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or being the crank at the town hall demanding that *their* input be considered.

what i am hearing is that i should go back in time and kill ralph nader's grandparents

It is curious. The ones I know are often very sweet, but incredibly rigid people. I always assume deformation professionelle, but I don’t know enough about the training/career path.

My transportation agency has brought in speakers who explicitly compared bike lanes to freeways and urban renewal. Grim!

maybe this is cyclical, but I think they just don’t want to do the work to make things better. it’s a lot easier to keep doing what you’ve been doing (or keep not doing anything)

Only the Dems do that. GOP just pushes things through.

Transit plannings is pretty specific to public transit. You are thinking about transportation planning overall

Fortunately that person hasn't actually been a planner for ten years, they just waste money at a foundation. But yes a true classic

They should have spiked the piece the second she claimed the Dutch and English approaches that actually eat stuff done “leave people out who have already been excluded many times over,” and then failed to provide one example of someone left out.

Where I live they built an overpass in the 1950s basically to keep the poors and the browns on the east side of the city. Literally everyone wants it gone, but it was designed to make that as difficult and as expensive as possible.

Yeah but the result is that Roxbury still got demolished and Cambridgeport did not.

Directly leading to the delay and death of useful transit, bike, and pedestrian proposals in one of America's densest states.

Nimbyism is huge im China, and really strong property rights, basically no eminent domain options. That's part of why all the HSR is on viaducs even in flatlands.

This feels that this is viewed through the lens of the US "everything must be racist" lens, if you lift everyone up, it makes everyone better. If you aren't born Dutch, it doesn't stop you from riding a bike. Much of the big city deliveries are bike led and not just by "dutchlanders"

"I’ll posit that some in the U.S. are inching towards doing better — by centering people most impacted in our planning." OK then name them, coward.

did Robert Moses write this skeet

Letting perfect be the enemy of the good.

q: does stakeholder engagement actually improve stakeholder alignment a: lol. lmao

The glory days of urbanist twitter

Workshopping a take that this shit actually reduces trust in government because people who don’t “engage” don’t see anything happen and people who do “engage” get made when things do happen contra the extremely specific thing they preferred

“To design is human, to implement, divine,” Jerold S. Kayden www.harvarddesignmagazine.org/articles/why...

He claims that they are trying. He doesn't say they succeed.

for example a lot of places have bus lines that parallel commuter trains all the way. Cause the train is for the white cummuter, the bus is for the black commuter It's terribly inefficient and fucks the agencies Distance based fares and feeder buses would be better, but that's seen as discrimination

Ah, good ol' "the bus is a punishment for being poor" theory in action.

American urban planning is self-flagellation

Stakeholders include those who ride transit.

As I understand it, a big part of this is most Anglo countries have systems based on English Common Law, which gives "stakeholders" plenty of time to object, and is why infrastructure in those places is so expensive and takes forever. The UK hasn't built a new reservoir in 30 years!

Not my field so I will defer to you here! I do know that in many countries (like NZ, where public works go to die), the legal requirement to consider public submissions usually means projects get caught in endless limbo before even breaking ground, sidelining engineers in favour of bureaucrats.

To be fair, that is also the case in US government work. The heads of public works and departments of transportation are always engineers. And there are even some planning/engineering departments (especially in the transportation sector) that must be headed by an engineer

otoh, the American makers did learn a fair amount from getting their asses repeatedly handed to them by the Japanese. To the point where the worst of the "big three" is European owned Chrysler.

maybe this is a state by state thing because I have basically heard the opposite as well, where engineers shoot down and actively try to block ideas that would go against "engineering standards" (car oriented world)

The system works quite well. Why would we want to muck it up? And most people go by bike anyways.

It takes a special mind to believe that "everyone" excludes anyone.

How does someone write this and not dissolve in a white hot ranging sphere of fire? The purpose of transit isn't transit it's *gestures vaguely* justice?

I like how the premise here isn't even that someone was actually left behind, but that they could imagine the idea of someone being left behind. Just straight up making up a guy.

How are you leaving people out if you're planning and executing transport for everyone? So much cognitive dissonance.

I don't think the author of the article is the problem and, if anything, I consider their article an outline of perfectly valid and extremely valuable cross-cultural observations. Lots to learn from!

I'd be more sympathetic to this argument if there was any evidence that US transportation planning ever produced results that primarily benefit low income, disabled, immigrant and minority communities Not to say that marginalized people never benefit, but they're definitely not prioritized

Is, uh, is the implication that, because the benefits disproportionately accrue (at least initially) to non-disadvantaged communities, they shouldn't do beneficial things?

They're doing the thing where they assume American circumstances and premises apply globally and are oblivious to the fact that different countries with different cultures and different histories might have different problems and different priorities.

Reminds me of the old CIA handbook that recommended encouraging endless meetings and bureaucracy to ensure that your adversary never gets anything done.

The most important stakeholders to engage: self-important junketeers.

Surely one could simply build things then have meetings?

Yeah if takes them a year longer to do it in disadvantaged neighborhoods that’s bad, yes. But…then the disadvantaged neighborhoods have it for every year after that year??? Which massively outweighs the temporary inequality!

If you spend more than 1 bus in $ studying how to make it optimal, congrats, you just made it suboptimal.

