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Why Safer Streets Keep Losing to Fire Trucks (www.youtube.com)
submitted 4 weeks ago by to c/fuckcars@lemmy.world
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[–] 0 points 4 weeks ago (7 children)

Another way to look at it:

It's a political competition between protecting property and protecting people likely to be renting.

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  • [–] [S] 7 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (6 children)

    That is a really fucking weird spin on it, in multiple ways.

    First of all, you think renters don't use sidewalks or bike lanes?

    Second, you think wide, highway-like streets are good for property owners?

    Third, you don't think single-family houses can be rented or that housing units in high-rises (requiring large ladder trucks to access) can be owned?

    I, for one, see no particular reason why owners' and renters' interests wouldn't be aligned on this issue.

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  • [–] 4 points 4 weeks ago (5 children)

    I believe government serves the needs of property before it serves the lives of its citizens, and not without reason.

    You're balancing an anxiety of, "I don't want my property to burn down" with "I don't want to get creamed by a car". The people with the money and the power and much more anxious about the first, so that's why the world has the zoning that it does.

    I'm obviously not saying that's a GOOD thing, but codes are political documents.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (4 children)

    Ah, that way of explaining it makes a lot more sense. You're talking about "protecting property" from a macro perspective, rather than an individual owner's perspective.

    I'm not necessarily sure I agree that people in power are thinking about it that intentionally (as opposed to it being an emergent consequence of how the city is organized, as I explained in another comment), but I can see how it's plausible.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 weeks ago (3 children)

    What is the macro but the aggregation of micro?

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

    Emergent properties, network effect, a bunch of other phenomena I can't remember the names of right now...

    Macro is very often different from the mere aggregation of micro. That's why macroeconomics isn't the same as microeconomics and it's stupid to try to run a country like a business, for example.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 weeks ago (1 child)

    Well, when it comes to politics, I think things are just aggregations of individual people and their power. It's more convenient to THINK in terms of macro, the same way that it's easier to drag a file to the trashbin on the desktop than it is to find the index table on the drive and zero out the entry....

    Like I think about how hard it is to increase housing. "The macro" level, though, is really just a lot of individual property owners pursuing their narrow financial interest in keeping property values high by keeping demmand high.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

    Well, when it comes to politics, I think things are just aggregations of individual people and their power.

    Consider the difference between some number of individuals having similar ideology but acting alone, vs. a political party/union/activist organization.

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