You have unlimited funds. How do you help your city?
Rules
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Please identify your city, and post a link to Wikipedia if the name is ambiguous or not well know. If you do not wish to provide this information for privacy reasons, you can provide some general informations about your city or nominate a similar one.
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Your funds are unlimited, but you're limited to a maximum of 3 projects. The projects can be as big or small as you want. And try to give a reasonable amount of detail. This is not intended for comedy or fictionalized speculation. Please submit ideas that you think are actually viable!
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You must increase any metrics included on or related to the Human Development Index[1] of your city.
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The projects don't need to focus on your birthplace or where you currently live. Any city you have significant knowledge of will do. But it must be a single one.
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Both consequentalist and deontological ethics must be observed. The projects must not contradict the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In other words, be excellent to each other!
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Unlike my previous ~talk thread, in this one I won't play a jackass genie or anything like that. The purpose of this thread is to have a healthy discussion on urban development by sharing our aspirations for the cities we love.
Example of areas to improve
- culture
- education
- internet access
- employment
- transportation
- water
- environment
[1] This is only a starting point. There is space for subjectivity
I think this is an interesting topic because I think every major city in the US would succeed under similar plans. Not identical, and the extent and work for the three would be different. I am going to tag-team two cities near and dear to my heart and say both of them would benefit extensively from these three things:
$20,000$247K (edit: just re-read my source and jesus its so much worse than I remembered) and the average household saving for a black family was $8 (source). In Boston, our communities of color also are disproportionately affected by public transportation issues and because of this have worse life expectancy due to air pollution inequality. My "plan" here would be to work with local groups who have been focusing on this for years.Edit: Adding a new source for point 3: there is a link between discriminatory housing rules and the average temperature, something that will increasingly become an issue as climate change worsens.
I'm of two minds on reparations, but lately I'm more inclined to agree that they are needed. It seems that the repression of POC comes from three major co-dependant structures: a wealth gap (POC tend to have less money), segregation (POCs and whites live in seperate areas), and legal suppression (laws or the enforcement of laws that adversely affect POC more than others). All of these support and are further strengthened by a cultural divide. For an example of that cultural divide, look at the "angry, violent" rap music of the 80s to the 2000s - many white people viewed the music as glorifying violence and vice without realizing that the messaging of those songs was about the justifiable anger that POC feel living as second-class citizens of a racial world.
Back to my point, I'm saying that since these forces are correlated, I think that reparations may actually help reduce racism in a real and tangible way. If you give a POC family money, you take away the wealth gap. If you take away the wealth gap, that means they aren't limited by price where they live and can move to nicer white-dominated neighborhoods, and that reduces segregation. With more integrated communities, that encourages police to be better about targeting black people specifically and encourages individuals participating in local government to be more considerate of their now more diverse neighbors, reducing the last leg. And with fewer forces keeping them apart, the culture divide also shrinks.
I'm going to add to this that it also helps decrease racism (or at least increases the chances of less bias) by people living closer together. Shaun made a good video about this. I will try to come back and write out some of his points/sources when I have more time for those who don't want to watch a 20min youtube video, but I would suggest it because IMO Shaun is pretty funny and definitely did more research than I am able to right now.
I love Shaun, but your link appears to point to some non-Shaun music video.
That’s the second link I have miscopied this week. What is going on with me. Fixed it
I really appreciate the thought given in point 2. My partner romani and really brought to my attention the historical plight and how shitty they have been treated throughout history and currently. Not really sure what else to add other than just like, I appreciate this awareness.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.
I see a lot of things here that I'd really like to do (like gigabit fiber), but with only three projects, I have to focus on more fundamental human needs. Gigabit fiber doesn't matter if you've got nowhere to live and no food. I'm a little surprised at some of the projects listed here and the places of privilege they come from. Are there just no homeless people in some parts of the world? Are there no problems with hunger? Healthcare?
We've got a number of serious issues here--we're the poorest big city in the nation, and we have a lot of folks below the poverty line. So bringing people above the poverty line, and providing affordable housing for them, would be a good first step. Making sure people have their fundamental needs taken care of will solve a LOT of issues--not just having the needs met, but also the psychological stress of worrying about not having those needs met.
I'd like to start with a universal basic income to address this. It is my considered (socialist) opinion that it is the job of the government to provide for its people, and I'm quite happy to pay higher taxes in order to do so. If folks have income and housing, the city will improve as folks are able to live their lives more equitably, more peacefully, and free of the stresses of providing for their basic needs. It's not just an investment in the people, it's an investment in the city by way of making people happier and less stressed, depressed, etc. Cities are very much alive, with the citizens impacting one another in subtle and overt ways. Making things better for others makes things better for oneself. And since I have unlimited funds, I'd love to have folks around the level of income that I enjoy right now. I'm in the 92nd percentile for income in the US, and I'm debt free. Everyone should be able to enjoy the level of income that a mid-career software developer does. No one should be rich, but conversely no one should be poor.
