i was thinking about how i used to have to walk a few blocks and repark the car on street cleaning day in the city i used to live.

if you let the data speak for itself, you’ll hear only lies. @jpkoning.bsky.social on how accurate data about euro-denominated traffic over the SWIFT network might lead one to conclusions 180° off from what’s likely going on. jpkoning.blogspot.com/2024/12/some...

it’s amazing how nostalgia can turn even mildly annoying aspects of the quotidian into things i now pine for.

i think we should defend antarctica from the soviets first.

when what we now take as pathological was aspirational. see also Milton Keynes, and actual city in Great Britain inspired I think by similar currents, muddling along surprisingly well despite what we’d now regret about those currents. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_...

yes. i’d not want their political system, but there’s lots to learn from and admire in their urbanism and governance. (they’re very small, so i don’t think it’s some slam dunk for authoritarianism. in general how to think well as collectivities of 100Ms+ is a hard problem!)

it’s always been true that the modal person lives not so far from where they’re from. but there did not exist 120 years ago a mass professional class whose choice of residence was routinely determined by education and career. there does now.

contemporary Singapore might fit this mold. i think they sometimes describe some of their newer new towns as “garden cities”. in any case, they add housing at scale not through piecemeal infill but by creating new, transit linked new towns. they make automobile ownership onerously expensive.

it’s just now they believe that they *are* the american eagle, and so what’s wrong with grooming?

nope. i have no cites. i just think it’s quite obviously true.

emigration has always been a thing, but the frequency of people living an inconvenient distance from family increased dramatically over the 20th Century (for better and worse) due to economic and technological developments.

Cars are really great for intercity travel, for getting between cities. It’s what they’ve done to cities that is terrible. A park-and-ride model where highways (among other modes) take you between cities, but you park them at the edges and ride in could be great.

yep. it’s time to try again, change things, make new mistakes this time.

I wasn’t accusing you of conspiracizing. I was accusing you of accusing me of conspiracizing when I was putting out a quick tweet. I was not twirling my mustache about how to defame zoom, even if i am very tech-co (not tech) skeptical.

there sure isn’t! but conventionally we most frequently use GDP per capita, and this kind of remedial GDP growth is one of many reasons we should be skeptical of that convention.

sure. defense rationales were part of those choices. as was active lobbying by auto, oil, entrepreneurs in an housing development industry. as was consumer choice. lots of reasons we collectively did the thing. we’ve enough experience now i think to regret the mistake. wasn’t obvious ex ante though.

because it was an accurate and really easy example to fit in a tweet? it popped into my head in short sentences? i don’t know how much conspiracizing you do before you post a 300 character masterpiece.