Not Just Bikes / r/fuckcars / Urbanists / New Urbanism / Car-Free / Anti-Car - People and grifters who hate personal transport, freedom, cars, roads, suburbs, and are obsessed with city planning and urban design

[S.C.U.D.]

There is a YouTube channel operated by a Russian called Dahir Kurmanbyevich Semyenov and his Turkish buddies called Dahir Insaat / Dahir Semyenov (second channel) which is probably representative of the lunacy at the far extreme of the kind of thinking portrayed in this thread.

These guys have been mentioned some years ago in Obscure Laughingstocks for their lethal "medical innovations" and insanely stupid weapons systems, but their main focus is urban development.

The following video is from the Semyenov channel. It is part of a sales pitch initially intended for the Russian government.

These 'turnkey cities' are truly the technology of the future. It's a pity I can't work out how to get people and goods in or out(except perhaps by helicopter).

View attachment 3628917

Both channels are full of such nonsense.

Reminds me of this.

I'm sure NJB would love a city like this.

 

[Cyberpunk Panatela]

a couple of months ago on twitter people were posting clips of Dahir Insaat's Drive Market video as a way to complain about car-centric infrastructure.

Anybody who uses Dahir Insaat as a source has automatically invalidated his own point and deserves to be ignored.

Just look at their "earthquake-proof bed" as an indicator of their untrustworthiness as an authority on anything.

 

[sasazuka]

Funny that you mention that since I remember a couple of months ago on twitter people were posting clips of Dahir Insaat's Drive Market video as a way to complain about car-centric infrastructure. I can't find the tweet again unfortunately otherwise I'd post it here.

I don't see the advantage of the "drive-through market" compared to either just getting a cart and walking through the Walmart or large-format supermarket which I think these "drive-through markets" are supposed to replace or ordering your products online and then parking outside of the store while they load your car or using a service like Walmart+ to get stuff from Walmart delivered to your home.

Maybe there's less of a parking lot with these Drive-Through Markets but there still needs to be a significant amount of paved area for the people waiting in line and I also thought these channels were generally dedicated to "not driving" but these Drive-Through Markets would be pretty useless to those of us who don't have a car or can't afford to maintain, fuel, and insure it.

 

[Cyberpunk Panatela]

I don't see the advantage of the "drive-through market" compared to either just getting a cart and walking through the Walmart or large-format supermarket which I think these "drive-through markets" are supposed to replace or ordering your products online and then parking outside of the store while they load your car or using a service like Walmart+ to get stuff from Walmart delivered to your home.

This way you also have to keep the car running (Maybe that's not a problem with an electric, but that's just a small percentage of the high-end market).

That "drive-in market" is a downgrade from the present system, IMO.

Much of Dahir Insaat's "construction and urban planning" output seems to originate from their having a concept (concrete prefabricated interlocking slabs) in search of an application.

"You need this thing!" "How do I get it, Mr. Semyenov?" "Buy my concrete LEGOs and build it!"

BTW, are "drive-in" facilities for anything other than fast food still popular in the USA?

Where I live almost all the drive-in cinemas and other such facilities closed in the 1970s when petrol got expensive. The last one held on until around 1997, mainly because it got a municipal subsidy as a "historical site" which was cancelled.

Also, giving credit where it is due, original mention of these lunatics on the Farms here back in 2016.

 

[flower tree]

As usual, the youtube grifters take a halfway decent idea and ruin it. Every single fucking time that someone has a common good like "We should improve public transportation so that it is a legitimate option for people who want it" the retards on the internet try to turn it into the worst idea possible.

You can't ban cars for a myriad of reasons, and even if you could, people love to drive, but American public transit is a bad fucking joke in the US and we should try to fix it. If nigs bother you on public transit, wait until your car gets hit by Jamal with no insurance, or until you accidentally rear end Jose and his family sues you for "back pain." Public transit should be an option, and people like NJB are actually right about that.

That being said, they sperg out at every possible opportunity. They never ask WHY public transit is so bad in the US without pointing to comfortable answers like "muh redlining" or "muh auto industry lobbying" when the real reason is crime and other uncomfortable factors. NYC, a liberal haven with a well functioning transit system, a system so good that it is considered to be the best in America, has a problem where it can't get people to pay the fucking $2.75 to get on the high quality train. Even after they pay, there is a crime problem, people get pushed on tracks, the smell of weed is constant. I was visiting NYC and the refusal of the city to get rid of the problem clients has lead to the subway being anarchy at some stations. Public transit needs to be maintained and kept crime free.

