Bri > Recent Status Updates

The book is well written, I'm reading it a lot more quickly than I expected. It's very well paced and interestingly told for a nonfiction book.

I hadn't really thought of squatting as a way to take back the city into a common space but it totally makes sense. I like the Berlin chapter as a contrast to the others.

Interesting, the author of the Berlin chapter argues that squatting there was about changing a space as a form of protest, since so many buildings in Berlin were dilapidated with rampant hiding speculation.

Robin Hood characters were real in the 1980s in Barcelona! Stealing from banks and redistributing the money.

I didn't know much of Greece's political history, but it makes sense in context. And I see some similarities with the US's currently political struggles.

"Resistance during eviction waves is the most publicized and mediagenic form of conflict between squatters and their opponents. Squatters refer to this resistance as 'a show,' openly treating these events as performative rituals to communicate opposition with the police, the state, and the imagined mainstream."

I hadn't really thought of squatting being so carefully planned and meticulously carried out. In my head squatting was impromptu and an act of desperation, but I'm learning about the political activism side of squatting which is the opposite.

"The eviction waves serve squatters because with sufficient calculation, squatters can reside in a house for at least three to four months; that is, if one squats a house immediately after an eviction wave, one can expect to remain until the next wave four months later."

I'm learning a lot. I didn't know much about any of these movements and I like that the information is accessible.

"... There were more political opportunities for new social movements such as the squatter movement in Northwestern Europe than in Southern Europe, because labor and capital had been pacified in the North through a corporatist economic system."

The biking chapter was very interesting. I think the problem with downtown Sacramento putting in protected bike lanes on J and 15th Street is what the book mentioned -- that fast one way streets are still dangerous no matter what. Slowing down that traffic will help everyone.

Very interesting analysis about how trams, trains, and buses all serve different purposes for pedestrians. And I hadn't really thought about the importance of a "neighborhood" having *everything* a citizen needs to live in it and connecting neighborhoods with transit. I think neighborhoods in the US are too caught up with the suburban ideal of quiet homesteading to be livable.

I definitely want to read the book that this parking chapter is based off of.

Not a huge fan of the author's attitude that housing at "market rate" is much better than income restricted / subsidized housing. Basically this author's reasoning for *why* downtown should be walkable is what I disagree with, but the methods he gives to get there are sound.

I like the arguments for getting rid of cars. Makes me want my city to be just a little more walkable / transitable so I could not have a car at all. Not a huge fan of the positives being "increased property values" when tearing down freeways, although this was written 10 years ago when housing wasn't insane because of COVID.

Any simulation is only as good as its model and inputs. Makes sense in how it relates to traffic studies.
"Traffic studies are bullshit."

Maybe this book will be like "Utopia for Realists" in which it focuses on the monetary benefits as the reason for social good. Not my favorite reasoning but I see why it's so popular, especially for the book being written 10 years ago.

Not sure I like the attitude that all cities need to be designed around economics and that the millennial "creative class" is fundamentally culturally different than prior generations. Downtowns don't need to be profitable and millennials preferring biking and buses could have as much to do with being poor as it does with being "cultural".

Haha, disagree, the automobile industry definitely declared war on the pedestrian with targeted jaywalking advertising