I know it’s an unpopular opinion given current circumstances, but I’ve always been a huge nerd about Russia. The history, the geography, the music, etc. And as an American, I’ve always found it fascinating how U.S.-Russian relations have fluctuated over time. We’ve gone from allies, to enemies, to frenemies. This doesn’t mean I support Z or Putin, of course. What are you a nerd about?
My friends would all tell you how tired they are of hearing me go on and on about urban planning and infrastructure.
The ways in which our communities are built have such a large and profound impact on our lives, yet most people give little thought to it. IMO a great deal of the social woes we’re dealing with (at least in North America) are caused or made worse by our lack of sensible city-planning, from carbon emissions to social isolation.
There exists so many cool and interesting ways to build solid, sustainable communities! It’s really exciting! Sadly I have to live that excitement by researching other countries. The only form of city-planning that seems to exist here in Canada is “highway going through a parking lot interspaced with strip malls and encircled by single-family housing suburbs”.
Are you me, but Canadian? I completely and entirely agree with your comment (USA checking in). Some of our biggest issues are directly caused by our utter dependence on cars, but also by different driving laws in different areas, dumb exit / entrance designs, lack of signage in critical areas (especially regarding high-speed turns) and general disrepair of the roads. These things all compound to make accidents one of the leading causes of death worldwide.
There should be more uniform rules and regulations regarding letting just anyone drive a 2+ ton vehicle, and it’s abhorrent how little you need to know to pass a driving test
I want to be nerdy about infrastructure, but I think, just like being a vet, it would make me way too sad lol
You’re pretty on the money there, at least if you live in an area with poor infrastructure. I can’t go outside without feeling a bit of dispair for how my city is built for cars rather than people. Car-centricity is everywhere I look.
How many hours of cities skylines have you played and what is your opinion on the second part?
Honestly, maybe two hours? I’m not much of a gamer anyways, but the little experience I had with the game focused too much on cars for my liking. I hear there are mods that fix that but I never got around to installing any.
It’s definitely extremely car centric, and it’s always annoyed me how it just magics away cars instead of modeling parking. However they do have the tools (through expansions/dlc) and there are community mods that allow one to live out some public transit fantasies. I’ve been working on a certain city concept for years that’s nearly entirely car independent and I could probably make it the entire topic of one of my nerd-outs.
this is the one i always get most worked up about, just because it’s so important and no one seems to realize it
like good god if we just agreed to stop building terrible infrastructure we could have so much more pleasant lives, we would save lives, and we’d save money! AAAAAAAAAAAAA
Where can I learn more about this? It sounds interesting!
There’s a ton of good resources out there! If you’re in North America, Strong Towns is a great place to start. On YouTube there are great channels like Not Just Bikes, RMTransit, and City Beautiful.
We need to build a strongtowns community on here
That’s a really good idea. Just checked and c/strong_towns does actually exist! It’s not active but if we all start using it we could make it into something.
I subbed
I second the recommendation for Not Just Bikes on YouTube, probably one of the online content creators who’ve had the biggest effect on me. Another good one is Oh The Urbanity!
I haven’t gotten around to reading it yet, but I’ve heard many recommend Confessions of a Recovering Traffic Engineer written by the founder of Strong Towns. Honestly, a lot of sources I’ve seen reference this book or are inspired by Strong Towns.
I’m into this too. Is there a good Lemmy community dedicated to urban planning and infrastructure?
This would be interesting to me as well!