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by mlinhares 395 days ago
I had never noticed it like that but now I’m dead.

When I moved to my current neighborhood I asked why there was no public transportation and someone said it was so poor people couldn’t be around and I hadn’t connected this to the wider culture.

3 comments

I was talking to someone about some existing bicycle road infrastructure that ran through several neighborhoods, rich and poor, in a large city. They said when it first was built, some people in the rich neighborhood objected because they said criminals would use it to come to their neighborhood. (The city is mostly on a grid, including this neighborhood, making the whole idea absurd anyway.)

I had long ago pointed out to them that much of the bike infrastructure connects wealthy neighborhoods with wealthy neighborhoods.

Yep, it puts the “F U” in fun!

Along the public transit line (ha!), the person primarily in charge of NYC’s road design and public transit planning back in the day made several anti-poor design choices, like ensuring overpasses crossing roads to less-poor (I.e. more-white) areas were just low enough that public busses couldn’t pass under them, as well as planning off-ramps that dumped a majority of the smog-ridden traffic into poorer neighborhoods, and let’s not forget how public parks in poorer neighborhoods had little monkeys adorning the fences. If you’ve ever wondered why a dangerously busy road with little in the way of safety measures for pedestrians cut between a neighborhood and a shopping district, you can thank Robert Moses.

> current neighborhood

Context please? Which country and city?

I assume US, city doesn’t matter since this is the default opinion for most NIMBY suburban Americans in all US cities.
A suburb in southern winter garden, FL.