Comments by "UzuMaki NaRuto" (@UzumakiNaruto_) on "City Beautiful" channel.

@jamesbell739 The point is. THIS ISN'T JAPAN..... And the reasoning behind how and why decisions were made is not the same.... You bring up the rail line. Look up the origins of the term "Other side of the tracks" Rail lines were also used to separate residential communities. Only in the US do we have people thinking a physical piece of infrastructure so profoundly affects people's mental state that it completely prevents them from improving the area that they live in rather than letting it turn to crap, rundown and becoming a dangerous place to live. Its like there's no such thing as PERSONAL ACCOUNTABLY where people can collectively choose to let an area turn bad or put in some work and improve the community they live in so that the people on 'The other side of the tracks' actually want to visit or even move to YOUR neighborhood instead of vise versa. Isn't that why there's so many Chinatowns, Koreatowns, Little Japans etc. that spring up in many western cities? Because many of these Asian immigrants who first arrived to western nations to make it their new homes were often not very wealthy and sometimes discriminated against and so they went out and created their own businesses run by their own people to serve their own communities. Eventually people from outside those communities discovered that you could get cheap stuff and services and good food from these immigrants and those areas became prosperous. I wonder if any of these immigrants ever thought to themselves 'Wow this highway or rail line running through or near my area makes it impossible for me to make my neighborhood better, safer and successful!' Yeah probably not. Why not just acknowledge that some groups of people are able to adapt to whatever circumstances they're placed in and make things work while other groups are not capable of doing the same and would rather complain about their poor conditions than put in any hard work to make things better? That's a much more logical and reasonable answer than blaming a highway or road or rail line as to why some communities are so poor and others are successful.
1
@ignasanchezl How successful has 4ocean been in doing this as they've been at it for a few years now it seems.
1
The reason to get rid of the Gardiner is completely opposite: It's entirely too small for Toronto, and there is physically no room for a larger highway. It's also incredibly expensive since it's elevated. I know it would never happen because of political and financial reasons as well as some public pushback although others would be in favor of it, but I'd tear down this Gardiner and build a brand new one with modern materials and design so that it could last decades and make it THREE DECKS. Now hear me out. The first deck would serve the existing purpose of moving cars into and out of downtown as it does now. The new second deck above it would be a true expressway completely bypassing downtown so that those people who want to go straight through the city east-west can do so without getting mixed with traffic trying to go downtown. The top deck would be a new park similar to New York's High Line park where people, cyclists, small e-vehicles etc. can relax, enjoy the views of the waterfront and city from an elevated position that would immediately because a huge tourist attraction as well as a place for Torontonians to use to get around town with in a direct path from east to west. I know plenty of condo people and others wouldn't like it, but I just think it'd be so awesome to see Toronto from several stories up and have such a park right in the heart of the city.
1
@altrag There is still a correlation though, especially in countries with high numbers of firearms. Being poor is stressful, and stressed out people are more likely to "snap". Except there isn't. You really need to get out of your bubble and see how literally HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS of asian people are living in poverty in their countries that don't become violent people. There's very few if and black people living in a western country that lives in worse poverty than countless millions of asian people do and yet those asians living in absolute squalor still don't grow up to be violent and criminal like other groups of people do. Also blaming guns is just another excuse when violent people will be violent with or without weapons around them. How many times have we seen asian and other people get randomly punched and assaulted and the majority of the time it was with fists and the perpetrators were black? Its always interesting to think that if the majority of these kinds of attacks were carried out by white people that we'd hear neverending crimes from our politicians, the media and the victims that white perpetrated hate crimes against minorities must end and how we need to fight against 'white supremacy' and all that stuff. And yet when its black people behind the majority of these crimes all these same people go radio silent because they're too scared to speak up for fear of getting cancelled. On the other hand, there is almost zero research showing "black people are inherently more violent", and the vast majority of what there is in that vein is from 100 years ago when people were using "science" to "prove" their bigotry. Pretty much all such research has been discounted. Whether or not black people are 'inherently more violent' can be debated. What CANNOT BE DEBATED is that far too many of them make poor life decisions and do things that keep the problems they face going rather than fixing those issues. Doing an utter piss poor job of raising your kids and not getting rid of all the criminals and other bad people in your neighborhoods is something most other groups of people don't do. And I mean, if you paid attention to anything other than skin color you'd notice that poor white people are just as prone to crime as poor black people. 100% false. Find me any poor white community anywhere in the US that has a crime and violence rate that comes close to the crime and violence rate of black people? You can't. I've tried to find it and have yet to do so. If you can find it then please post the links here became I'd genuinely like to read about it. The existence of shitty humans is function of humans being humans, not a function of melanin concentration). No one ever said that a person's skin color makes you more prone to being violent and criminal, BUT its pretty damn clear that black people are among the most violent and criminal no matter where they go in the world because of their poor life choices and inability to raise their kids properly to be decent human beings with morals and compassion for their fellow man. I live in Toronto one of the most diverse cities on the planet and yet the vast majority of violent crime is still committed by black people here. People from all over the world can come to this city and find a way to largely co-exist with each other in a peaceful and civilized manner except for one or two groups of people who can't do the same or even live in peace with their own kind.