The government refuses to get rid of people who mug/sexually harass people on public transit and then complain about how "nobody wants to take it anymore" and then get more money to blow on it from the taxpayers. Wash, rinse, repeat.

 

[Watcher]

One thing that would give governments enormous pause with the idea of banning cars is because the economy relies on cars, a lot. Entire sections of the USA would collapse economically if that were to happen. And auto industry changes have often caused cities to go from prosperous to impoverished. See: Detroit. It's why I don't see the government ever banning them and preferring to push citizens towards electric cars instead at all costs.

They also would never force things like trucks to be banned due to the enormous amount of things the economy relies on that involve shipping. You can see the sheer amount of steps involved with this in a documentary here.

They've tried inventing new technologies to simplify this process like air dropping things like packages to people but that also causes problems in of itself. Like airspace around most cities is often so restricted it's just infeasible to do for most people.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

Dahir Insaat / Dahir Semyenov

Thunderf00t made a long video mainly busting that gyroscopic bus idea by Insaat: Bus of the Future: Bus-TED!!! - YouTube

(tl;dw: gyroscopes don't work that way)

 

[Richard Emmanuel III]

https://web.archive.org/web/20220822034320/https://twitter.com/adamkotsko/status/1561367698587750400

 

[Return of the Freaker]

https://web.archive.org/web/20220822034320/https://twitter.com/adamkotsko/status/1561367698587750400

View attachment 3632766

"Ugh why are all these rural people resisting our project? Don't they know we know what's best for them? Fine just shoot them, I mean they really aren't Diverse anyway"

 

[quaawaa]

https://web.archive.org/web/20220822034320/https://twitter.com/adamkotsko/status/1561367698587750400

View attachment 3632766

Instead of forcing rural people into cities, why don’t we force the people who like living in “dense, transit-rich settings” to move to a rural area? Mao did it:

As a result of what he perceived to be pro-bourgeois thinking prevalent during the Cultural Revolution, Chairman Mao Zedong declared certain privileged urban youth would be sent to mountainous areas or farming villages to learn from the workers and farmers there. In total, approximately 17 million youth were sent to rural areas as a result of the movement.

 

[DumbDude42]

I live in a country which is almost the same size and length of all of western Europe combined but with less population than Spain, half of it in just one city.

what country could that be?
kazakhstan? mongolia? or maybe something like saudi arabia or algeria where most of the country is arid desert wasteland?

 

[AUTOEXEC2.BAT]

Since we're talking about rural areas, I'd like to show you some pictures from former rural rail lines, that were widely used but fell into disrepair.

Spoiler: Former rail lines in Drenthe

Here is a former railway bridge, left to deteriorate as a monument to the once industrious province of Drenthe.

A former tram line that was widely used by the local residents in the villages to get to work.

Spoiler: Former rail lines in Overijssel

A former rail line widely used by residents of the villages to get to the industrial cities of Enschede and Hengelo.

Another crumbling rail line that fell into disrepair.

Spoiler: Former rail lines in Brabant

A former rail bridge, connecting the villages and cities of Brabant, fell into disrepair after government funding was cut.

A former station along the above rail line.

Spoiler: Bonus

A former rail line that was well travelled, seeing thousands of passengers each day.

The government has consistently cut funding for the provinces in order to prop up the wealthy liberal west of the country. One great example of this neglect is the HSL-Oost high speed rail line. For decades, the government had promised to build more high speed rail lines to connect the provinces to the rest of the country as well as to improve connections to Germany. After years of bureaucracy, the plan was finally approved in 1989: The high speed line was going to be built from Amsterdam to Arnhem, with a planned opening date of 2003, however it was later delayed to 2005. The leftist transport minister eventually cancelled the project in 2001, however she made sure to double the Amsterdam - Utrecht part of the railway from two to four tracks and preparing the overhead wiring for 200 km/h, again reinforcing the divide between the Randstad and the poorer provinces.

The high-speed, state of the art railway that was built for this is in stark contrast to the crumbling infrastructure of the provinces that the high speed rail was meant to connect.