Beyond this, we've also got a serious opioid problem in the city. I'm not sure how to address this. Part of it is certainly because life just sucks, so making life suck less would be a very good first step. That's part of the point of the UBI above, to get folks to a point where they don't feel as much of a need to rely on opioids to make life bearable. But more broadly than this, I'd like to provide universal healthcare as well, with a focus on addiction treatment. We have a number of addiction treatment centers in the city, but they don't have the funding (or staffing, which is a function of funding) that they need to do the work we so desperately need. I'm really uncertain what to do here. We've got some hospitals in bad shape because of money, so putting more money into the hospitals would be great, too. Can I say "invest in healthcare" as a project?
Now that most people's basic survival needs have been met, things get more interesting. I'd initially think education, and had a paragraph about that and its relationship to engineering in improving quality of life, but we have a lot of other more fundamental problems, too. A better police force would help--and by better I don't mean more officers, I mean better laws that reflect the times and how people actually live. I'm socially super liberal, even by European standards, and I'd like to support a judicial system that reflects the "live and let live" philosophy.
This struck me too. I don't particularly hold it against Tildes because I find it to be about the same as conversations I have IRL will software engineers, but yeah I was shocked that homelessness, public health/addiction, climate change, and I guess poverty in general weren't more common responses.
I moved from Canada to Philly relatively recently, and I have to admit it's actually been quite a culture shock. There's very few homeless people where I'm from, and the homeless people in Philly are certainly in much more dire straights... It's really sad to see, and I really hope this country can pull itself up by its bootstraps and fix some of these problems. I think a good chunk of this does stem from the healthcare problems here, and while it's not perfect in Canada it's... essentially a non-issue (at least in comparison). There's also a lot of things that people seem to think are normal here that are very abnormal where I'm from, and many of these seem to be symptoms / responses to inequality issues, lack of healthcare, etc... You're certainly aware of this in Canada, but you don't really appreciate the scale or desperation of it all in other places.
Project One - Big ass college campus with the best of the best as the teachers and huge amount of advertising money. College tuition is free for the first five years, or whatever is required to get tons and tons of attention from students across the nation.
Project Two - Widespread gigabit or higher internet infrastructure, along with much wider roads and lots of highway infrastructure to allow for an expanding city and new businesses.
Project Three - Massive solar/wind/nuclear power plant to supplant coal/fossil fuel generation.
I can't specify my city as I want to remain private, but I think the above three would be a boon.
You have unlimited funds. Why just five years?
Instead of revealing your city, if you're comfortable with it, you can simply provide some information regarding its size and general and make-up. Or name another city that is similar to yours.
I'm going to assume it's not just so that you can have a seven figure universal basic income for all citizens and their families, or launder infinite money, or put your entire city on a rocket pad and turn it into a floating island, and at least trying to keep it to reasonable solutions.
I can see how having just one city (instead of the entire country) with such great benefits could lead to unpredicatable imbalances. But something like that might be worth the effort. And while education can increase income, it is not always simple such a simple/direct relation.
I pulled five years out of my hat, whatever number of years is good to get a good degree.
One thing I've noticed with cities that it's difficult to build a community from the top down. You can put in a city owned rec center, grocery co-op, college or fiber network, but community is going to be a difficult nut to crack. To try and combat that, I'd focus on providing housing and ammentities to residents, a robust portfolio of work and study opportunities available around the city, and an acceptable number of "third places" be they libraries, churches, cafes, bars or eateries. With jobs taking up more and more of a community angle, I feel obligated to try and work against that.
EDIT: SE Michigan. My city is in pretty good shape economically, but others around me aren't, and isolation is a pretty universal constant.
I live in a small city, Canadian, and I'm mostly happy with it mostly! My three municipal fixes with infinite money:
Our bus routes and schedules are not good for people who don't have cars; they don't run on Sundays and only half on Saturdays. Hire a few consultants to work on the routes, hire bus drivers, etc., get me some full service and good coverage and make it free.
Infrastructure for biking. I want Little Copenhagen in Eastern Canada. Bike elevators and good snow clearing. Let's get people moving and less reliant on cars in general. :)
Pour money into development of housing assistance for low-income people. Our vacancy rate is crazy low and the only new things being built are luxury apartments (we're of course attracting tech companies and thus tech workers lately so rent is going up). We need either rent subsidies for them or more affordable housing, and probably more social programs as well. The current mayor is trying to end homelessness altogether in our city - so I think I might just give him a credit card and tell him to go nuts.
