of urban design in the slightest. The result is policy that gives land developers completely free reign to build recklessly with no future plans for backfilling with increasing density as suburbs age into slums.
What is the right "POLICY" answer to gentrifcation? Do nothing.
What is the right policy answer to income inequality? Do nothing.
What is the right answer to building cities designed to grow and handle increasing density? WELL, it's definitely not DO NOTHING.
Because they genuinely are a contributing factor to the problems of income inequality and gentrification, along with the long running corruption of the government and defense spending.
Let's turn back time to the 1950's.
America is riding high. We're King Shit of Fuck Mountain. Every economy but ours is stuck rebuilding from the war and will be for years to come. And what do we decide to do? We build suburbs. A LOT of suburbs. Malls. Airports. Jetliners. Highways. Cars.
Ford and GM, collaborating with Standard Oil and the Pentagon, get a little bit cocky. Collectively they conspire to buy up and put out of business hundreds of metro mass transit systems (mostly streetcars, intraurban rails, and electrified buses). The car makers want to make cars as fashionable as clothes; they want to see a new car in every driveway every two years, annually if possible. The Pentagon wants EVERY FUCKING CITIZEN to be able to get out of the cities before the bombs hit. And the oil companies, well, just want to sell a lot of oil.
By the 70's the first signs of trouble are beginning to appear. The mass proliferation of cars and urban sprawl without effective mass transit is beginning to show in overloaded roads. Office parks start appearing, accelerating in the 80's, on the outskirts of suburbs causing an urban ring and the rapid collapse of the inner city as old, high employment heavy industries collapse or offshore.
Cities bifurcated into those top few that had been able to retain their mass transit systems in defiance of the conspiracy to end them, and those that didn't. Buses are not as effective as dedicated rail systems. They don't move people fast enough, or in large enough quantities, to deter cars. Instead, they simply become an option for the poor (and inevitably earn a reputation as such).
Today, it's basically too late to fix. Any effort to add electrified mass transit where the provisions for it doesn't already exist is essentially doomed by litigation and land prices.
In some large cities, the process has repeated again, causing another urban ring of post 90's construction. Minneapolis for example has urban ring elements at the 494, and another all the fuck way out at Burnsville.
I'm sorry you're retarded, but Jesus dude.
Cars aren't a problem at all.
The cars themselves are not the problem.
The problem is the growth pattern.
US cities beginning in the fifties formed a secondary ring of urbanized office plazas, industrial parks, malls, and big box strips outside of the urban core.
THIS GROWTH PATTERN WAS UNIQUE TO MIDCENTURY NORTH AMERICA AND IS NOT SEEN ELSEWHERE.
The effect of it was a routing efficiency problem that makes it difficult to offer effective mass transit. In a traditional (ie, non-North American) city, radial routing tends to work very well. In North American cities, routing bifuricates into radial routes AND lots of circumference routes.
Almost all of which would fit neatly within Dallas's I-635 loop.
If you've ever been to Dallas, you know there's like two more fucking loops outside the 635. I don't think you understand just how fucking huge American cities are.
Consider this: The M25 Motorway, which encircles ALL of London, is 117 miles long. The Kansas City I-435 + I-470 + HW-291 loop, which doesn't even successfully loop the city anymore, is like 20 miles longer. It takes at least two fucking hours to drive all the way around the outskirts of Kansas City, I know it cuz I've had to do it a bunch of times.
The crime in the inner city FOLLOWED the development of the suburb.
Yes, in North American cities. Because of the ring of office parks that cause radial routing to the city center to fail at providing effective routing to where people actually want to go, because they need more orbital routes.
You think I'm blaming the suburbs and the cars.
I'm blaming the office parks.
You can build suburbs and make mass transit work, Europe does that all over the place. But you can't build a secondary ring of commercial/industrial activity outside the CBD and expect mass transit to function properly.
That's what America did after the war.
Canary Wharf is like a mile from the Tower.
Now here's what I want you to do. I want you to freeze that mental image of the Docklands in relation to Westminster in your head, right.
Okay?
Now I want you to go look at Denver. Northfield? Commerce City? Arvada? They're all like five miles outside the core.
Chicago. Cicero is like five miles from downtown. Schamburg, you're already on the far side of O'Hare. AURORA. YOU'RE A QUARTER OF THE WAY TO FUCKING IOWA IN AURORA!
First sentence uses "income inequality and gentrification", which is really nice because it lets us know the remainder will be leftist drivel.
If the problem didn't exist people wouldn't be burning down cities.
The trick is in what we do about it.
The thing about the libertarians and conservatives is that they have right answers on high level policy. But on the zoomed in scale of urban planning, they have essentially no answers at all.
And I mean that very literally. Conservatives don't think about the future impact of urban design in the slightest. The result is policy that gives land developers completely free reign to build recklessly with no future plans for backfilling with increasing density as suburbs age into slums.
What is the right "POLICY" answer to gentrifcation? Do nothing.
What is the right policy answer to income inequality? Do nothing.
What is the right answer to building cities designed to grow and handle increasing density? WELL, it's definitely not DO NOTHING.
That's a really cool synopsis.