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Unfortunately I do believe this is correct. The rest of the world dabbled with cars but their urban design and infrastructure for centuries was pre-automobile. They merely shifted back towards their diversified transportation origins. The Americas, by contrast, began their massive development just as the rise of the automobile began. It is the core and soul of the entire fundamental urban and societal structure. Without tearing that out, which would almost necessitate starting over from scratch with most cities urban design, they are trapped with single (or low) occupancy transit as their only reliable means of transportation.
This is true for everywhere in America except New York or Chicago. In those towns you can literally live car-free. I don’t know of anywhere else you can do that.
Oh man, I miss the CTA since I moved away from Chicago. While I lived there, I had a laundry list of annoyances with public transit, but boy does it feel nice to not have to be the one driving during your commute.
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Portland OR you can go car free. It’s not as good as Chicago or NY as far as trains go (still better than most), but the city has 300 miles of bike lanes and the busses are solid.
Harsh to tell people to give up on America when the people most affected by poor urban planning can’t afford to move. Things aren’t getting better here any time soon though. Or any time late…
Yeah this feels deeply classist and anti-solidarity. “My channel isnt for the poor and never has been”. Pretty shit message when you consider the things he is advocating for will uplift the poor and working class higher then anyone else. “We should have affordable public transportation options” but also “not in your city you filthy poor, it’s to late for you. Sorry bucko.”
it’ll be fixed after decolonization
These urbanism channels just preach supply side Reaganomics, which itself only increases gentrification and displacement because housing/land is commodified in a market.
Europeans cities like Amsterdam were built through Colonialism and getting people around the world hooked on opium. The difference between the Euros and the Settler cities is that the Euros don’t want to trash their own land, while the Settler states are trashing someone else’s for maximum profitability. Countries like Switzerland built really nice train networks off of centuries of banking for empires. Their money comes from this so they don’t need to trash the land for profit as in the US and Canada.
NJBs isn’t as much of a Neoliberal dork as Oh the Urbanity or Strong Towns, but still there is zero connection with Colonialism in discussing the settler and colonizer creation of space. Relevant paper on gentrification in settler states: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/918979
Like so much of the shape of cities in “North America” is due to Colonialism in the form of land expropriation, racial segregation and casting, and making maximum money from workers in the form of rent, transportation, and food costs. Marxist Geography has pretty good theories on this stuff, the post I linked criticizes the field of study for its failure to address the specifics of Colonialism in city-building.
But yeah as long as Settlers rule over this land we’ll have deadly streets, food deserts, and fossil fuel reliance.
what does this mean? like how do you propose we just “decolonize” the united states?? do you mean decolonize it of cars??
Probably of genocidal white supremacists and their legacies.
Probably something like giving back land to native Americans, paying them reparations. Paying reparations to descendants of slaves. Ending systemic racism. Paying reparations to countries the US bombed or suffered CIA intervention. Demilitarizing the US.
It’s not just giving land back and reparations. It is the dissolution of the settler state. Americans will not have a state for themselves. They will become citizens of a Decolonial state.
I agree that all those things are good and should be something to work towards, but the word “decolonize” implies people leaving, perhaps by force. That’s just a surface level vibe though. I also don’t think those things will inherently fix the infrastructure problem in America - I think that’s firmly in the capitalism circle of issues. Yes there’s intersectionality, but until companies aren’t allowed as strong a hold on the public transportation sector, I don’t think much will change.
I thought this was an interesting video on the history of Amtrak, but I’m sure you can find the same information elsewhere. Until public transportation is really allowed to thrive nothing will change. https://youtu.be/von_IMi97-w
I think NJB’s take is pessimistic, but unfortunately also on the side of realism. Just like how guns have infiltrated American culture and there’s no good way to put the genie back in the bottle; we have to work with what we’ve got. It sucks for the people who can’t afford to move, but for those who can there are places without the issues America has grown up with. I think that’s all NJB is saying.
but the word “decolonize” implies people leaving, perhaps by force.