Richmond Virginia
I'd improve the quality of inner city schools.
I'd buy up empty/unused real estate and turn them into green areas to back off the urban sprawl/VCU takeover.
I'd give funding for small businesses, in particular arts/culture based ones.
Now those are my 3 GRAND gestures. With my personal wealth, I'd buy the Byrd theater and reinstate the $2 ticket price and preserve it the way it used to be, forever as a reminder of the perfect sleepy city Richmond was, and can hopefully continue to be.
Any specifics on how to achieve that?
What do you mean by green areas? Entirely non-urban ecosystems or parks, arborized squares, actual streets but with more vegetation...?
Would this money be given with or without conditions? Would the business be required to fill some kind of metrics for efficiency, reach, etc?
For the schools, I would certainly find advisors to make sure the process is carried out properly, but in general I think hiring and retaining quality teachers is a huge problem. So I would use my money to do that, and also make sure kid's lunches/after-school activities are properly funded and free to the students.
For green-areas, I ideally mean parks. Obviously there may be a point of too many parks, so some sort of community recreation type places would also be useful. Key point is to make things as non-commercially oriented as possible, with access to everyone.
For small businesses, yes there would be conditions. I think the money to start the business is most important, and after that if they needed money they would have to prove people are actually coming to their business/are collaborating with it. For example, if you've got a little gallery that people are hanging out around, but you cant quite make rent, that's fine, but if you're overall not turning any profit/participation then I wouldn't be keen on it. I'd also love, with my infinite money, to help small businesses that have rented their spot for 10 or more years to outright buy the property they operate in.
Thanks for the questions. I'm no economist or anything so who knows how well this would work out. I just believe that providing people with quality of life improvements that don't always involve new shopping centers and strip malls to be more wholesome. A lot of people talk about having rails and other fast forms of travel, but I prefer the idea of having a tight-knit community where you have everything you need within walking distance, and people from out of town-don't come in too often.
Auckland. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auckland
Unlimited funds. Hopefully from one of those magical sources of unlimited wealth.
2 & 3. Public Transport infrastructure. Auckland basically has a Y-shaped train line that is largely useless to where the a lot of the people live. Funding a train line from Orewa in the north to Britomart (CBD) would ease a lot of traffic issues. Also fund the proposed light rail system that is getting delayed and crap such that it appears to not actually have any intention of getting it built.
If 1 is invalid (ie: purchasing n properties is n projects, so limited to purchasing 1 property project), then I would replace it with building a apartment building full of 2-4 bedroom dwellings in the middle of either Ponsonby, Freemans Bay, St Mary's Bay, Parnel, Orakei. Those places are the most expensive areas and the residents would likely object to anything like this. The apartments would be rented out cheaply on long term leases (2 years minimum) to allow for as many.
Dream scenario is actually:
Buy all land. Build large scale apartments close to the CBD. Beyond the current SH1/16 belt that surrounds the CBD, build town-centred apartments. In between the town centres return the developed land to farming (pasture and crops), native bush regeneration and public reserves. The idea is to reduce the human land footprint.
I might have to draw a picture over a map of Auckland to try to work this one out :p
Your city's name makes for a crazy URL, I thought it was an error! lol
Honest question: regardless of funding, do you really think a city of 141,374 requires power plants and subway lines? Why?
I see. Well, subways are awesome and clean so no question there! A partnership with other cities would be great - it would be a waste to have an isolated system.
Power plants are similar: great upfront investment, but great rewards. And, in case your city doesn't require one all by itself, you could simply donate the excess to neighbor communities!
Metropolitan region of São Paulo.
First: Massively boost public transportation and other public amenities. Finish the Rodoanel (São Paulo's long delayed ringroad), build a metro rodoanel in and around the city from the Guarulhos airport around the whole city to Osasco to the ABC (a subregion in the south of the greater region of São Paulo for 3 cities called saint Andre, Bernard and Caetano) to Suzano until it reaches the airport again. Help people in slums actually build good houses. Invest more in education, make it primarily Internet-based with a few exceptions like handwriting, add economics and civics as subjects, turn the classroom into an interactive lecture of sorts and also make it for all ages (because only having your youngest generation be educated means that until they become the majority this will be in vain) and turn Brazilian public Healthcare into something more analogous to Germany.
2: Invest in clean energy and try to expand it into manufacturing and food, promote automation and software development. Once that's done well, automate the whole of public transport, make a bunch of private companies dedicated to lab grown meat which would hopefully replace farming completely and compete with US companies. (link to this.) Fund new privacy conscious start-ups to compete with US companies and promote privacy and make tech be less centered on Silicon Valley.
Public transit
And cycling infrastructure...
A few more details would be awesome ;)