1
@JamilLynch Zoning laws in Japan permit that. Zoning laws in the states prohibit that. Do you mean building structures near a highway or something else?
1
@barvdw While I agree that local ideas are possible, those solutions are mostly for those particular areas and I doubt it can become a national solution. Alot of the things mentioned like more bike infrastructure, more density and increased transit etc. mostly works in big cities and it would likely be pretty expensive to build and maintain outside of those dense areas. I live in Toronto which is Canada's largest city and outside of Toronto itself, once you get into the suburbs transit becomes very unprofitable and inefficient. When I was living near downtown many years ago taking transit while abit inconvenient, wasn't too bad and it made sense to use it when it was cheaper than driving and I traveled to downtown regularly. Now that I've moved into suburbs that are farther out, taking transit is pointless when its hugely time consuming and inefficient. Again blame the city planners for not continuing to build density and instead turning to building much more housing and spacing stores and services so far apart that makes a car the most efficient way to reach them. Right now I can drive to most stores in my area within 10-15 minutes and do one trip to reach them all and do my shopping in them all within a couple of hours. If I were to attempt to make the same shopping trip relying on transit, it would take me most of the day and wouldn't even be able to carry home a half of what I could carry in my car. Also with regards to building more housing, there's constant building of houses and condos in Toronto and its suburbs and its never ending here. The problem is much of that isn't affordable. Who wants to build cheap housing for people when you can build high priced properties for people with money and for investors, both foreign and domestic? Maybe if Canada stopped allowing so many foreigners to buy up property at will as investments, perhaps Canadians who actually lived here could afford some of that new housing that keeps being built.
1
@barvdw I agree that less traffic would be ideal, but I'd say there are other ways to accomplish that than simply saying less cars is the only way to do it. For example building more self-contained communities where many of your services and stores are located in or near a neighborhood so that you can either walk/bike to those businesses or take only a short drive to them thereby lowering the amount of time a car is using the roads and leseening the traffic. Another thing we can do to lower the traffic significantly is simply improving the traffic timings of lights at intersections and building more roundabouts. It pisses me off to no end to see the light in front of you go green only to see the light ahead of you turning red, stopping your progress and creating unnecessary car traffic and this is especially true at night when a main road has a red light while cars are piling up and you see a small road getting a green for 20 seconds with barely any cars going in that direction while you wait for no good reason. How easy would it be to simply designate major roads to have traffic light piriority and give them the bulk of the time where the lights change to promote more continuous flow of traffic on these main roads to keep cars moving. Even better would be to build more roundabouts in new subdivisions so that traffic will be even more improved without the use of traffic lights and saving on electricity and traffic light costs as well. Simple changes like this can vastly improve traffic flow immediately with relatively limited effort compared to changes like building massive transit projects that would take forever to implement and have less impact than one would believe those kinds of projects would have in the suburbs.
1
@FIVEFIVEFIVE-v1p Blame city planners for creating the problems to begin with. I'm in Toronto and if you live downtown then not owning a car is fine because everything is close to you. If you live farther out then it gets more difficult and if you live in the suburbs it becomes almost a necessity if you don't want to take forever to get anywhere. Where I live I'm within 5 mins driving distance of two supermarkets for example. It would take me about 20 mins to get there by bike. Not that bad, but it does become a problem when you start carrying a fair amount of groceries and things get even worse during the winter when you have to battle the cold and the snow. About 15 years ago when I lived elsewhere and before I got my first car, I use to take 15 mins to bike to a supermarket near me and let me say it was HELL doing it in the winter. Once I got my car it took less than 5 mins to get there and driving opened up a whole new world that I didn't even realize. All the places that for years would take forever for me to get to by bike or transit all of a sudden only took 10-20 mins. Going to several locations in one trip was so easy and fast. Driving to one of my friend's house took only about 30 mins by highway while back in highschool when I went over to his place by transit took almost 2 hours. Really unless you live somewhere with really good transit and with stores near you, there's no reason not to drive if you live elsewhere when its just plain so much faster and convenient.
