Cars aren't a bad idea, but building everything with them as the sole mode of transport sure as hell was.
this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2025
324 points (94.0% liked)
History Memes
3223 readers
1404 users here now
A place to share history memes!
Rules:
-
No sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, assorted bigotry, etc.
-
No fascism, atrocity denial or apologia, etc.
-
Tag NSFW pics as NSFW.
-
Follow all Lemmy.world rules.
Banner courtesy of @setsneedtofeed@lemmy.world
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
I've just binged "The Gilded Age".
The show starts in 1883 NYC. Follows high society. There is a lot of plot points about railways. I don't know how's far the show will go but it's kinda depressing to see — even in acting — what great plans there were for a marvellous railroad network. Had that spirit been kept up instead of being destroyed by industry pushing private cars..
Same assholes though, mostly. (JP Morgan features in the show, as do a bunch of other real life characters). Almost as if a society went after nothing more than money, it'd turn out kinda shit.
You may want to watch Gangs of New York for a look at what it was like for the non-high society folks back then. Very rough!
That's a movie, and in both cases, it's twenty years too old. Both as in it's set 20 years earlier, during the American Civil War, and it was made more than 20 years ago.
I saw it when it came out. It doesn't check any of the boxes that I'm watching "the gilded age for".
As a suggestion this feels like if you saw me with a liquorice pipe and thought "hey, you might enjoy loose snus (or chewing tobacco)."
Like... yeah, there's a connection. But there's also major differences.
Gangs of New York is a great movie though.
But for the itch I'm scratching, I'm now watching Belgravia. I don't want to look at street crazies with razors hidden about their person — I'm watching shows for escapism from reality.
So I'd rather watch people in circles where the worst offense ever is to have sex before being married.
Got enough crazies living on my street challenging me to fights don't need that in my shows.
Edit also unless you want to admire the scenery and dresses, you can honestly pretty much just listen to these, unlike gangs of new york, which has action
On the other hand, they got plenty of exercise and were in a splendid shape.
Don’t forget investment in public transit like cable cars in that first panel.
And the monorail
I believe that falls under "infrastructure"
lol right?
It's not suburbanization and the automobile, it's a political system based on money-for-access and lobbying, where whichever entity has more money always gradually gets laws and habits changed in a way that advantages them, inexorably.
Large scale long term societal enshittification as a mathematically unavoidable by-product of unfettered capitalism.
Both things can be true bro. Yes, it’s unfettered capitalism in the macro. In the micro, when it comes to how American cities have disintegrated, suburbanization and the automobile are two clear culprits.
No offense, but this is a really obnoxious and unhelpful reply to a post about how suburban sprawl and car-centric infrastructure have really ruined life in the American City. Js.
Certainly wasn't meant to be obnoxious, I just wanted to point out the underlying issue... 🤷♂️
The automobile itself is not responsible for cities being designed around them. What is obnoxious and unhelpful is your absolute ignorance in the face of a clear explanation for the real cause. Fucking grow up and learn how politics and city management actually function.
We didn't have much of a choice when horses were crazy expensive. Once we got cars and phone lines, we realized there was seemingly unlimited space and natural resources, why not?
The car companies sabotaging urban mass transit was what was fucked up.