Someone once told me that malls are appealing because they match what we want out of a walkable city, and I haven’t been able to get that out of my mind.
I’d also stipulate there is at least one way walkable cities should be more like malls. Everyone wants to get rid of cars , for good reason, but what about everyone else? Good walkable cities still need to provide better ways for someone to drive to the city and leave their car.
We’d all benefit from more park-n-rides surrounding a town center, more long term parking. Let’s welcome people not yet ready to give up their cars, the opportunity to give them up part time
Good walkable cities should have appropriate rural transport so you don’t need to drive into town and can take a five dollar train ride with no traffic instead that includes return fare and takes you right to main destination districts.
A lot of malls I can think of (in both my current and previous city) do have tons of housing around them (though admittedly they also tend to waste a ton of space on parking). Some are admittedly a mixed bag. My parents live near a mall that is surrounded by a giant suburb and not that many medium density apartments. Though the biggest mall in that city is downtown and is positively surrounded by high density housing. Another reaaaally big mall is in a street that frankly is terrible for walking despite being full of businesses (it’s a really long, low density street), but the entire back side of the mall is residences and lots of medium density at that.
In my current city, one of the biggest malls is kinda similar to that. It’s got mostly detached housing near it. But it’s directly on our LRT and that makes it super accessible for probably the majority of high density housing residents, which counts as walkable in my book. A significant number of people can get there in 10-20 minutes by convenient and frequent public transit. The other big mall is also on the LRT but the other side of the city. It’s got much more housing near by, including a large amount of high density apartments. There’s also a smaller mall more in the middle that is just surrounded by high density apartments. That mall has been hit really hard by COVID, but at least the street it’s on is full of life. It doesn’t make for traditional mall experiences (e.g., no food court), but it’s still a super walkable area, regularly hosts mini festivals outside, and is also on the LRT route.
As I type this, I think it really drives home that LRTs and subways are utterly critical for walkable cities. Literally all the malls I’ve mentioned are major transit hubs (which makes them great to live near if you want to take transit), but buses relatively suck compared to LRT/subway. The ability to just head to a station without having to know the schedule is extremely convenient and the frequency also just makes it more viable to get to the mall quickly. I’ve used public transit for years in both cities (and to get to all the mentioned malls), but the best experiences are definitely with the LRT. The LRT also makes high density housing a lot more sensical, since being close to the LRT stations is extremely convenient and high density housing is the most scalable way to achieve that.
I hadn't been to a mall in a really long time until a friend of mine dragged me to one to kill some time before a thing we had going on later that night. I was surprised how busy it was, and how much it had expanded in terms of content. There were a couple of art galleries and even a little tabletop gaming store with a few people playing Catan. The only area that was kind of deserted was surprisingly the food court, which only had a bubble tea place and a sandwich place open.
There’s no way this dude seriously thinks he can win a primary right? Anyone not white is surely just aiming for VP. Even that seems like a long shot though.
On the bright side if you go and twat now “screw you future historians trying to figure out stuff” you might manage to annoy someone in a thousand years.
Hmm come to think of it. People should be make random references right now to really mess with the future. “I saw Zoey today, her brother John is called the Messiah by some”
But don’t you find it interesting that these incidents don’t happen in first class? Maybe there’s a hint there at what might be getting these passengers so pissed off to the point of violence.
(It’s the Real. You’ve paid money to be packed in a tin can, to have your anus digitally breached, you need to take off your belt, in the security line everyone is a criminal. When the Real has revealed itself, violence most usually follows. Being in the presence of the Real is torture.)
(It doesn’t happen in first class because the luxury does a better job of obscuring the Real.)
Remind me not to fly whatever airline you're using..
I think that you have come to the wrong conclusion here. People who can spend first class money are generally less likely to stab somebody just because they're frustrated.
I have ridiculously long legs, and am uncomfortable every time I fly, but I have never felt the desire to assault anybody over it.
the vast moronity of ai travelers can behave like civilized people, even when annoyed by the burdens of air travel, and news flash: it always sucked. I’ve flown for over 40 years, and even before 9/11 TSA security theater, before the shrinking seats and legroom and lack of inflight meals, flying was uncomfortable, tedious and awful. The difference today? an increasing sector of society believe they’re entitled to act like selfish assholes all the time and that the price of an airline ticket entitles them to treat the entire plane like their own home where they’re allowed to act, do, and say whatever they want, regardless of how the actions and behaviors affect anyone else— worse, because they know (or think) that, once in the air, there’s nothing anyone can do to stop them. It’s that kind of entitled, selfish, and childish mindset that makes them believe they can lash out and attack others without consequences when the flight crew tries to hold them accountable.