1
@jesseperez4185 I'm going to dispute you on the its cheaper to eat out in Japan part. Unless you're buying the best and most expensive ingredients there's almost no way that its cheaper to eat out than it is to cook one meal and then eat the leftovers for several days. I do that all the time. Make one batch of food that will last me for a few days so that I only have to cook like 2-3 times a week at most. No way doing that is more expensive than eating out or getting food deliveries all the time and its definitely more healthier too. Also buying in bulk DOES save money and now with inflation making everything more expensive it makes more sense than ever to see if there's anything on sale each week and then stock up on it rather than buying a little bit that will only last you a day or two. Seriously try comparing prices from your local grocery store and your big box store and in many if not most cases food will be cheaper at the big box stores. I want to support small business, but at the end of the day saving money is my main concern when as I said everything including food prices are going up. Also if the goal is to reduce the number of cars on the road, how exactly are we doing that when you have so many delivery vehicles on the roads driving everywhere to bring stuff to people's doorsteps these days? Its like moving factories overseas so that your land and air doesn't get polluted, but land and air elsewhere in the world gets polluted instead. The same with deliveries where you make one less trip in your car only to be offset by someone else having to make that trip for you and you're paying them a few bucks to do it. At the end of the day pollution is still created just not by you personally so that's suppose to be better? 🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔
1
@You can eat in class!! Unless where you shop has consistently low prices, why would you shop frequently and pay more? I'm in Toronto and smaller grocery stores sometimes have deals, but its the bigger supermarkets where I buy in bulk when something I like goes on sale. For example I love my Campbells Chunky Soup. Small grocery stores might have it, but they sell it at high prices. On the otherhand I can just wait until it goes on sale at a big supermarket and drive there and buy several dozen cans and stock up for long term. That's the advantage of being able to drive to where the deals are especially with recent supply chain issues that are driving up the prices of many things. Personally I would love to live in a neighborhood that is more pedestrian and bike friendly, but thanks to our crappy city planners and developers who keep building crappy car centric subdivisions this won't happen anytime soon until they change their ways. So as much as I would like to drive less to get around, where I live its simply not possible and transit isn't the answer here either.
1
@grassytramtracks The way things are in North America isn't ideal, but its become that way because of the size of our lands and also the decisions made by our politicians and developers. I don't think people from other parts of the world who live in high density countries appreciate just how large North America is and how difficult it is to get around the country. Increasing density within our cities would be great, but when you have so much land available people just tend to naturally spread out and our city planners and politicians never chose to change that. Also as great as it would be to live in higher density areas, most people can't afford to buy or even rent in those areas anymore because of how insanely expensive housing has gotten. I think there are tons of people who would love to live in the city, but most can no longer afford to and living further out is the only answer.
1
@grassytramtracks In many cities of North America, if you live within walking distance of many stores, many people probably aren't going to be able to afford to live in those areas as housing prices go up. Many people DO want to live in the city or around areas that have higher density and have services and stores near them. The problem is that in many areas, places like that are going up in price quickly and its outstripping people's wages so that they have no choice but to live elsewhere.
1
@alec_cooking_channel Apparently many people disagree with you when so many WANT to continue to work from home and avoid wasting time travelling to and from work. Heck there are 100,000+ government workers on strike right now in Canada where one of their demands is for the choice to continue to work from home if they want to. Some people don't mind making the commute and going into the office to work there and interact with people and others prefer to not have to rush to get to work on time and instead do it from the comfort of their own home. It sucks for businesses that rely on workers to go to their establishments to spend money there, but at the same time its helping the environment and reducing traffic like we all wanted isn't it?
1
@alec_cooking_channel Even with great transit I think many if not most people would still choose to work from home most of the time if they could with only going into the office for a couple days at most. If that wasn't the case so many people wouldn't be fighting to keep the option to work from home with their employers instead of rushing back to the office. I mean why waste time getting ready in the morning, then potentially riding a full bus or train of people to the office when you can take your time getting started during the day? As I said maybe more businesses should consider smaller satellite offices so that workers can make shorter trips if they want people to go to the office.
1
That's what happens in most nations where you have plenty of land to spread out on. They'll tend not to build up density in those places. Move the entire US population into a country the size of Japan and you'll bet your ass that there will be high density dwellings everywhere.
1
In most parts of the US there's plenty of land to build on so the need to increase density and efficiency is less pressing. Until city planners start forcing increased density and discouraging low density subdivisions then nothing will change. Also these days planners and developers aren't making neighbourhoods more livable when they don't create good mainstreets and other areas of interest for people to want to walk and bike locally and instead people are more likely to drive to go for their daily as well as entertainment needs.