The line eventually never ended up being built, because it's deemed as unprofitable. However, the lines that have since been built in the west of the country, are also not profitable and constantly need extra subsidies from the government.

Here is the former town of Heveskes, only the old church remains. In the background, we see a chemical plant, that the town had to make way for.

This is in the province of Groningen, probably best known for the gas field. Fracking here was originally meant to be a temporary measure before the country could build enough nuclear power plants. The income generated from gas field subsidized the infrastructure of the west, none of the income was being reinvested in the province itself. The government had assured the local population that subsidence wouldn't be an issue, and if this was the case, they would be reimbursed generously.

On paper, Groningen is one of the richest areas of Northern Europe. However, all of the revenue flows into the national budget which is paying for the great infrastructure that urbanists like Not Just Bikes are preaching for.

Fracking still continues to this day, because there were mass protests against building nuclear power plants in the west. Nowadays, Groningen is empty, the local population is shrinking and moving to the west. There are earthquakes and homes are falling apart. You can read more about this here.

This isn't only happening in Groningen though, in the region of Twente, part of the province of Overijssel, the NAM is injecting highly toxic waste water from oil production into the empty gas fields of Twente. They're doing this by reusing the old pipelines, however they have fallen into disrepair and despite several pipes having cracked, they are continuing to inject their poison. The Secretary of State has refused to stop these injections, despite the toxic waste water now seeping into the ground water, permanently affecting the soil and turning the area toxic.

This is what pays for the infrastructure that these bugmen advertise, and the above sentiments about the rural migration are true. The population didn't want to move, so now the government is poisoning the ground water, destroying whole villages to make way for heavy, toxic industry, and letting infrastructure fall into disrepair in order to further their western utopia. There have been many, many studies and articles about the rural vs city divide here, but there's one I like in particular that I'll translate for you, it's a good read.

Original article with images here

The gap with the Randstad can no longer be closed
As a correspondent for the Northern Netherlands, Ana van Es saw Groningen, Drenthe and Friesland drifting away from the rest of the country in recent years. And the worse the relationship became, the louder the call for money.
Here, on the far edge of the Netherlands, an entire village was sacrificed for it. By demolishing the houses and the church, it was believed, prosperity would come. Factories, employers, large investors: they would descend en masse on the vacant land. At last the North would be able to compete with the rest of the Netherlands.
On the seawall east of Delfzijl, only the cemetery remains. That is all that is left of Oterdum, the village that had to make way for progress in the 1970s. The gravestones form a gray mosaic on the green dike. Looking at the weathered gravestones I think: at least you can't say that they didn't try in this region.
The polder behind the dike shows the contours of demolished farms, shadows in a landscape that has now been left fallow for forty years. Because Oterdum was demolished for nothing. The industry that was so hoped for here never materialized.

Do the three northern provinces still matter? As a correspondent for the Northern Netherlands I have often asked myself that in recent years. I saw the gap between the North and the Randstad. On both sides of that gap the hope falters that the North will ever be on an equal footing with the rest of the country. Both parts of the country threaten to give up on each other. More and more, the guilt over that broken relationship is being bought off.
The government in The Hague increasingly openly no longer believes in a future for the North. Just listen to Coen Teulings, at that time still director of the Central Planning Bureau (CPB), when he gives a lecture in Leeuwarden in May 2012. As one of the country's most influential government advisors, he wants to say this: in the knowledge economy of the future, the North will be partly left behind. For Friesland it makes "no sense to try to compete with the Randstad. Friesland, with Leeuwarden in the lead, says the CPB figurehead, that is 'lagging behind'.

Also in the North itself, doubts about the future are growing. A cocktail of earthquakes, population decline, unemployment, investments that keep failing and The Hague that increasingly turns its back is undermining the confidence in Groningen, Friesland and Drenthe that something will ever change for the better. This feeling: the Northern Netherlands as the dumbest boy in the class, a second-rate part of the country, subordinate to the rest of the Netherlands.
Relations between the North and the rest of the Netherlands have been strained over the past two years by the earthquakes in the Groningen gas field. There has always been discontent about gas production here: the capital under the Groningen clay is flowing away to The Hague without the province getting much in return.
The gas, the exploitation, Groningen as the doormat of the rest of the Netherlands', writes Frank Westerman in De Graanrepubliek (The Grain Republic), his chronicle of the loss of rural life in the Oldambt. After a quake with a magnitude of 3.6 on the Richter scale near the hamlet of Huizinge, on 16 August 2012, there is no longer any denying that Groningen has indeed become a profit center.


