That's quite possibly the most American response you could provide. Though Germans value their cars (sometimes more than their wives), German society is quite focused on public transport and the availability thereof.
Furthermore, distancing ourselves from personal cars is among one of the best things we can do for the environment. We are experiencing the effects of car ownership right now with bad air / smog, traffic jams, noise and (very avoidable) accidents. Engines might have heralded a new age and while cars do represent transportational freedom, it's time we move away from them if we want to exist in a livable world.
Neither the Author is American, nor am I. Sometimes it seems, though, racial stereotypes are perfectly acceptable...
In practice, and I currently live in a socially cohesive neighborhood, in practice it is just very laidback and it’s about helping eachother out and live and let live.
There's a bus to my workplace but it's every 30 minutes, so if I miss it, that's 30 minutes of my day wasted waiting for the next one. Or I could get a car and get there whenever I can/want and have more free time for myself at home. The choice wasn't difficult.
Too much freedom can be a bad thing. Especially when the government is chronically underfunded to take over the responsibilities.
I thought of Sartre's No Exit. But for the type that would go around casting judgement on others for religious infractions in a previous age, it must be paradise.
Where I live, the town actually implements a variation of this: if you have a child under 3, you can apply for a "diaper subsidy" to your garbage fee, offered by the town, because they assume that you will need more bins emptied than other households (in general, you pay for how many times your bin gets emptied).
Vauban is very special and strange even for German eyes. But one thing is abundantly clear among many German communities:
The egocentric individualism where all the problems you produce are offloaded to some ephemeral society funded by taxes you don't want to pay is not sustainable unless you exploit external communities around you.
Conversely if you need to do laundry in your apartment building on a holiday because you're a single parent, that's an outrage. The person leaving all the racist and xenophobic notes about respecting local traditions is a model citizen.
Yes, you can't behave like an arrogant a-hole, people will complain and call services/cops on you. But if you follow few simple rules which can be summed up as 'be respectful of others and laws in the country', you can have a great time since respect goes both ways.
The assumption that people living there are intolerant of babies and families is false.
But if I threw out 200 of them per month, that would be my own thing. Nobody frowns, complains, cares or anything. People just go about their lives in pretty sensible ways.
In Geneva, I can throw trash in Migros plastic bags if I want, nobody cares. No clue about current Zurich, 10 years ago I didn't pay anything neither.
The areas of Baden, the former state Freiburg was part of, and Swabia e.g. were for decades the only areas in Germany were the otherwise urbanite-higher-ed focused Green Party had success with rural/small town voters.
Do you have any source for that? I find it fascinating, but was not able to find any link about this, only that the student dorm does not have "bio"-dumpsters for compostable garbage.
It’s the most televised segment about Vauban. It takes some time until it gets to the trash bins. You have to get passed the segment of the professor talking about „communal self-Control“ if a neighbor dares to open his windows, because of the ecological burden said neighbor would unload on others. But the whole thing is worth watching.
Edit: It’s around minute 10.
The part about neighbors keeping watch over open windows however is hilariously dystopian. Especially given my own experience with passive buildings that completely failed to live up to the hype, with air circulation that was a health hazard..
If you're flexible you can set up your outlook however you think is best. And there are of course prevailing mindsets, depending on where you are. For me, Vauban seems closer to ideal than a lot of other places.
I think often people, who find themselves closer to mainstream, find themselves judged, or fearing judgment, from the marginal "progressives" (and vice versa). I think it's normal for this mainstream-marginal tension to exist, and it's independent of whatever the distinguishing opinions are. If the tension is getting bad, it's just a symptom of people having trouble socialising; capacity for variety is a major societal health indicator. Doesn't really say anything about the actual topics discussed, like eco-friendliness in this case.
How the fuck does THAT fit with the other examples you gave? The word "force" in there should make it pretty clear that it's not ok or just a matter of opinion.
It was just another example of cultural behavior.
It was not a normative statement.
(Disclaimer: I live in Egypt, which is a Muslim country. However, it's much less strict compared to the others.)
You know, from the community's perspective, your comment could come off as incredibly self-centered and entitled. Why is it the community's responsibility to dispose of endless amounts of waste that you and your little poop monsters produce? All of those services require the community to do work for you.
The social contract is more maleable than you realize. I am not sure you want to accept that it can be renegotiated because like most of us, you've accepted an entire lifetime's worth of Western programming telling you you get to do whatever you want and everybody else has got to just deal with it, and if they have a problem with that then it's some kind of horrible encroachment.
But the reality is that people have always lived in communities that have a delicately negotiated social contract and ways of shaming, shunning, and even ex-communicating individuals who don't conform. The social contract is a negotiation, not your absolute right to do whatever you want and have people clean up after you.
> Alas, people who are annoyed by this leave.
I'd say that's WAI. It doesn't sound like a lot of fun to live there. So don't. I probably wouldn't either. But TBH it's not a lot of fun to live next to trash monkeys and junk hoarders, and communities absolutely do kick such people out.
Unfortunately, because once you allow to degrade strangers/neighbors in public for something malign like that, it doesn’t stop there.
Because of this Vauban is not always admired, rather sometimes regarded as tax payer funded dystopia for upper class people to live in.
E.g. your amount of thrash you can dispose per month is highly regulated, via communal key-card opened dumpsters. Once you’ve reached your threshold, the dumpsters stay closed. If you ever where to forget, say, your toddlers diapers you have two options:
Enjoy the smell for the remaining time period or brace for the walk of shame of asking your neighbors to forgive your sin, alleviate your family from the smell and selflessly take in your diapers. Rest assured that this selflessness will at least come with an inquiry of why you aren‘t using reusable diapers in the first place.
Alas, people who are annoyed by this leave, with the share of those who think such behavior is ok ever increases.