And then the ents kicked ass. They just fuckin’ showed up basically on a whim, by themselves, and ripped Isengard a new asshole.

To be fair I never really got why companies couldn’t bring themselves to make hybrid vehicles that just looked like normal cars. They did everything they could to make sure that electric cars remained kinda niche. This modern trend of just making existing, familiar models come with electric options is great. Even the weirdos who buy trucks are going for the Ford Lightning.

Cities have more property than you’d think. They homd a lot of it so they don’t get locked out of being able to do things like this.

Obviously they restrict people who have homes but that isn’t really relevant here, is it? Those people have choices, they get to choose to stay late in a park and the alternative for them is go home.

It’s not even close to the same thing.

Right but that’s a choice the shelter can make and not a point against the idea that people, ultimately, won’t really refuse a place to sleep. It’s a more complex issue that takes more time than an evening so rules like “no being drunk” which sound fine don’t really help anyone.

Housing in places like SF is expensive because of private landlords jacking up proces to the moon. If the government owns the property and gets to control the cost then it’s really not any more expensive than housing them anywhere else. Better still it puts those people within the range of public services like transit so they can actually work on getting themselves into a better situation.

Why the illegal part, though? People don’t really need an incentive to have shelter. It just punishes people who are struggling with even deeper issues.

Saying it feels like you’re insulting me or otherwise talking down is not the same as saying you did use a specific word. You aren’t the victim here and I’m not saying that I am but if you react like that to someone giving you feedback well, yea, maybe it’s best this discussion is ended.

And yes, for your last bit thank you for coming to that understanding, it is appreciated to hear.

Fair enough, though I’d like to be clearer about where I’m coming from, I think. When it comes to these projects there’s always a bunch of people who act like someone saying “wouldn’t this be neat?” hasn’t thought of these things or would otherwise think of them as something you could do over a weekend. Like, we know that it will take effort and there’s already so much effort going into objectively wrong, but familiar, projects that we can divert to doing good things. So when someone busts in trying to discourage these projects it’s kinda frustrating. We used to destroy whole neighbourhoods for god-awful highways but a little work to make a community greenspace is always “way too hard”. And while some of your points were at least factual when you said “trees take time to grow” I really had to wonder a) how stupid you think I am and b) how stupid you might be.

To address your last point how often has profit really been a terribly good motivator when it takes longer than twenty minutes to see a return even if that return is guaranteed and far greater? I see the private sector constantly doing extremely stupid things because the people who have all the money usually didn’t earn it and all too often think of themselves as geniuses who shouldn’t be questioned so bad ideas happen all the time. Highway expansions, for example, have a fucking terrible return on investment, at most only barely helping for a year, yet they’re always the go-to. Another golden example is how every single fucking time a pedestrian street is proposed the business owners get pissed off and every single time it happens anyway they actually end up making more money because of it. Just because something is or isn’t happening isn’t a super great indicator for how good an idea it is.

There’s also the point to make that if the landowners can’t be responsible with it then maybe we should do something about that. I’m not saying we need to do away with private business entirely but things paid for with taxes don’t need to be profitable but they do need to provide real value and that’s kinda awesome. Projects like this improve the lives of everyone living nearby and do real good for the people living there which can have immense indirect economic value. A golden example would be USPS, a service which serves everyone and doesn’t avoid or gouge “non-profitable areas” like a private mail service would(and don’t get me started on the theft that is the brokerage fee). Here in Canada the CBC makes sure that people all over the country have access to news and culture even when it doesn’t make them money because that’s important to us as human beings.

Ok so literally none of that is exceptionally difficult. I’m an architectural technologist and have worked on some pretty large projects as well as seen what my landscape architect friend gets up to. I know how this all works. What you’ve described is trivial in the grand scheme of things.

Yes, it will take time, no fucking shit. That is all the more reason to start now. Man, I wish there was a saying for that kinda stuff, probably something to do with trees I dunno.

Literally projects like this already exist. In my city we have so many streets that get converted into pedestrian spaces, parks that are well maintained by the city with all sorts of things(the biggest park even has an area for teaching kids how to ride a bicycle on the street), and the people love the public transport. I own a sportscar and it is almost never the best way to get around and that’s awesome. And before you get snippy about why I own it I’m going to a race track in two weeks which is a whole lot more fun than driving around doing errands that I could easily walk to.

Anyway, this is far from impossible. It’s actually astoundingly easy to do. It doesn’t require a utopia to put a fucking park in and building some mid-density communities.

We get it, you’re afraid of change and scared of a little effort. It’s ok but maybe don’t act like you know what you’re talking about when you have zero evidence to support your claims and are running entirely off feelings.

Ok, so what’s bothering you about it? Are you gunna elaborate?