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Alisa U Zemlji Chuda

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PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH
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@iangreezy
Coffee house crew!
Every city needs at least 1 building that is noticeably phallic. More than 3 and I start to wonder what’s going on here.
Wealthy suburbs are paid for by poor neighbourhoods.
Suburbia promises the best of both worlds - you get city levels of infrastructure, with rural levels of space. It's like glamping - you get to roleplay living on a farmstead, while also not needing to have a septic tank. In reality, though, city infrastructure is expensive, especially to maintain, and these suburbs produce functionally zero value.
In an actual rural area, there's farmland, producing value. In a city, with shops and workplaces alongside housing, there's value produced. In suburbia, there's just housing - and extremely low-density housing, at that. A mile of road, underground electrical cables, and sewer lines cost the same whether they're in a city center, or in the middle of an empty street, leading to a six-house cul-de-sac. To actually support this amount of infrastructure, serving so few people, with so little actual city revenue, property taxes would have to exceed median income - i.e., it's unsustainable.
To illustrate, here are the costs of services compared to city revenue, per acre, in Lafayette, with net positive in grey, net negative in red, as well as the average costs of different land use by area, in Eugene:
In short, these wealthier suburbs are a net drain on city economies, as they produce no value, but require exorbitant amounts of infrastructure and maintenance. In fact, these areas are functionally subsidised by the rest of the city, especially by higher-density, mixed-use neighbourhoods, which produce significantly more value for the same amount of city infrastructure. Poorer, urban neighbourhoods subsidise wealthy suburban neighbourhoods - and, despite being unsustainable, it remains literally illegal in most of the US to build anything but low-density single-family homes, due to car-centric zoning laws.
These suburbs are subsidised by the rest of the city, especially high-density mixed-use neighbourhoods, which produce significantly more value for the same amount of city infrastructure. Poorer, urban neighbourhoods subsidise wealthy suburban neighbourhoods, which are unsustainable - but it remains literally illegal in most of the US to build anything but low-density single-family homes, due to car-centric zoning laws.
Where it is legal to build anything else, including medium-density or mixed-use developments (as is the norm in the rest of the world), car-centric requirements for minimum parking, street setback, and minimum lot sizes make it infeasible, and again pigeonhole development into wide, flat areas of asphalt only traversible by car.
This is a new development, by the way - US cities didn't used to be like this, they were, actually, similar to cities in the rest of the world. It was a fairly recent development, that medium-density, mixed-use, walkable cities in the US were demolished, to build car-dependent sprawls.
You might notice that the majority of the land use here is parking lots. These parking lots, taking as much infrastructure and maintenance from the city as an actual neighbourhood with shops, homes, and workplaces, produce... nothing, except making it impossible to get anywhere except by car. When everything is spread out, with nothing but a mile of unshaded pavement between you and the nearest shop, of course you'd drive. When everyone drives, and the city's full of polluting, noisy cars, of course you wouldn't want to live there, and only visit in an enclosed, soundproofed box.
Other countries have gone down the same path of car-dependent development, and have been able to reverse course. Changing zoning to allow mixed-use is possible. City streets need to be torn up regularly anyway, and can simply be modernised when they're put back in. Amsterdam in the 70s was a nightmare of traffic and car accidents, and now it's one of the safest and most convenient places to walk, cycle, take the tram, or otherwise not have to drive. There are still suburbs, but there isn't suburbia.
All that's missing is political will - and as long as oil companies control the government, and some jackass car company owner can get your high-speed rail cancelled, then it's not gonna happen. But it can.
The UN recognised Moscow as the best megapolis in terms of infrastructure and quality of life
Is it really like that?
Moscow ranked third on the UN-HABITAT City Prosperity Index. The Russian capital surpassed Sydney, London and Paris.
UN experts analysed the following indicators of 29 major cities around the world by evaluating settlements on the quality of the environment, access to electricity and drinking water, as well as infrastructure, beautification, social integration, quality of life and so on.
First and second place went to Singapore and Toronto. Sydney, London, Paris, Madrid, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and New York are also in the top ten.
