this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2023
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Solarpunk Urbanism
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A community to discuss solarpunk and other new and alternative urbanisms that seek to break away from our currently ecologically destructive urbanisms.
- Henri Lefebvre, The Right to the City — In brief, the right to the city is the right to the production of a city. The labor of a worker is the source of most of the value of a commodity that is expropriated by the owner. The worker, therefore, has a right to benefit from that value denied to them. In the same way, the urban citizen produces and reproduces the city through their own daily actions. However, the the city is expropriated from the urbanite by the rich and the state. The right to the city is therefore the right to appropriate the city by and for those who make and remake it.
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I like trains because if I notice I forgot something important 20 minutes into a one hour commute it will set me back two hours and forty minutes.
Why would you go the whole way to your destination and not exit the next stop to return home?
I take the express train. I don’t want my one hour commute to be a two hour commute because they stop for five minutes every 8 minutes and have to get back up to speed. I already have to wake up ten minutes earlier to take the light rail, change trains to a local, take that three stops to a hub, and change to the express train. I should just buy a car.
Oh damn. That kind of sucks :/ do you often forget things at home?
I really enjoy commuting by train + bike, it is really cheap and kind of fun to be active before and after work. But my commute (at least the train part) is quite a bit shorter.
Depending on weather or track maintenance/construction I often think about getting a car as well. But then I remember how stressful commuting by car is and that thought is gone
One time I did all my grocery shopping for the month by train but I had to bring six friends to help carry everything home and I had to pay for all their tickets there and back. I bought them all dinner for wasting hours in their day to do what one person could trivially accomplish with one car. It actually ended up being cheaper to just pay the premium for instacart and tip the driver.
Why the fuck would you do all your grocery shopping for a month all at once? Do you not live anywhere near civilization?
Well as apparently it takes them hours to get to their destination... probably not.
Why is this a valid point in the urbanism instance then?
That's the dumbest argument for cars I've ever heard. And I've heard a lot of dumb ones.
If your commute is an hour by train, it's gonna be like >2 hours by car in traffic. But sure, if you ignore all the benefits of trains and only look at the downsides they look bad.
In all seriousness I have commuted into a major city for various gigs throughout my life, including driving in at trades rush hour (5-6am), driving in at normie rush hour (7-10am), and driving in at off hours (around 11am-12pm) and a one hour drive leaving at 5am would be a two hour drive leaving at 7am and it would be a 30 minute drive at 11:30am. Taking the train in generally took about an hour +- 20 minutes depending on getting to the station, finding parking, and catching the correctly timed train. The delicious baked-in luxury of being alone and going wherever you want in a car instead of having to pile in another fart tube with 100 other people also rules.
The real answer is: it’s complicated and painting everyone with the same brush is kind of shitty.
@penix @GigaBowser so by your estimates, getting the train would be around an hour quicker for the normal commuter, and about the same for trades commuting. That’s quite something.
Extremely relevant to bring up in a post about urbanism and trams of course. So did this experience make you hate all public transport by association?
Living in Europe I completely don't share that sentiment.
Cars should be used only when necessary and actually save significant proportion of time, otherwise cities become inhospitable hellholes and everyone loses (including cars now stuck in traffic).
But then again, I don't forget things too often, and in other post I saw you said that you regularly need to make a 3 part jurney. This would be a good situation to get a car.
That's a very edge case scenario to bring to the table as a counterargument... Like my buddy who was sceptical about reverse cameras in cars because "and what if it breaks?". Well, then we just use the rear view mirror like we always did. Nobody is arguing for abolishing them, just as nobody is arguing for completely abolishing cars.
If you got off at the next stop and turned around you’d add maybe an hour to your commute. A car would still be 30-40 minutes. Plus trains are way less stressful since there’s no dealing with idiot drivers.
Don't forget things.
Well if rich enough, you could just buy a car and sit in traffic... It would solve this anxiety somewhat
As an extremely forgetful person who commutes by public transit myself, this is why you make a mental checklist to run through before you leave home / the office. Phone, wallet, keys, lunchbag, anything else important you need for that day.
The trick is to run through it every single time you leave for your commute, no exceptions. It does take a few repetitions to get in the habit. But once you do, it'll dramatically reduce the number of times you forget anything important.