1
@kevinaguilar7541 I believe you're basing this on unfactual media with its bias and enivitable under representation. I was in a highschool that contained 60% Africa Americans. At least to the friends, acquaintances, and overhearing, not one ever complained to me that it's the white man's fault. How far back are we talking about when you say you were in highschool? Also maybe where you went to school they don't blame white people, but in recent years more than ever where I live in Toronto, almost EVERYTHING is being blamed on white people and particularly white men and its coming from not just black people, but from native, muslim, LGBT and women as well. There almost isn't a day that goes by where someone isn't blaming something on white people and how horrible they are. It really is quite a sight to see how willingly white people largely accept getting beat up so much with relatively little push back and the few that actually do try and stand up, they're immediately beaten back down and told to shutup. I have black neighbors on the right side and in front of me. From what I understand, they're pretty successful. I never said that there aren't successful black people and I don't doubt there are many out there, but relatively speaking they're still vastly dwarfed by many not so successful and very violent and criminal black people which is why their crime rates are so high. And another thing white people are the dominant ethnicity of the country, and thus have a undeniable advantage in pursuing a successful life. The laws and society were founded by white people and it is bias for them. Here's the thing. I believe US and Canada as well are some of the most fair countries when it comes to treatment of minorities and if anything in many cases they bend over backwards to help them in favor of other Canadian people. Even if it isn't 100% perfectly equal, its pretty damn close and its why so many asian and Indian people who live in western countries become successful and self-sufficient and often even more successful than white people are. The system is there for everyone to take advantage of and we live in largely peaceful countries even if certain people are hellbent on turning it into crapholes and what many people refuse to recognize is that some groups of people simply choose to work hard and get educated and make a life for themselves while other groups want practically everything handed to them on a silver platter and EVEN THEN THEY STILL COMPLAIN that its 'not enough'. A prime example is the difference between Somali and Syrian refugees in Canada. Somali refugees have been in Canada for 30+ years and they're still at the bottom in progress and still are at the top in crime and violence and if anything they're getting even more violent these days. In contrast the 70,000 Syrian refugees that Canada took in since 2016 are progressing pretty decently and although some Syrians are doing better than others, the main thing is that the amount of crime and violence from them are extremely minimal. Both groups came from war torn countries to a nation that welcomed them in and yet one group of refugees decided to bring the violent and criminal behaviors from their home country to their new country and have made things worse here. The other group is actively trying to get themselves educated, working and are seeking to cause as little crime and violence as possible and so far they have. Both groups have the same opportunities to become successful in Canada and yet the Syrian refugees have probably accomplished more collectively in 6 years of living in Canada than the Somalis have in 30+ years and they've done it without all the crime and violence. One group chose to take advantage of the opportunities given to them in their new home and the other chose not to. The point is even if you believe white people have the advantage in western countries, there's still plenty of opportunity for everyone else to become successful if they're willing to work hard at it and its why asian people are consistently at or near the top in success nearly everywhere they go and settle because all they want and ever asked for is the chance to improve their lives. In contrast we have blacks and native people here who demand everything be given to them and EVEN THEN with endless amounts of help and affirmative action they STILL end up at the bottom in terms of having their people become successful, mostly problem free and peaceful. This isn't the problem of the government and the system not giving them enough help, this is a problem of some groups of people making extremely poor life choices and not willing to accept the consequences of those choices and even worse most people are more than willing to make neverending excuses for them rather than holding them accountable like we do for most other people.
1
@thespanishinquisiton8306 Most people on the Gardiner drive to or from downtown Toronto, not through the city, butmost people in downtown Toronto arrive by transit. I disagree. There's quite a few people who drive straight through downtown and use the Gardiner to go east-west. I don't know why people would ever think replacing the Gardiner with a boulevard wouldn't be much worse unless vehicles and pedestrians and cyclists were completely separated from each other.
1
@Tekuani Aakab Compton is what happens when you historically refuse to integrate businesses into your urban landscape, enforce low density housing, and perpetuate systemic inequality. Here's the thing. Why can't black people get together and make things happen ON THEIR OWN instead of relying on racist white people to do it for them? You know like how asian people have been doing for decades everytime they immigrate to a western country. They don't wait for people to hand everything on a silver platter to them before they can start to succeed. They go out and make things happen for themselves and for their communities which is why there are Chinatowns wherever Chinese people settle in significant numbers because they create businesses and social services that serve their own community rather than waiting for people to build it for them. And you know what the funny yet sad thing is? People can actually build all these things for black communities and they still mess it up and tear it down. Kinda like how Walgreens put stores in poor areas to try and help those neighborhoods and instead of people being happy and taking care of these stores, the people there do what they always do and plunder and rob these stores until they close down and then they again begin the cycle of whining about 'lack of services' in their communities and attribute it to 'systemic racism'.
1
@ARTiculations Do you live in Toronto/GTA? If so you can just drive around for a while and see for yourself how poor the traffic light timings are in many places here. Like I said it makes no sense that roads that have relatively few cars on them are given the same priority as major roads when simply changing that one thing would improve traffic flow so much better.
1