{"id":2622,"date":"2018-06-27T18:16:25","date_gmt":"2018-06-27T18:16:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/?p=2622"},"modified":"2018-06-27T18:16:25","modified_gmt":"2018-06-27T18:16:25","slug":"deaf-urban-planning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/2018\/06\/deaf-urban-planning\/","title":{"rendered":"Deaf Urban Planning"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m fascinated by the lack of listening happening in this world sometimes. Take trains.<\/p>\n

Everywhere on earth where public transit is part of everyday life, in very dense cities, it\u2019s a disaster. MTA in NYC, RER in Paris, Underground in London it doesn\u2019t matter: it\u2019s a mess and we\u2019re lucky no big dramatic things have happened. Yet. People deal with it thanks to our digital devices. Without them? I don\u2019t want to imagine.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile in LA, many people still believe that underground trains are the future. In one of the most active seismic zone in the world? With big earthquakes a bit overdue? Son. A kid can detect the problem.<\/p>\n

So we have examples around the planet showing that trains work up to a point and then don\u2019t. Those examples don\u2019t have the threat of earthquakes. And the city of Los Angeles is like \u201clet\u2019s pour billions into this!\u201d<\/em>. As if the rest of the world didn\u2019t exist. As if there was only one, quick way to modernize a town.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s so weird.<\/p>\n

And then, you have cities completely designed to be car-free<\/a> and which are not because cars are pretty super useful. Independence, y\u2019all. People love that shit. Being able to move some big stuff without thinking logistics is nice. Thinking that American Korean folks used to the US west coast all their lives will move back to high rises in apartments in Korea is cute, if not disconnected from reality. And if they move when they\u2019ll retire, congratulations your city is now a big retirement home. Not that vibrant now, is it?<\/p>\n

The conclusion is that cities are not Ikea furniture that fit everywhere the same on this planet. Cities vary wildly. People are complex. Some constants will happen: people love personal space. The convenience of walking to stores is not necessarily a convenience, if at all with delivery being so pervasive. People love choices. Sometimes people even enjoy to drive! There are some heritage to deal with: you can\u2019t build LA-like boulevards in Paris because there\u2019s no room, and you can\u2019t really walk that much in LA because it\u2019s hot as fuck 365 days a year.<\/p>\n

I think it\u2019s one of the bias from technology or at least tech sales pitch: we can solve things in a clean and \u201cperfect\u201d, one-shot way. We can\u2019t. We\u2019re humans, we\u2019re all different, it\u2019s messy. So are our cities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m fascinated by the lack of listening happening in this world sometimes. Take trains. Everywhere on earth where public transit is part of everyday life, in very dense cities, it\u2019s a disaster. MTA in NYC, RER in Paris, Underground in London it doesn\u2019t matter: it\u2019s a mess and we\u2019re lucky no big dramatic things have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2622"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2622"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2622\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2623,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2622\/revisions\/2623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}