THAT is the problem now, and the discomfort of flying just makes these horrible people worse, it’s not what caused them in the first place. And people who act this way on flights also act this way in restaurants, subways and busses, movie theaters, and other public spaces where they selfishly don’t give a damn how there behavior affects others.
the airlines can be blamed for making flying uncomfortable but not for the fact that these people are selfish assholes who resort to violence when confronted.
Airline keeps increasing prices, reducing size of the chair and the leg space, offers you no-snacks or meals on any flight 5 hours and under, over sell seats on purpose, never run on time, never clean plane in between flights, cancel flights, are now hiring door bouncers as flight attendants - cause who the fuck wants to pay to train their staff, am i right?
but there’s another side to this: the rise in extremely shitty and entitled attitudes that people in general have regarding their behaviors in public spaces, that being a creeping breakdown in basic civility and decorum.
I remember a time when people would just get onto a plane, sit down, and endure their flight. air travel has never been particularly comfortable or enjoyable. there was always an unspoken social contract between fellow travelers to at least do what we could to not make it worse for each other, but now? so many people don’t give a damn about how their actions affect others, often taking very selfish action at the expense of others’ comfort which push the boundaries of even the most understanding person’s patience.
removing smelly shoes, eating pungent foods, and engaging in many other annoying or obnoxious behaviors that air travelers simply would not have done 5-10 years ago at a far higher rate with a “fuck you” attitude isn’t something you can simply blame on smaller seats and less legroom. combine that with a flagrant disregard for in-flight staff and their instructions or attempts to de-escalate to the point of engaging in violence has reached outrageous levels. bigger seats with more legroom and serving in-flight meals isn’t going to make these people stop acting like animals. whatever it is that caused these people to believe that acting like entitled assholes is ok now did not originate from airlines trying to squeeze out a profit, even though it may be a contributing factor to making everyone else miserable.
the people who act this way ON the plane act this way OFF the plane, too.
This echos for healthcare workers and social services too. You can’t imagine the physical and verbal abuse. Especially if you work in the ED. Where I work, we have self-defense and workplace violence training every year. Statistics say something like 30-60% have been assaulted before (a very easy Google). There’s so much more that goes un-reported.
And yeah, sometimes it’s the legitimate agitated patient with altered mental status, but more than often it’s just shitty entitled people who would normally go to jail, except they do it in the hospital setting and it gets swept under the rug. Because management sucks, and police sucks.
I’m in the service industry, specifically a nightclub setting, and these folks are feral now. I have a lot more fear of getting shot or stabbed than I ever did previous to covid.
People have GOT to stop blaming Trump for every damn thing. Generally speaking the tearing social fabric started LONG before 2016. As it relates specifically to Air Travel I took my first Commercial Flight in 1980 and things were pretty damn good right up until 9/11 and its been getting worse ever since.
How could you read everything that guy wrote and your takeaway was to completely misunderstand it. It almost seems deliberate on your part. Please leave that attitude with Reddit, be normal here.
“I remember a time when people would just get onto a plane, sit down, and endure their flight. air travel has never been particularly comfortable or enjoyable.”
Pretty sure when they said this part? We don’t have to take that crap from airlines, just don’t fly. Keep your weird attitude on reddit? Didn’t know opinions about others opinions weren’t allowed here.
I was literally just arguing with someone a couple weeks ago here about how while you can recline on a plane, it’s generally not an okay thing to do because there’s a person behind you who has significantly less space. No matter how many different ways I tried to explain it to them it always came back to basically “but I deserve my space”.
They’re just unaware other people exist at all. But god knows if someone reclined into them they’d be complaining about it for days.
I travel weekly for work, and sitting upright in the seats is awful. Everybody should recline when able, and then everyone will have the same amount of room as before, and everyone gets a more comfortable experience.
I’m a tall guy (6’4) and when the person in front of me reclines it brings the top of their sear closer, but the lower part moves forward creating more space for my stupid long legs. I can actually move my knees around and reposition instead of having to be angled towards one side the whole time.
But, I never recline myself. I try to be very polite and courteous to strangers when interacting, but overall I’d rather not have to interact at all. So I’ve never asked the person behind me. Without that information, I can’t be sure what they’d prefer. Then, since so much in our society is treated as “zero sum”, if I don’t take my option to recline, my “suffering” must mean their pleasure, right?
That’s what goes through my head anyway. Writing it all out, it sounds like nonsense.
You’re probably right, and paired with my experience being “reclined on” it likely is best for everyone if we all recline. I’ll try it on my next flight and see how it goes. Maybe I’ll even ask the stranger behind me…
I’m very tall and I sincerely disagree with your first claim. The person in front of me reclining brings the back of their chair directly into my knees, I don’t need leg room I need knee room. If I then recline it pushes the bottom of my chair forward making it even worse. It is literally the worst of all possible solutions for me.
Fair enough! I’m sure our experiences vary. I don’t really fly that often (maybe a couple trips a year, at most). Also you say “very tall” which I’d assume is taller than me, from context.