But this raises questions for many people, both Muscovites themselves and those who constantly follow these rankings and have never seen Moscow in the top 10 before.
"Perhaps the results obtained cause some surprise and even distrust among some experts. But, in fact, we are so used to enjoying the benefits of our city that we often do not give an account of what level of development Moscow has achieved in recent years," commented Sergey Sobyanin, the mayor of Moscow, in his blog.
It also tops the ratings for infrastructure development and quality of life!
Infrastructure - 1 place
Moscow topped the ranking of infrastructure development, overtaking Hong Kong.
The index of infrastructure development takes into account the housing and social infrastructure, information and communication technology, urban mobility and other indicators.
Quality of life - 1 place
Moscow also took first place in the quality of life rating, which takes into account a total of 14 indicators, such as health, education, recreation, safety and others.
So, Moscow - what are its obvious PROs?
It has a public health care system (health insurance free for everyone and you don't have to pay for ambulance)
60 universities Most universities are public and have free tuition. Universities offer a ranking system of admission and a certain number of free places - everything depends on the aggregate results of the final examinations from school. Some universities have separate entrance examinations.
There are 185 museums in the city One of the highest rates among the cities in terms of leisure and cultural development
The average bill in most restaurants $15-20 One main course + a glass of wine + dessert
150 public WIFI spots (That's a lot! That's more than Rome's 88)
Transportation costs $0.68 per ticket Which is much lower than the fare in many cities, with subway trains running every two minutes and delays or delays being a rarity.
Monthly fare is $30.51
The cost of 1 litre of fuel - $0, 67
The average price of a 0.5l beer is $0.89.
Cost per Big Mac is $2.7 The Big Mac Index was introduced by The Economist as an unofficial way to measure purchasing power parity (PPP) between two currencies. The Big Mac PPP exchange rate between two countries is determined by dividing the price of a Big Mac in one country (in its currency) by the price of a Big Mac in the other country (in its currency). (London, Paris - $4,93)
Average price of a standard one-bedroom apartment rent is $915.73
The median price of a standard one-bedroom apartment in the city center indicates how much of your salary will be used to pay rent and is an indicator of the cost of living in the city
The homicide rate per 100,000 residents is 4.9
A lower homicide rate describes safer cities and a better quality of life. 4.9 is lower than New York City (6.4).
Unemployment rate 0.4%
The number of dollar billionaires is 82. More only in New York - there out of 92 (only by 10).
Maximum income tax is 34%. The minimum is 13%.
No smoking in public places Would YOU consider living in Moscow?
The Netflix show Old Enough! offers a glimpse of an alternate reality.
The premise of Old Enough!, a Japanese reality show newly streaming on Netflix, is childishly simple. In each 10-minute episode, a tiny kid sets off to complete the child’s first errand alone. (Well, “alone,” with the cameramen.) The children totter off into the neighborhood, forget what they’re supposed to be doing, burst into tears, and ultimately make their way back to Mom and Dad laden with plastic shopping bags, having succeeded in their mission. Hajimete no otsukai, which is based on a children’s book of the same name from 1977, has run on Japanese TV for more than 30 years—long enough that some kids on the show’s newer episodes have parents who were on the show!
In the first of the 20 episodes made available to Netflix subscribers, a 2-year-old travels to the town convenience store to buy groceries for Mom. In the fourth, 3-year-old Yuka crosses a five-lane road in Akashi, a city the size of Cincinnati, to get to the fish market. “Can you go all the way to Uonotana without getting hit by any cars?” Mom asks.
Needless to say, if the show were set in the United States, the parents would be under investigation by child protective services, and the children in foster care. Like many things about Japan, it would be easy to attribute Hajimete no otsukai (literally, “First Errand”) to some cliché about Japanese essentialism. But the Japanese are not so different from us. They’ve just made policy choices that make it possible for kids to run their first errand a decade before their American counterparts get to do the same.
