There was a riot there in the late 80s right?

I think it’s had that rep since at the very least the 80s lol

“Currently in Astoria, Queens, Council member Julie Won and allied community activists are resisting “Innovation QNS,” a massive, $2 billion development that would bring 2,845 new apartments to the area, citing concerns about the area’s rapid gentrification and the need for a greater percentage of affordable units. Over 1,000 of those apartments would be classified as affordable for the area.”

Well Ms. Won, maybe your area wouldn’t be “gentrifying” so quickly if people weren’t clamoring to find housing because politicians like you block every development. Were I in charge, I would gather up 1,000 low income or working class families and make her explain to each of them individually that their presence in apartments they could afford would be “gentrification”.

NYC needs to cut this bullshit of letting perfect be the enemy of good, because until that happens, the housing crisis is going to continue to get worse

Oh it’s painful to read what AA county residents said about what would happen if public transit were completed. I mean just straight up blatant racism.

Oh yeah, this particular highway might have totally destroyed neighborhoods in this instance. My answer was more of just a general take on why highways at that time were sometimes aligned on the water. I am very, very glad it did not get built lol. The damage the "highway to nowhere" caused the west side is a great example of why highways are so harmful. I wish the city had built out its metro network like DC did, who knows where we'd be today

How do you quantify this though? My work alternates between Typescript, C# and JavaScript on a regular basis depending on the project I am working on. How would you classify my salary for this chart?

You raised some good reasons why this was done, but another factor I’d add to that is that it didn’t usually tear neighborhoods in half. Yes, it’s awful to ruin great waterfront property, but it’s also a lot better to place a highway between some houses and the water than to place it directly through a neighborhood and rip it up. Not every transit engineer was evil back then, and sometimes this genuinely was one of few options that was relatively non-impactful to a community. I don’t know if that’s what happened in Baltimore specifically with this drawing, but it was definitely a factor in other places.

But I think it’s also important to keep in mind cars were seen as the future and public transit was earning a really bad rep. It’s true General Motors bought a lot of streetcar companies - but that’s because many of them were going bankrupt. Even NYC’s subway companies were be acquired by the city because they weren’t sustaining themselves (among other reasons). Nobody wanted to ride in a streetcar, they were loud, cramped and frequently obstructed. Buses were cheaper and flexible, requiring zero infrastructure beyond some menial placards and a bunch to set up an entirely new route. And to be frank, streetcars still don’t make much sense as replacements for buses even in 2022. So if that’s where you’re at in the 50s, it makes sense to imagine highways going everywhere and why that’ll be an improvement

It's not a zero sum game though. I can be Christian or Muslim and feel very devoted to my faith and still take great care of my health. I don't wake up and have to choose between my priorities being my hobbies and having faith. Ranking my faith above health for my values does not mean I don't take care of myself just as much as somebody with no faith.

Loving your family doesn't mean you have to let an adult who's perfectly capable of taking care of themselves reside in your house for free. That being said, I hardly knew anybody whose parents didn't help their kids after they turned 18.

Having a lot of guns doesn’t inherently make your crime rate go up, otherwise countries like Switzerland would have rather higher crime rates.

Canada also contributes to those profits, no? Or does Canada not also buy opiates and cocaine and amphetamines?

The person’s comment suggested Mexico was leading to crime in American cities, and specifically cited LA as an example of that. I pointed out a border city that is actually very safe, and you retorted that the reason El Paso is safe is because it has Fort Bliss and soccer moms would get gunned down, causing a stir so the cartels and gangs leave it alone. However, this doesn’t really make sense since 1.) LA has no military base and that’s not happening there, either. It’s almost entirely street violence between local gangs, not cartel violence and 2.) there are plenty of areas with military bases nearby that are very sketchy, so I don’t think that’s a deterrent to crime from Mexico. If it was, Killeen would be like the safest city on earth.

It is true that cities near the border have crimes that are predominantly committed by gangs of young men who are of primarily mexican origin, although that doesn’t mean that crime wouldn’t have been committed if Mexico weren’t nearby. Baltimore has practically zero mexican influence and is one of the most dangerous cities in America, where San Antonio, San Diego and El Paso have a ton of mexican influence and are relatively safe.

I also provided links establishing that border counties are amongst the safest in the US. So no, I don’t think it’s fair to blame violent crime here on Mexico

Oh my god I’m so stupid, I totally forgot crime is not tolerated near military bases, which is why the areas around Ft Hood are so nice and safe! That must explain it, because soccer moms in LA are gunned down alllll the time but nobody cares because they aren’t military wives. Gee I’m silly aren’t I?

They have crime, and the issues you mentioned, but they are far from the most dangerous cities. Detroit, Chicago, Baltimore, St Louis, Little Rock, New Orleans, Memphis, Flint, etc are nowhere near the border.

Why would the border also affect cities like LA so strongly, yet completely ignore El Paso, which is literally across the river from an extremely violent Mexican city with heavy cartel influences?

Not really.

https://www.axios.com/2020/12/01/border-cities-safest-fbi-data

So...can the US excuse its violent crime rate because it is on a border with Mexico? After all, things leak over the border

I don’t dispute any of that, my point was solely that it doesn’t make any more sense to compare the US to Lichtenstein or Denmark than it does to compare the US to Brazil. Wealth shouldn’t be the only factor we look at.

For instance: Mexico is a high income economy who also broke away from a European power and is a democratic, free market nation. Mexico’s GNI is actually closer to Spain’s than Spain’s is to the US. If it’s fair game to compare spain to the US (which has a GNI $40,000 dollars higher than spain), why is it not for Mexico?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GNI_(nominal)_per_capita

I totally agree income is part of the puzzle, I just can’t stand when it seems like people dismiss certain nations from comparison to the US because it would hurt their narrative (for instance, when the Washington post made a graph for violent crime in OECD countries to talk about violence in the US, but left out Mexico).

Idk, why is GDP per capita the only metric that should be used to group countries? The US has far more in common with Brazil and Mexico in terms of history, religion, geography, diversity, former colonial status, etc than it does with Belgium or Norway. Because Brazil is poorer, it doesn’t make sense to compare two large, diverse countries with similar histories of slavery and colonization with hundreds of millions of people, but it does make sense to compare the US to a country like Luxembourg, a small affluent, homogenous European nation with fewer people than Indianapolis? Or Norway, which has half the population of Los Angeles county and practically no resemblance to the US in anything but income?

I grow so weary of these weird excuses where apparently “developing” nations (which, I will point out, is a totally arbitrary term) are too dysfunctional or anarchic to be compared to “civilized” European/North American countries. I just don’t buy that.

As someone who didn’t get the chance to grow up near NYC, this is super cool to hear that you had that experience. Also that’s just really great exercise too. I hope you get to do more walks like this and stay safe!