Comments by "alex smith" (@alexsmith-ob3lu) on "The Government Built "Public" Housing. What A Disaster! Chicago 1964" video.

@resetsetmefree478 Streetcars and subway systems provide mass transit, not buses. In terms of expressways, you could only use it for two purposes: private car or coach bus. Coach buses only ran from city to city, while private cars are limited based on financial income and family needs. During times of prosperity, America is wasteful and inconsiderate. But when a recession hits, America really suffers from its short-sighted behaviors.
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@resetsetmefree478 Well put. However, I disagree with you on the construction, urban planning, and architecture of the 1950s and 60s. We poured in hundreds of billions to build car centric suburbia, which was a big experiment (continent wide). No other nation in history, built stuff to a ready and finished state, while neglecting long term maintenance priorities. When you sprawl everything out, you decrease your tax revenue while increasing the amount of expenses you must cover! When things started to bog down in the mid 1970s, we changed over to a debt based system that has been disastrous. With the continuous decline of social-government support, we see pe-ww2 cities being taken over by the rich, while the countryside and rotting car centric suburbs are given to the poor. This is the despotic end result we're faced with... As for the Great Society and other welfare programs, Lyndon Johnson simply kicked the problem down the road for future generations to deal with. We also can no longer pay for food banks, clothing drives, and children support programs. All of cities, states and local counties are bankrupt. So many Americans (rich and poor) are on federal assistance these days because of such gross mismanagement.
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I've always wondered how public housing in the USA went from three story rowhouses, triplexes and mixed use residential-commercial buildings in a streetcar suburb grid in the 1930s. To these ugly and horrendously designed concrete monstrosities clustered in the middle of nowhere with no access to jobs, small businesses and public transit.
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@resetsetmefree478 Chuck Marohn of Strong Towns describes this suburban decline as a financial and population retreat. Our cities and towns will greatly shrink in size over the next few decades because we cannot afford maintain every cul-de-sac, parking lot, strip malls, and cheap mansions we've built. You'll have entire neighborhoods get abandoned, scrapped/looted or simply burnt to the ground. Many people will organize their own close-knit communities, completely ignoring the strict zoning codes (that make local development impossible). You already see this in Detroit. Downtown Detroit has become a boom center for wealthy folks, while certain Detroit neighborhoods are being re-occupied and re-organized by the working poor. Large cities such as New York will continue to struggle/stagnate, because of the 125 year old urban infrastructure neglect that has created a situation where the city requires constant federal assistance. I get the impression that the older generations threw a big party they could not afford. Then they left the party bills for us younger people who were never invited.
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@resetsetmefree478 Thank you for the compliments! I get the same feeling as well. All the restrictions, regulations, ridiculous rules and financial authority being so concentrated in dumb individuals; make it impossible for us to do anything these days!
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