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DooDooBrownz t1_iy8mg5f wrote

this all happened when groupthink was: city=bad, suburb=good, car is king. when you approach the traffic congestion problem from that perspective those solutions were pretty standard at the time in the US. central artery and a beltway or a series of beltways is a well used template. of course in hindsight it's easy to criticize things when granularity of specific issues and circumstances surrounding all those projects has been lost to time.

im sure in 20 years when the seaport district has water lapping at the second floors of those new buildings someone is gonna be facepalming and calling us stupid and bad decision makers

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Prestigious_Bobcat29 t1_iy997c3 wrote

Idk I think you’re being far too kind. I work in urban planning and the thing about the mid century groupthink is that is was so obviously doomed to fail. In fact, it’s gone far better than any planner then could have hoped! Population projections from the time expected modern populations to be far higher than they ended, and as plenty of people pointed out at the time the geometry just made no sense. Highways are too low capacity to work in urban environments. It’s absolutely fair to slam what was an obvious mistake at the time it was made.

Similarly, the seaport does not reflect modern planning best practices at all. It’s held up as a model by planners of what not to do, no hindsight needed!

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