Re:Toronto swaps Google-backed, not-so-smart city plans for ...
by throwawaysea on Sunday March 14, 2021 @01:30PM
(#26457024)
In Seattle it’s the opposite. Retirees are a minority at these meetings. Young urban or leftist activists are the majority, for example socialist housing advocates and homelessness advocates. They are well organized, seemingly have tons of time (potentially jobless?), and are aggressive, often staging protests outside city hall hearings and ensuring anyone else is shouted down. In many cases no one else is able to sign up on time to even speak, because the organizations these activists belong to are very disciplined about brigading the sign up page right on time. And who’s missing? The middle group - people with families or jobs.
This isn't really right, you're confusing 60s style city planning with the modern approach. 60s style "urban renewal" built a lot of freeways everywhere without asking and destroyed many poor neighborhoods. This caused a backlash and the start of urban environmental activism (e.g. SF getting rid of the Embarcadero highway), and urban planning switched to the exact opposite approach it uses now, which is to never do anything without 5000 community meetings.
The result of this is… nothing ever happens, because the only people who show up to community meetings are retirees who don't want anything to change; nobody else has any free time. These people are less against roads than they are against houses though, because they mostly have no opinions other than hating traffic and liking free parking.