It doesn’t. Colonizers have made up this rhetoric as a boogyman, because they displaced people by force to create their colonies. If you don’t like the idea of indigenous populations controlling their territories again, you can leave voluntarily. Many cases of Decolonization this has happened, because they couldn’t accept not owning all the property, but in partial de-colonized countries like South Africa, they mostly stayed because they got to keep their stolen property. This is why the EFF is getting popular because they want to redistribute the concentrated wealth in the hands of the mostly white settler, bourgeoisie.
Mind you, Colonization is constantly, habitually, force relocating indigenous, racialized, and poor peoples (reservations, terminations, condemnations, and gentrifications). Now we might have to relocate people into more efficient communities, for all of our sake, but there is no need to move them to another continent. They just need to accept that most land will become commons under indigenous stewardship. Most biodiversity is on indigenous territory, the colonial system has proven itself incapable of stewarding the lands.
I’m 100% down for efficient communities run like actual communities. If the land is commons and everyone can use it, instead of such a strong focus on personal property, that could become an incredible thing. Infrastructure could become much more human-forward, and homelessness would likely dissappear. Local gardens and food areas would also likely be a priority. So if that’s what decolonizing means, I can appreciate it.
I’m just saying that’s not what the word “decolonize” sounds like to people like me who don’t know what it fully means, and perhaps a better word should be used.
To me it sounds like moving people out that shouldn’t be there, or weren’t there when the colonizing happened. Where I live most people don’t own property anyways (I certainly don’t), so that would mean displacing poor people and mostly POC with very little money. I do think there should be reparations but “decolonizing” by transferring ownership is one thing, making people leave so they have full control of the land like they used to is another. I don’t have the answers but doing the same thing to innocent people that was done to innocent people in the past isn’t the right one, in my opinion. It just perpetuates the cycle.
I’m super fucking down for transferring ownership from landlords to people actually living on the land. But with how America has evolved, most of those people are not indigenous people.
Even looking up what the word means, it’s complicated and doesn’t give straightforward answers as to what it may mean to you and the person I initially asked.
Why do you think Liberal American Wikipedia would have a genuine, Marxist definition of Decolonization? Colonization is the reason why Liberal American definitions are the first thing you think of and seek out. America has manufactured its demographics that favor white settlers, most states were founded with equal to indigenous majority but they weren’t considered citizens and the settlers violently expropriated land in self organized, private, and state ventures. America continues to make it seem like indigenous people no longer exist. It’s not a coincidence that Liberal American definitions of Decolonization feed into fascist fears of “White Genocide” and “Great Replacement Theory”. Did you know that the Bolshevik revolution kicking out German and Polish bourgeois colonizers of what is now Belarus and Ukraine by Slavic and Jewish Communists is what inspired fears of a “Judeo-Bolshevik conspiracy to eliminate ‘Aryan’ dominance”? Doesn’t that sound familiar.
Sovereignty over the land will be entirely in indigenous hands. Americans will have rights as citizens such as democratic control over their communities but they will no longer have political control over land in general as they do under the American state.
Indigeneity is not a racial category, nor is colonizer, it is a political category in the national form. The indigenous nations still exist and still have claim to the territories we are settled on. The Black nation has a right to self determination from American rule. This is Decolonization. We will not change the definition. We should never give way to Liberal Colonizer definitions.
This is the same cognitive dissonance surrounding ideas of Communism meaning taking all your stuff and giving everyone exactly the same amount of food. It’s them applying idealism to our scientific cause because idealism is the only way they can justify keeping their “so-called primitive accumulation” which Marx sarcastically defined in mockery of Liberal apologists of private property.
It looks like very typical Reddit Defeatist Brigade responses. “Can’t fix it, let’s just give up”.
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I can only really speak from a Canadian perspective and I think it’s important to focus on your local area. I’ve seen in my city and all of the other major cities (I’ve been luck enough to travel to here) that along with urbanism, a heavier emphasis on public transit and active transportation, is present.
While I can only speak to the large cities, a lot of the smaller towns I’ve been to are still somewhat closely knit. It’s the suburbs that are weird and hostile to the above ideas. Not that it’s all that surprising given the predominant political views of there but that’s a long topic that others have made YouTube videos about.
