Philosoft

A positive one, obviously.

lisarea

Taint a joke atall, as far as I'm concerned.

Here's the sad thing: Some number of years back, everyone was all hot and bothered about this concept of 'new urbanism,' which involves any number of factors meant to counteract the dehumanizing and isolating aspects of suburban living. Some of the elements of new urbanism were that houses had porches to encourage porch sitting and the attendant howdy neighborin', alleys with garages in back, to dissuade the suburban phenomenon of coming and going solely through the garage (and never so much as setting foot on your front walk) and to eliminate the fugly 'snout house' phenomenon, wider sidewalks and narrower streets, and mixed use zoning both to attact a variety of demographics, and to bring back the corner market, etc. to middle America.

Know what developers did instead? Started building complexes of condos and shit with different facades in the same complex, so it'd LOOK AS THOUGH they'd been developed over time. And sometimes, they put a Starbucks or a 7-11 in the complex. They literally call this new urbanism. I literally call those developers lying hucksters.

I would very strongly agree that the bedroom communities have played a huge role in the isolation and dehumanizing of society, and while I'm not going to go out and research it right now, if anyone were interested enough, I think some of the early polemics from the New Urbanism movement did have references to studies backing that up.

Mageth

I concur, lisarea. Thanks for so eloquently expanding on my point.

And this conversation would be much nicer on the porch over a pitcher of margaritas, I might add.

elnoyle

Hahaha. Where does the god-squad come up with this stuff?

I have a friend who attends a catholic high school, an environment with a supposedly Christian setting. However, she tells me stories from time to time about the drug dealing, as well as underage sex, as well as big gang fights.

Or does what the bible thumper is saying only apply to protestant teachings?

Ab_Normal

massively off-topic:

lisarea, can I borrow 'snout house'? I *hate* those house designs where the garage is the most prominent feature. My dream house has a wrap around front porch, a turret, and the garage... somewhere over there. I can walk through the snow to get to the house.

Ab_Normal

Well, yeah, don'tcha know the Roman Catholic Church is the Whore of Bablyon?

lisarea

topic schmopic (no, for serious, I won't continue the OT rambling after this):

I guess it's OK, seeing as how I stole it myself. I hate those houses, too, and I own one. Someday, I'll trade it for a little Craftsman bungalow and a big pile of greasy samoleans.

unregistered_user_1

http://www.au.org/press/pr42799.htm

http://www.atheists.org/courthouse/decline.html

http://www.au.org/churchstate/cs10018.htm

http://www.au.org/churchstate/cs79910.htm

Jewel

That's some interesting reading, unregistered_user_1. Thanks for the links.

Dingus

And, the population explosion has something to do with the increase in violence. Oh, shame that people take the Bible literally and 'go forth and multiply'.

Before the forced public school prayers were stopped there definitely was violence in schools - for the ones who attended school. Back in my parent's school days they didn't need to graduate from high school, but I heard stories about the teachers hitting the kids all the time - that's called violence.

When the violent acts occured in the public schools pre-no forced school prayers it was with knives and plenty of fist fights, too. Kids were killed in schools in New York City and on the playground too boot.

And, why are Xtians and other such religions crying about the violence in schools? Their religous books are filled with violence - their God encourages it!