Poverty
Fortunately, there is the solution that has often averted a crisis between the North and the Randstad: a bag of money from The Hague. I listened to northern administrators pleading for a compensation fund to make up for half a century of gas production and then heard the minister announce an amount with nine zeros, as if it were domestic development aid.

They don't understand each other, the North and the Randstad. Just before I started as a correspondent here in 2011, a regional campaign was launched to tempt highly educated Randstad residents to move to the North. In commercials you see people who have already made the move, as pioneers in a newly developed part of the country.
In front of the camera a young woman tells how she had to swallow when she heard that her new place of employment was not an exciting foreign country, but Assen, in Drenthe. That Assen is not hip. That she cycled 20 kilometers to work, in a long line of colleagues, as if she were a high school student.

Next shot: a bicycle path in the rain, as if this were not an advertisement, but a tragic feature film. This is how the Northern Netherlands sells itself.
Well, I come from here - mother from Groningen, father from Friesland, grew up in a village in Drenthe - so I do understand. Too much self-esteem is a social mortal sin in this region, so by local standards this commercial is quite appealing. But in the rest of the Netherlands, with the prospect of cycling 20 kilometers in the rain, nobody thinks: gosh, let's move.


Wall of prejudice
Mutual relationships are barricaded with a wall of prejudice anyway. "Do you know if there are any stores in Assen?" a first-year Media and Culture student at the University of Amsterdam asked me on the train the other day. She wanted cigarettes, but didn't know if they are for sale in these parts. Outside, strange stations flashed by. Mappel. Oh no, Mèppel. Hoogeveen. Beilen. 'I didn't know people lived here.'

The gap between the North and the Randstad, that is in fact the gap between countryside and city. Just look at the map: the Northern Netherlands is one large area with a relatively large amount of contiguous countryside. The city is almost always far away here, the contrast between emptiness and construction still great.

It is no coincidence that Geert Mak chose the Frisian village of Jorwerd as the setting for his book on the disappearance of the last Dutch countryside. In Hoe God verdween uit Jorwerd (How God disappeared from Jorwerd) he writes about the disdain with which city-dwellers view the countryside: 'In their eyes, the countryside is only something negative: it is not a city and nothing else.

The relationship between the North and the rest of the country, that is not infrequently also the distinction between relative poverty and prosperity. The samples from the Central Bureau of Statistics show: no matter how different the three provinces are, what binds the North of the Netherlands is that much is not going well. It is too easy to lump the North together: a university city like Groningen, for example, turns in fine figures compared to the rest of the Netherlands. But in large parts of the region, incomes, education levels, employment and house prices dangle at the bottom of the statistics. On the 2014 CBS list of poorest municipalities, the North is the front runner: the top 3 consists of Groningen's Pekela and Stadskanaal, followed by Achtkarspelen in Friesland.

Nowhere is the distance between the North and the rest of the Netherlands as great as in The Hague. "Did you leave last night?" a spokesman at a ministry once asked me when I joined him there at ten in the morning.


Abandoned
For decades, the national government actively tried to push the North up the ladder. The Den Uyl government began to relocate government services from The Hague to the edges of the Netherlands. Thus, the headquarters of the PTT - now KPN - came to the city of Groningen.

Although PTT personnel resisted the exile all the way to the company doctor (in the North they would go under psychologically), the head office in Groningen has been holding out for a quarter of a century now: a striking building behind the main railway station. Alongside the university from 1614, the hospitals and the Gasunie, it has become one of the pillars of regional employment.
Meanwhile, the course of the government has changed dramatically. A recent pile of official reports breathes a new tenor: bleeding the region dry in favor of big cities. Where the government previously sought the periphery, it is now regrouping in the Randstad. The cutbacks in government offices nowhere hit harder than in the North. In Friesland almost a quarter of the civil servants are threatened with unemployment, in Drenthe even almost half.

Pasture' locations for working and living are no longer in keeping with the times, according to the most recent report by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, which was published two weeks ago. The future of the Netherlands lies in the city. The North, with all that countryside, is left behind as a desolate outpost.