To bring it back around, similar to what some other comrades have said in this thread, local/municipal politics is where you’re most likely to get some change done.
NJB has an interesting view and I can see where he’s coming from as his story and mine aren’t too dissimilar (except the city that I moved to is till within Canada). I don’t agree on the nihilism that he exhibits around Canadian cities as my takeaway is he is still living within fixed boundaries of a political mindset. It’s important to realize that many urban residents support making their city more people oriented but just haven’t had the push to become more politically engaged.
For anyone interested in Canadian urbanism/active transportation/public transit, I can recommend a few channels:
They also have videos about cities outside of Canada but are nonetheless Canadian creators so they have a bit more of a focus on their home cities.
I’m Canadian too and looking back at what my city’s public transport used to look like is incredibly disheartening. We used to have streetcars going to ever nook and cranny of the city but it was all torn up to make room for the automobile. It’s only recently that the LRT has been getting an upgrade to include travel to every corner rather than just north and south, its also taking forever to complete because they stupidly chose a private company to build the rails rather than the public sector (P3 model, I believe) and it wont be rideable till 2024-2025 as it keeps getting delayed.
Also, thank you for the recommendations! Im surprised I haven’t seen their channels before.
I don’t know who this is, but I’m always very wary of influencers who tell you to give up on doing social change because it has never been done (exactly like that) before. Specially if they’re from Western Europe. Sure, acknowledge you don’t have hope for a place, though be more honest and say that you just don’t know how things can get better. But absolutely pay no heed to somebody speaking from a place of privilege that your worse situation is unfixable and you should “just move” (which for most Yankees means moving on to the afterlife because it’s what they can afford).
Pretty sure neither Netherlands nor Canada were fixed since 70’s
idealism
I believe that it will take generations of time and effort or a cataclysmic event to even begin to fix some of the issues with America, both about the car question and more generally. It’s still worth trying, but your time and effort are more wisely spent on mainly supporting revolutionary movements in other countries, especially since the creation of the internet, and putting a smaller amount of effort towards local politics and real life agitation and organizing in America. Education, on the other hand, is well known to be uniquely ineffective on Americans who are always consuming large quantities of counterrevolutionary propaganda, and efforts to educate Americans should always follow a comprehensive assessment of whether you would be better off nailing all of your toes to a wall, making iced tea from a plucky collection of polished stones, or reading the graffiti on the sidewalk with your tongue. Always know your American’s propaganda diet before attempting to educate them.
Education, on the other hand, is well known to be uniquely ineffective on Americans who are always consuming large quantities of counterrevolutionary propaganda, and efforts to educate Americans should always follow a comprehensive assessment of whether you would be better off nailing all of your toes to a wall, making iced tea from a plucky collection of polished stones, or reading the graffiti on the sidewalk with your tongue. Always know your American’s propaganda diet before attempting to educate them.
Omg 😂😂 this is so true.
Now, I’m all for education. And I’m all for educating. I can’t help but try to help people understand things. But the US environment, especially, is generally not conducive to learning. It’s conducive to bickering. Over the most serious shit. While the ruling class plays with it’s horses on its ranches.
There are certain areas of the states you can live car free, but so much of it exists with cars as a built-in assumption.
I left, but more because of Roe, the coup that is still in progress, and too many guns. It’s a bad place to raise a kid.
Remember Los Angeles was in the 70s the city with the best public transport in the world, I wouldn’t give up!
Living in the US, I’m inclined to agree. Especially about our lack of public transportation. The cities, maybe, but I can’t see public transit really taking off until it’s shown to work in most of the country. For example, if every major US city had public transit people were satisfied with, then I could see it spreading down into smaller cities and towns. But how the country is set up, projects like that are expensive and time-consuming things that are frequently roadblocked, sabotaged, and targeted by propaganda. It’s the same with recycling: the nature of our country attempts to sabotage it, and eventually its supporters lose hope and the project loses steam. The dream for public transit, recycling, or any other progressive mission never dies, but I’ve seen limited progress on any of these projects outside of cities in the past 20 years.
