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

[Xarpho's Return]

It's just an extension of the argument people make about people "voting against their own interests". There are people who want total control over your life and think they know better than you.

The "voting against their own interests" never made to sense to me. Maybe it's because I'm not full of shit, but they think that, say, voting against mass transit is a bad thing when one can be explained perfectly.

1) I do not intend to ride the proposed mass transit.
2) I do not want my taxes to fund proposed mass transit.
3) I harbor no delusions that my commute will be magically improved with mass transit.

Personally I don't buy that he even has friends, he just wanted an excuse to post about why his Twitter offshoot is better than the American-chosen Twitter offshoot.

Does he even have IRL friends? You'd think he could do a collaboration with some Dutch transit enthusiast, instead he splices together shit with troons living in a different country.

The thing about NIMBYs is they tend to be the strongest in places Urbanists live (California/New York) so its a bit on the nose for them. Also, the NIMBY hysteria is also a part of the problem. In southern states, you don't really hear about that type of divide because building housing isn't politicized. That's where urbanists make the mistake where they turn every little thing to some stupid advocacy issue.

If you just let people build stuff, and stop making everything about your pet social justice issue - you get actual progress. All this NIMBY shit is just leftovers from the politicization of environmental science from 70s due to leftism.

A lot of the NIMBY stuff is from the "highway revolts" of the 1970s onwards, which these still people are 100% against. When it comes to their pet projects, that your local streets should be ruined or your neighborhood should be knocked down for apartments, they'll use "greater good" arguments like "what about the immigrant housing housing crisis?" but if you advocate for a new freeway or widening an existing one that has issues because the last upgrades it saw were 30+ years ago, that's automatically bad. (This is why the "induced demand" argument exists so they can argue it doesn't actually work, ergo, pointless).

 

[quaawaa]

A lot of the NIMBY stuff is from the "highway revolts" of the 1970s onwards, which these still people are 100% against. When it comes to their pet projects, that your local streets should be ruined or your neighborhood should be knocked down for apartments, they'll use "greater good" arguments like "what about the immigrant housing housing crisis?" but if you advocate for a new freeway or widening an existing one that has issues because the last upgrades it saw were 30+ years ago, that's automatically bad. (This is why the "induced demand" argument exists so they can argue it doesn't actually work, ergo, pointless).

A hilarious example of urbanists being NIMBYs: opposing a new grocery store because it is just a grocery store and not also a high-rise apartment tower:

Spoiler: Rest of images in post

How dare they build a store in MY neighborhood?!?!:



Someone saying that it's a lot more expensive to build a tower than a single story store gets downvoted:

Building the grocery store will destroy the neighborhood for the next 20-50 years:


Someone tells them to buy the land off the developer if they don't like the plan. Discussion devolves into the urbanist saying that zoning laws should be changed to make it illegal to build the grocery store:

Someone gets very mad over someone else calling it nice because the planned building has a parking garage:

Muh Tax Revenue Per Acre:

They don't like being called NIMBYs:

Source (Archive)

 

[JJLiautaud]

Personally I don't buy that he even has friends, he just wanted an excuse to post about why his Twitter offshoot is better than the American-chosen Twitter offshoot.

unlikely it will change due to founder effects.

 

[John.Doe]

The "voting against their own interests" never made to sense to me. Maybe it's because I'm not full of shit

That is why. Whenever they say "voting against their own interests" they are trying to say that they know better than the plebs that dared to make up their own minds, and if only the stupid carbrained idiots would listen to their betters it would all work out! It is just the smug, self-righteous/enlightened narcissistic genius flavor of authoritarian thought.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

A hilarious example of urbanists being NIMBYs: opposing a new grocery store because it is just a grocery store and not also a high-rise apartment tower:

It gets worse if you know the full backstory, which is briefly alluded to in Reddit. The site in question was built as an Albertsons in the mid-1990s, and doesn't look too out of place, even today, with surrounding development, restaurants with parking lots and gas stations and drugstores. Sharing the block itself is an Original Pancake House restaurant which sounds like an IHOP knockoff but is a really good breakfast place if you ever get a chance to try it, as well as the former site of Manny's Uptown Tex-Mex (which appears to have closed down during COVID).

Anyway, in 2015, Albertsons merged with Safeway (which operated Tom Thumb stores in Dallas) and sold off the store to Minyard Sun Fresh Market, a one-off operator, and then sold to H-E-B almost immediately afterward, which made no promises to open their own store there, but rather their upscale spinoff Central Market. So what H-E-B is doing is just going to demolish and rebuild the store to closer match their prototype (it would have to be completely gutted inside either way). So they're arguing about that the Central Market isn't enough of an improvement on the former Albertsons site and really shows how these people think. They posture about "if you own the land you can do whatever with it" and but they can't imagine why it has a parking lot...or otherwise end up arguing in favor of zoning which they claim to hate...or being forced to use the Albertsons building mostly as-is because of a combination of prohibitive building permits.

The reality is that urban land is often too expensive to build on (and for what it's worth, that part of Uptown isn't TERRIBLY urban, it's like Montrose in Houston, despite being substantially changed to have big apartment buildings and mixed-use tenants, there's still strip malls and supermarkets with parking lots). If you make it prohibitively expensive to build anything, you'll just end up with random vacant lots (archive) that despite looking like it would be a fine place for a corner coffee shop with a few floors of apartments above it, doesn't make financial sense. The linked NY Groove's left-wing slant wants to imagine those as affordable housing builds but once you start talking "100% affordable housing" all the arguments like tax revenue per acre flies out the window.

 

[jray4559]

We're reaching levels of lack of self-awareness previously thought impossible.

