Kathy Hochul Hater: Never forget, public outreach is almost always a fake thing that governments do when they want to score brownie points with certain groups and/or slow good projects down. If they really want cars to go a little faster it doesn't matter what the public says mass.streetsblog.org/2024/03/27/h...

Never forget, public outreach is almost always a fake thing that governments do when they want to score brownie points with certain groups and/or slow good projects down. If they really want cars to go a little faster it doesn't matter what the public says mass.streetsblog.org/2024/03/27/h...

They taught us this little thing from the 60s in planning school which is cute but there should be another couple dimensions, whether things get on the ladder at all and how long the whole thing takes if you're up in the top rungs here

As I was saying. Cars won't even go faster here. The city did years of outreach to build this in the first place and hundreds of people showed up to a rally at City Hall on Monday against this decision. Didn't make a fucking difference because it's a different mayor (old one was term limited)

ah more meetings! I'm sure those will be really great and the mayor will be listening closely to all feedback

Attendees at a recent South Boston "transportation safety" meeting. Love that the only person who appears to be under 50 years old is wearing a MAGA hat

Public comment doesn't matter if the people in power want to make sure cars go a little faster or have more parking available.

Public comment doesn't matter if the people in power want to move the bus terminal to the other side of downtown so that poor people stop hanging out there

I think this is an unfair reading of Arnstein and what Model Cities was trying to do, and, more importantly, what it was responding to. It’s absolutely abused and used lazily, but the goal of more democratic control in major decision of the built environment is a positive goal.

I didn't say it wasn't useful at the time. That was over fifty years ago

My point is it is *still* useful and attacking the model as you framed it does not contextualize why the model was so revolutionary or why we still teach it

Ok. I disagree.

On which part?

more compared to what?

Compared to no voice? The abuses that led to the current state was absolutely a result of the dismissal/indifference to the effect certain interventions had on communities, particularly poor Black and immigrant communities.

Probably the only thing that ever brings out the authoritarian in me is an emphasis on ‘community involvement’ in projects … like combined sewer overflow treatment facilities that should have been built years ago per an ongoing consent decree, “but… THE PEOPLE say…”

Post