Ruins
The landscape is marked by dashed hopes. The most famous example is Blauwestad: a huge, newly dug lake in the middle of the old Grain Republic. Here, in 2004, land was turned into water in an ultimate attempt to attract affluent Randstad residents to East Groningen.

Ten years after its completion, the lake sloshes in the autumn sun. The banks are virtually empty. Of the 1,480 lots that were to be built here, about 1,200 remained unsold. The rich Amsterdammers who were supposed to settle here never came. An investment of over half a billion euros in air and empty banks.

In Sneek, Friesland, there is a similar failure, but there the lake already existed, so it is less conspicuous.

I drive back to the Groninger coast, where not only Oterdum but also the villages of Weiwerd and Heveskes were largely flattened in the 1970s for industry that turned out to be an illusion. The 13th century church of Heveskes, the only one to survive the sledge hammer, looks out onto the Aldel aluminum factory, which with hundreds of jobs was the engine of the economy here for decades. Now the furnaces lie rusting away. The aluminum smelter, once called "a draught horse for the North" by Joop den Uyl, went bankrupt in early 2014.
Where has the hope gone? Even when something goes right here - in September the American company Google settled in Eemshaven - resignation shines through. In the party tent that rose in the Groningen clay in honor of the Internet giant's arrival, a PvdA deputy says he is doing everything he can to make things right for his residents. I want them to say: it's a big mess, but we're being looked after very well.
'n Dikke schietboudel' is Gronings for: a lot of misery.

The distance to the rest of the Netherlands is particularly noticeable on the train. The new railroad line to the North makes a strange hook above Lelystad. Not straight ahead through Southwest Friesland, as the highway does, but with a slow turn to the east, toward Zwolle, and from there to boom along the 1870s railroad route. The result: the journey from the Randstad to Leeuwarden and Groningen takes half an hour longer by public transport than by car, and often more.


Zuiderzeelijn
The plan to extend the railroad line along the highway - the Zuiderzeelijn - was called off in 2007. The new vision of the national government was already visible here: the North is empty and will remain so. However, there was a bag of consolation money: 2.15 billion euros to support the northern economy.

A year later, the first millions from the Wadden fund came pouring in: some 30 million per year, most of which went to the northern provinces. At the beginning of this year, after intensive lobbying under the leadership of the Groningen Commissioner of the King Max van den Berg (PvdA), the newest gem among the northern support funds was brought in: a fund against the consequences of gas extraction in Groningen. There is now 1.2 billion euros in it.
Rightly paid, in itself. Near Bedum, a Groningen village with a church tower more crooked than that of Pisa, I discovered a country road full of ruins: one farmhouse demolished because of quake damage, the walls of the second one are torn through, the neighbors have a collapsed roof and a little further on a house is being propped up after the umpteenth quake. The scene is that of a street at war.

One earthquake, a sober northerner can get over. Ten earthquakes do something to your psyche. In the North of Groningen the ground already trembled more than a thousand times.
For years the party responsible, the Nederlandse Aardolie Maatschappij (NAM), called the quakes an 'event', as if they were something fun. I spoke to inhabitants who fell out of bed at night because of an earthquake, lie awake waiting for the next blow, don't talk about it during the day because you just don't talk about it in these parts and see only one way out: moving. But they can't, because their house is unsaleable. Seen in this light, the billion in compensation is a pittance.

But just as development money in West Africa does not always end up in the right place, the same is unfortunately true in Westeremden and its surroundings. In Groningen the kick-off was recently given for the construction of a new ring road. With a public garden on top. And space for 'perhaps an open air concert'.
No, this is not a joke. Financed by hundreds of millions from the Zuiderzee Fund, brought together by taxpayers from all over the Netherlands. In a province where trains detour and houses are in ruins.

The earthquake fund serves a clear purpose: to strengthen houses, repair damage, and prevent Groningen from sinking further into the periphery. Yet a tombola is already forming about how the money will be spent, at a meeting institute called the Dialogue Table. While administrators, interest groups and the NAM management pull each other across that table, the money is gathering dust in the vault.


Fact of life
The Netherlands is too small to maintain a periphery, was an argument used at the time to compensate for the cancellation of the Zuiderzeelijn. But money does not address the essential problem: two parts of the country that do not know how to proceed.