…or if you don’t have the budget they have in Europe.

I agree in terms of speed of buildouts but if you just google government contractor theft I think you'll find they're a far larger problem overall.

crazy

there is probably a middle way between "one more planning committee, never build anything" and "environmental racism isn't real, build whatever wherever" some of the solutions are technology of course

This is also based upon the assumption that the demographics of a given area will always remain the same, and that neighborhood segregation is good and should be reinforced by public policy.

Here in the US we achieve greater inclusion and equity by not building any transit, thus making emissions from cars available to all.

cutting NIMBYs out of the process is good, actually

WHAT PART OF "EVERYONE" DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND

Lol at Americans randomly deciding to have democracy only at the most inopportune time and in absolutely no other circumstances.

diff person I think www.linkedin.com/in/lisa-jaco...

Ah, yes. "Sombra" would veer into false advertising

If you don't prioritize climate, the minorities die too

I'm sure it sounds awesome if you're the dominant culture, and if you're not the dominant culture then you can eat shit I guess.

The author sees prioritizing “climate, impeccable design, and engineering” and says nah let’s not do that

I see climate justice activists are using community engagement to prioritize the needs of those who use transport over those whose needs are not respected because they never need to leave the house, thus erasing those in alternative labor arrangements such as stay-at-home parents and gamers. Smdh.

This is firing the same neurons as when a DEI manager who makes twice my salary, has unclear responsibilities, and has never run a meeting that starts or ends on time gives me a task to do that's unrelated to my job.

Name checks out.

“In the long run…” No, in the long run, the Netherlands gets it and is leaps and bounds ahead of the US, which is always chasing table scraps for marginal gains.

That's so fucking stupid. The US isn't any better at alleviating the issues for marginalized communities. Climate crisis effects everyone, so solving it a little counts for more than talking about who has it worse right this instant!

Amazing levels of sophistry

Sounds like someone doesn’t realize they are the on the committee that exists to ensure nothing gets done. They are too dumb to know they are the front the NIMBYs use to prevent anything from happening.

By every concrete metric, they may be doing a million times better at achieving the goals of modern urban planning, BUT!!! they’re valorizing white institutions and white ways of knowing and being and structuring society in really problematic ways.

Do they think the Moroccan neighbourhoods are being given diesel buses or something

If there’s one thing America definitely does it’s priotitize the needs of marginalized groups.

Hohohoho $11M dollars of grants for nothing (same author) www.barrfoundation.org/blog/the-rig...

Wow, just completely abdicating the responsibility to actually use their expertise to deliver tangible improvements for anyone, including the marginalized people they purport to serve. #WhatIfDems? Build good things, don‘t just talk about them.

"We have to spend these federal funds 'fairly', so here's the plan. We'll put poor minority areas through The Process, a Kafkaesque charade of never-ending meetings and paperwork. Problem solved." anti-development progressives don't literally be segregationists challenge [impossible]

Is this guy claiming that public services in the US aren't worse in Black neighborhoods? The outcome of the studies he wants is to have more information on how to discriminate against Black neighborhoods and in favor of affluent white neighborhoods.

I like the part where the writer suggests that "climate, impeccable design, and engineering" are things that transit agencies shouldn't consider priorities.

Maybe the difference is that in Amsterdam the dominant culture is ‘everyone’.

You know what sucks? Impeccable design.

it's a bizarre way of writing: implies that low-income people aren't being served by the system without actually saying that.

"Impeccable design and engineering" being treated lile the negative is hilarious. Who'd have guess well designed systems could actually work.

Say it louder to these idiots: FUCK YOU!!! Build infrastructure! Get shit done! Deliver, or FUCK OFF!

We just need to circle back before we tag up to see if this meeting aligns with the key steakholders

What if you’re an American immigrant and refuse to accept the local norm of walking? Better build some highways for them, too!

Shuddering, imagining a world with that level of dependency on a vehicle as complicated, dangerous, and exclusionary as a bicycle

What is even more outrageous about this is that everybody knows which parts of Amsterdam have higher migrant populations. You can go there, easily-- they are well served by public transport and the cycling infrastructure is seamless. And if you go there, you will see everyone else on bikes, too.

ah but marcy have you considered that a lot of chinese came to the westside of san francisco to be REAL AMERICANS who DRIVE EVERYWHERE and if we have to have a few marys fong lau annihilating families at bus stops driving at 70mph, that you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs

This is what I don’t get about some of the progressives’ mindsets. Implicit in that statement is the assumption not just that they can’t but also that they wouldn’t want or choose to. And if public things don’t fully accommodate your specific situation at a point in time, it’s “oppression”.

It does read like the explicit ethos is, "If even one Type of Person can't use this, it's a failure, and all its successes are moot." I can't ride and gave up learning, and I assure these folks, my reaction to a fully functioning bike corridor near a shitty walking path is "So Far So Good."

The American malaise, endless meetings instead of just getting on and doing something.

Although that's kind of their point, that the transit planners follow the money and put all the train lines and bus routes into the rich neighborhoods so it's entirely possible for you to visit the city center via transit and see not one single person who isn't white...

Maybe they just never left the central canal district? But still...

I mean, the assumption in tthe writing is that there are but their voices aren't being prioritized