View attachment 6660425

Personally I don't buy that he even has friends, he just wanted an excuse to post about why his Twitter offshoot is better than the American-chosen Twitter offshoot.

View attachment 6660427

Source, Archive

I can't believe he can actually type that up with a straight face. Not only is this guy describing at least three webistes' userbase (Bluesky, Mastodon/Fediverse and Reddit), but honestly he's been one of the biggest creators of such kinds of people thanks to how he acts. This kind of dismissive attitude that is sweeping political advocacy for stuff like this is hurting the cause more than it helps. I personally am not a total "carbrain" like he and the rest would probably call me but just reading online discussions about transit anywhere like this is making me want to get an F-150 and blow fucktons of coal in every downtown. I wonder what an actual, realisitc solution is for depolarizing these people and making them see reason and understanding. Temporary job placement in a rural place? Forcing them to try to balance a less urban need schedule without a car? Lobotomies?

 

[TowinKarz]

The constant howling about "build for the community!" betrays the authoritarian nature of these miserable little communists.... you'll never be able to build a community in an area where what the people there want is actively denied through harsh and inflexible zoning. You fundamentally wound the ability for a strong community to grow when the first thing any new prospective resident has to deal with is a list of "NO" s

They always have the flow chart upside down.

Community results from the collective desire of people to come together and protect what they have.

Commies always think that stuffing people together and not giving them the option to deviate in what they want to do (in this case, build) will create a unifying purpose and community, which will then go on to build great things.....

It doesn't work that way and never will.

 

[Yamamura]

Commies always think that stuffing people together and not giving them the option to deviate in what they want to do (in this case, build) will create a unifying purpose and community, which will then go on to build great things.....

They think it will work out like a high school/prison where if people are physically confined together in a single building eventually things should work out.

 

[Aero the Alcoholic Bat]

They think it will work out like a high school/prison where if people are physically confined together in a single building eventually things should work out.

But does it really, in those settings?

 

[Xarpho's Return]

But does it really, in those settings?

I don't know, if Class of '09 is any indication, there's some sort of nostalgia for millennials and high school while clearly showing that public high school is part of the reason why SBN3 is a clearly malformed individual.

On high school, even if you had friends and it wasn't complete misery, everyone appreciated open lunch days.

 

[LaxerBRO]

Someone tells them to buy the land off the developer if they don't like the plan. Discussion devolves into the urbanist saying that zoning laws should be changed to make it illegal to build the grocery store:

All that results in is nothing being built there or at best, housing with no grocery store.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

All that results in is nothing being built there or at best, housing with no grocery store.

That's how a mixed-use project in Austin got neutered. It was an apartment building that replaced a long-vacant Safeway and was supposed to have a supermarket on the ground level, but somehow things got around that it was "too high" (despite being right across the freeway from downtown) and in the end, they lowered it about 15 feet by not taking out a floor, but taking out what would've been ground level.

But, as we've seen in Houston (link to relevant post) having housing on top of stores doesn't mean shit if you don't have a captive audience. Between the east-of-the-freeway location (admittedly gentrifying but still not a great place), the undoubtedly complicated access which would hurt traffic even though it's right next to the freeway, and the homeless population in the area which means that it would be completely disgusting if not losing money hand over fist, damages the chances for success.

In Dallas, even though I don't think Uptown is plagued with the same problems, Central Market isn't the type of store you go to for milk, eggs, and skinless boneless chicken breast, it's a nice supermarket that attracts the city's wealthy (and offers enough variety and interest it's fun to visit and buy a few specialty items—the bakery section and bulk candy are the things I usually go for), and those people aren't living in bughives located above the store.

Don't be confused by the rails running along the street, that's a cute little heritage trolley that goes around the neighborhood and is not seen as real transit by anyone.

 

[quaawaa]

A Tyre Extinguisher deflated some tires in Singapore and it went about as well as you'd expect:

This private information is unavailable to guests due to policies enforced by third-parties.

Source (Archive)

---

Spoiler: Images in Facebook Post

Source (Archive)

 

[unaboomer]

A Tyre Extinguisher deflated some tires in Singapore and it went about as well as you'd expect:

"Your gas guzzling 4x4 SUV kills!"
> Vandalizes FWD 4-cylinder hatchbacks

 

[The Jewel of the Nile]

A Tyre Extinguisher deflated some tires in Singapore and it went about as well as you'd expect:

That's a cool 4x4 AWD SUV

 

[ComStar]

A Tyre Extinguisher deflated some tires in Singapore and it went about as well as you'd expect:

I'll just mention here that Singapore practices judicial caning. He might get a proper ass-whipping for this little act of revolutionary mischief.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

A Tyre Extinguisher deflated some tires in Singapore and it went about as well as you'd expect:

Imagine ruining your academic career for some faggy activism you didn't even do on-campus.

 

[quaawaa]

/r/fuckcars user is mad that no one wants to take transit in the pouring snow:

The ultra-rich want congestion pricing:



Source (Archive)

---

Matt Walsh really triggered them by saying that HSR combines the worst aspects of driving and flying:


Tweet (Archive)

Spoiler: Image in Comment

Of course, diaper fetishists are offended:








And how slow would the train be if it has to stop in every city along its route?



Source (Archive)

 

[Yamamura]

A Tyre Extinguisher deflated some tires in Singapore and it went about as well as you'd expect:

When I first heard Singapore I was like, "isn't that the country that beats you with a rod doing shit like this". I hope they throw the book at his ass.

 

[Yamamura]

"Your gas guzzling 4x4 SUV kills!"
> Vandalizes FWD 4-cylinder hatchbacks

These are the same people who confused a Ford Ranger with an F-150. They don't know shit, they just want to get in on the band wagon even though they don't live in North America.