Minister Kamp (Economic Affairs, VVD) reportedly had reservations about paying Groningen a billion euros for half a century of gas production. But for a region where open communication is sometimes so awkward, the quiet diplomacy towards The Hague is sometimes remarkably well-oiled. The minister gave in. At the end of last month it became clear that Kamp had not made a crazy deal.
On September 30 an earthquake occurred that was different from the thousand previous ones. This time the epicenter (2.8 on the Richter scale) was not in the sparsely populated rural area, but close to the city of Groningen.
This time, the damage calls and frightening stories came not from abandoned farms, but from the old city center, the city hall and the University Medical Center, which draws patients from all over the Netherlands. State Supervision of Mines had already warned that tremors in this densely populated city were a major safety risk.

Advice: turn off the gas tap further.
But what does Kamp say after the earthquake in Groningen city? They are a fact of life', the quakes. Now that he has transferred over a billion euros, the minister can afford to shrug his shoulders. Later he explains that the words escaped him. In the province, they know better. As Ede Staal, the Groningen folk singer, sang:

It seems so beautiful,
That land with all its colors,
They are in blue: lilac, pink and white,
As the skies on an autumn day
become blacker,
Then all that matters is what's underneath.

But Kamps nonchalance comes too soon. When the quake subsides, something bordering on administrative euphoria arises in the North. After all, the harder the blow, the more visible the consequences, the greater the chance of more compensation. Two billion, suggests Max van den Berg. The new ring road in Groningen, the one with the park on it, must now be made quake-proof. In Drenthe, there are calls for the area to be included in the risk zone. Friesland had already come forward: earthquakes do not stop at the provincial border.

The three provinces will be asking for money, a lot of money. As long as the gap with the rest of the Netherlands cannot be closed, that is the only thing they can hope for in the North.

Moral of the story is that despite these urbanist ideas are good on paper, someone is always paying. In this case, it's the working classes of the provinces, who are being poisoned, fracked and bullied out in order to further the liberal agenda.

 

[Narcotics]

I'm just going to say fuck you if you really want to force me into using the deathtraps called "public transportation" that we have around here.

 

[WhiskeyJack]

https://web.archive.org/web/20220822034320/https://twitter.com/adamkotsko/status/1561367698587750400

View attachment 3632766

Guess these whiny cityfolk just want to starve to death, then. I'm fine with that.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

https://web.archive.org/web/20220822034320/https://twitter.com/adamkotsko/status/1561367698587750400

Of course that soy wants people herded into the cities.

In cities people are more dependent, more controllable.

Also I lived in a big city for years and it sucked ass.

 

[Canispugnax]

@AUTOEXEC2.BAT Yeah. It is I know some lads from the provinces and I find it funny that some people can't understand why the farmer revolt is happening. Drive trough the towns there and half the cars have a sach and most of the flags are upside down. Randstad and it's bugman inhabitants have been sucking them dry for decades. Same goes with people from Zeeuws-Vlaanderen. They also hate them. The Westerscheldetunnel is here for almost 20 years and still they have to pay to use it. Fucking faggots. People like NJB have never talked to some Calvinist fundi from the belt or some Eastern farmers. They claime to live in the Netherlands, but have met few if any actual Dutchmen. They only meet their fellow rootless urbanites.
I could actually appreciate "urbanism" if it was used to make rootless shitholes like amsterdam, Brussels, Antwerp, Utrecht, etc. into real living cities with a real sens of community. You could restructure cities to help foster that, but no these faggots just want to live issolated in their pods and reee at cars all day. I would actually argue that what they want with cities would be a million times worse for the fragmentation and isolation of society than their hated "suburbia".

 

[ToroidalBoat]

I'm just going to say fuck you if you really want to force me into using the deathtraps called "public transportation" that we have around here.

Not to mention the species isn't naturally evolved - or created if you prefer - for being crammed like sardines with a huge number of other humans (as that soyboy put it). And of course there's the crime and all sorts of pollution (noise, air, light, etc.) in the city. That soy reminds me of MovieBob wanting a "Superior Future" of city life.

 

[Tago Mago]

Ahh yes, the infamous urbanite community.