Plus I think it also depends on airline - some of them tout their coach legroom. So I’m sure that’s different too.
Part of what adds to the situation is that you can never actually talk to the people responsible for making “the system” the way it is. Instead you interact with low level employees, or sometimes actual bots that have no say in “the system” while the people who make the decisions aren’t even inconvenienced by having the knowledge of what the plebs think about the decisions they made.
All of the pain of the tradeoffs of their decisions are borne by someone other than them, and they are surrounded by sycophants and cheerleaders for making them.
Tl;Dr: I very much relate to Dennis’s fictional frustrations in the current season’s episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia where he tries to take a mental health day.
I used to work at an international airport. Once, when a plane arrived they discovered that one of the passengers had likely died of natural causes before landing. They had him removed and the doctor obliged by declaring him dead on the jet bridge, rather than on the plane.
Apparently, if a passenger is declared dead on the plane, they have to do a thorough clean. This would have caused a delay. Delays cost money. Thanks to him officially having died on the jet bridge, no thorough clean was required. The cleaning staff removed the excess rubbish, and some lucky passenger unknowingly got to fly in the dead passenger's seat less than half an hour later.
I suppose I should have been more appalled, but this happened for a low cost airline. I never felt too much sympathy for passengers who paid significantly less for their flight, often a flight that could have been a train ride that didn't kill the planet, invariably treated ground staff like shit, then complained when the budget airline offered them budget service.
Not that the business class passengers were much better. Like the VIP who deliberately shoved a pregnant colleague with his trolley, but wasn't banned from BA, because he was a gold member or something stupid like that.
And if you don’t feel the need to treat the people with dignity who use a cheaper airline, then you probably shouldn’t be working for a cheaper airline. Everyone should be treated with respect until they prove they don’t deserve it.
Everyone should be treated with respect until they prove they don’t deserve it
They proved they didn't deserve respect by flying with airlines which are infamous for treating staff poorly, ignoring and outright breaking labour laws, regularly fucking over customers, and by flying relatively short distances rather (than taking a train, bus or even car) and being part of the problem when it comes to climate change.
Obviously, I know this is a hard truth, but if someone sees a kid drowning but chooses to eat an ice cream rather than help they're evil. Most people do that on a daily basis because the kid's drowning far away and off-screen. Why should underpaid employees have respect for customers who support a company that fucks people over, when its their turn to get fucked over?
They could instead earn some respect by buying a ticket with a regular airline that treats its staff properly, or by taking the train because although it takes a bit longer you're not killing the planet.
then you probably shouldn’t be working for a cheaper airlines
Most groundstaff work for a handler, not the airline itself. So in this case the cheap airline subcontracted my company to board and deboard the plane, take care of luggage etc. But crucially, the cheap airlines didn't pay us to handle complaints or deal with delays. So when a flight was cancelled, as often happened because they knowingly flew a schedule which was far too tight, customers would be left stranded and be told to call a call centre somewhere on a paying number. Once again, it's hard to sympathise, given these customers knew that this happened regularly, yet still went ahead and bought the cheap tickets anyway. We would however hand out little fliers and explain their rights under EU law. Said airlines would regularly flout the law when it came to legally required compensation. Obviously that's no different in the US.
In any case, you get what you pay for. Of course, this was only a short term starter job. They didn't pay enough to retain staff long term. This is common in the industry, which is why you'll occassionally hear stories about a kid sneaking past the gate and end up in the wrong destination or someone getting sucked into an engine. Staff would turn up drunk or high, not bother to check documents properly, not enter the weight of luggage correctly leading to balance issues, that kind of thing. You pay McDonalds wages you get McDonalds level employees. Have a safe flight!
They proved they didn’t deserve respect by flying with airlines which are infamous for treating staff poorly, ignoring and outright breaking labour laws, regularly fucking over customers
A) they didn’t necessarily know all of these things… Not everyone sees every bit of news about airlines, and certainly nobody bothers to compile it all to rank them (not even journalists do this that I’m aware of)
B) to a large extent, every single airline has problems in the US… Every major carrier has problems with staff treatment, labor law violations, and customer service issues
C) some people are poor, and when you’re working for a living, speedy travel is very important because you don’t have the paid time off to accommodate very shitty alternative transit options (even if you have the money, which is also a question mark)
All very true but should we really celebrate death by cop without a trial? I’m as disgusted as anyone by this crime but I also really fucking hate and distrust cops. Did they for sure get the right guy?
Well, of course he didn’t mean it’s great that the lady got shot. Folks in this thread seem to like the instant karma aspect of him getting gunned down by the cops. I can understand the visceral appeal of that - I mean fuck that guy - but my head knows that death by cop, on the scene of the crime, is not the justice system we want.
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