“In Japan, many kids go to neighborhood schools on foot and by themselves, that’s quite typical,” said Hironori Kato, a professor of transportation planning at the University of Tokyo. Typically, Japanese children don’t actually run errands for Mom and Dad in the city at 2 or 3 years old, he notes, as they do in the show. But the comic, TV-friendly premise exaggerates a truth about Japanese society: Children in Japan have an unusual degree of independence from an early age.
“Roads and street networks are designed for kids to walk in a safe manner,” Kato said. Among the factors, he said: Drivers in Japan are taught to yield to pedestrians. Speed limits are low. Neighborhoods have small blocks with lots of intersections. That means kids have to cross the street a lot—but also keeps drivers going slow, out of self-interest if nothing else.
The streets themselves are also different. Many small streets do not have raised sidewalks but depend on pedestrians, cyclists, and drivers to share the road. Curbside parking is rare, which creates better visibility for drivers and pedestrians and helps give the smaller streets of big Japanese cities their distinctive feel. In fact, I first heard about Hajimete no otsukai from Rebecca Clements, a research fellow at the University of Sydney who has written a dissertation on Japan’s approach to parking: Car-buyers must show proof of an off-street parking space to make their purchase. For Clements, the show is evidence of how Japan gives children a “right to the city.”
Japanese kids make a lot of weekday trips on foot—especially those between 7 and 12 years old, who walk for almost four in five trips. Neighborhood schools are the driving force behind a lot of this travel, with many schools employing “walking school buses”—a morning parade of kids in which the older ones help guide the younger ones. But the school trips also introduce children to their neighborhood, which can facilitate other kinds of travel.
“I went into it saying, ‘Is it the built environment or the culture?’ ” recalled E. Owen Waygood, a professor at Montréal Polytechnique who wrote his Ph.D. thesis at Kyoto University on Japanese children’s travel and land use. “There is an underlying cultural value—Japanese parents believe kids should be able to get around by themselves. And they build policies to support that. Japanese cities are built on the concept that every neighborhood should function as a village. That planning paradigm means you have shops and small businesses in residential neighborhoods, which means there are places to go—places these kids can walk to.”
Method Man // Lauryn Hill // André 3000 feat. hats + bright colors
Method Man // Lauryn Hill // André 3000 feat. hats + bright colors
Being lonely is boring but interesting at the same time
World Building
Types of Government
♛
⤷ anarchy
➝ society without enforced government
⤷ aristocracy
➝ small, elite ruling class holds power over lower socioeconomic strata ; members chosen based on wealth
⤷ autocracy
➝ controlled by one singular person of power without restraints
⤷ communism
➝ state owns and operates industry on behalf of the people ; citizens are apart of a classless society that distributes goods & services as needed
⤷ democracy
➝ power held by the people through voting in order to ensure fair representation and prevention of abuse of power
⤷ dictatorship
➝ power held by one person or a group of people who control the masses
⤷ fascism
➝ control of the people by promoting ancestral/cultural values & eradicating foreign influences
⤷ federalism
➝ union of smaller states which are self-governed yet united under a central government
⤷ junta
➝ militaristic rule after taking over by force
⤷ monarchy
➝ authority is vested in a single figure for life and passed down hereditarily ; level of power may vary from absolution to nonexistent
➝ constitutional monarchy: limited power as outlined in a constitution // absolute monarchy: unlimited power
⤷ oligarchy
➝ authoritative power rests with a small faction of people or families who are deemed worthy due to wealth, education, and/or family history
⤷ plutocracy
➝ ruled by the wealthy
⤷ republic
➝ democratic model in which the people elect representatives
⤷ socialism
➝ collective and cooperative ownership of production, opposed to private
⤷ stratocracy
➝ ruled by the military following wars and expansion
⤷ technocracy
➝ scientists are decision makers ; rulers are chosen based on experience/knowledge/skill
⤷ theocracy
➝ power rests with religious figures ; scriptural laws and legal codes are coincided
⤷ totalitarian
➝ total control by government including the prohibition of opposition & extreme regulation of public/private life
⤷ tyranny
➝ absolute control by ruler with an oppressive power