Spoiler: A bit of powerleveling

I got introduced to that rabbit hole by a channel called City Beautiful, of an "urban planner". It was probably around 2018-2019, and at least back then I found his arguments compelling. I agreed that car dependency was bad, "walkability" was good and generally American or America-like cities were ugly with their parking lots and zoning laws and blahblah. I then got recommended more content of that style, by NJB, Britbong (I think), Alan Fisher, and I guess Michael Beach counts too even if he's been inactive for years. As an autistic nerd with a weird fascination for urban design, it was entertaining, and I fully bought into the "omg suburbs BAD, we need a bunch of houses crammed together" thing despite disliking leftists and their sphere of influence. It went on for a time until I got a video recommended, by Adam Something. I can't remember which one it was (I think it was about skyscrapers) but... the smug, condescending tone turned me off and I unsusbscribed, then the guy started posting Elon hate and it kept getting recommended and I got tired of it. And that was the start of my disenchantment with the "urban planning community". I eventually found that bughive Farms thread and it was the final nail in the coffin, and now I, too, hate pro-bughive channels.

Those people have some good points and can make compelling arguments once in a while, but then you analyze what they want, what they advocate for... and then the house of cards comes down. It would be a disaster. I checked on City Beautiful and it's sad, now he's just regurgitating the same bullshit AS or NJB spew all the time. Muh "ban cars", muh "lul why more highways". At least he still makes some interesting videos from time to time, mostly about history or how certain things came to be. NJB is just pure unadulterated autism, and Adam Something is pretty much a breadtuber by this point, so is Alan Fisher.

Well, whatever, at least they're unintentionally funny, except for that prick AS who is one of those people whose presence alone is irritating.

 

[TheGrandDragonJesus]

Yes, if it kept happening to my vehicle I would wait day and night to catch the MF and ring his head off the curb. And I would be 100% morally justified in doing so. The government might say elsewise. IDC.

 

[AUTOEXEC2.BAT]

Yeah. It is I know some lads from the provinces and I find it funny that some people can't understand why the farmer revolt is happening. Drive trough the towns there and half the cars have a sach and most of the flags are upside down. Randstad and it's bugman inhabitants have been sucking them dry for decades. Same goes with people from Zeeuws-Vlaanderen. They also hate them. The Westerscheldetunnel is here for almost 20 years and still they have to pay to use it. Fucking faggots. People like NJB have never talked to some Calvinist fundi from the belt or some Eastern farmers. They claime to live in the Netherlands, but have met few if any actual Dutchmen. They only meet their fellow rootless urbanites.
I could actually appreciate "urbanism" if it was used to make rootless shitholes like amsterdam, Brussels, Antwerp, Utrecht, etc. into real living cities with a real sens of community. You could restructure cities to help foster that, but no these faggots just want to live issolated in their pods and reee at cars all day. I would actually argue that what they want with cities would be a million times worse for the fragmentation and isolation of society than their hated "suburbia".

Exactly, they keep hammering that this is because of the nitrogen issues, but if you look towards Groningen, towns have been replaced by chemical plants, in Limburg there's Chemelot, we also have Tata Steel and the port of Rotterdam as big polluters.
Even then, even if farmers are polluting so much, where are the plans? The area I was talking about, Twente, is largely Natura2000, meaning the farmers would have to reduce their pollution by over 70%. Even if this was possible, where are the farm workers going to go? A lot of young men there don't have the education background (because education there is abysmal) to support themselves in the Randstad, coincidentally in some of the towns over 80% of people between the ages of 18 and 35 work in agriculture there, not only would it ruin the local economy, it would also drive people away from these areas, but they can't go to the Randstad, since they're not being reimbursed for anything and they cannot afford to live there because people like NJB live there, thus driving the prices up.
The truth is that these people are seen as undesirable, uncultured, this has been a slow process to assimilate the country into the Randstad sphere, the provinces be damned.

Cars are a necessary evil in the provinces because the Randstad bugmen have ruined the previous public transport infrastructure in order to build more infrastructure mega-projects in the Randstad. I agree that we shouldn't build car-centric neighborhoods and everything, but what I don't agree with is the hate boner for cars. They serve a purpose to the developing areas of the country, where poverty is currently at an all time high. You can still have quiet, liveable neighborhoods with electric or hybrid cars in these places, provided the government actually invests in the provinces instead of building another Amsterdam metro line or another Fyra fiasco.