Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should Know
Speaker 1: from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W Chuck Bryant
Speaker 1: that would make this stuff you should know? As if
Speaker 1: you didn't know, should I speak? Yeah, please do speak?
Speaker 1: Bail me out. Yeah, this is a show number two
Speaker 1: in the temporary office. I hate this place so much.
Speaker 1: I know it's weird. Get used to it, buddy. We'll
Speaker 1: be here for the next six weeks and then it'll
Speaker 1: be like whoa look at this new studio would be
Speaker 1: like the kitchen of the future. Yeah, yeah, but from
Speaker 1: the fifties, so Chuck, Yes, Josh. Do you know what
Speaker 1: May seven was? It was a big day, my wedding anniversary. No,
Speaker 1: that was not my wedding anniversion. Go ahead. Was a
Speaker 1: weird thing to say if it wasn't true, okay, um, chuck.
Speaker 1: USD seven represented the day that more humans in modern
Speaker 1: times lived in cities than did rural areas. I believe
Speaker 1: it a couple of so that didn't blow your mind. No,
Speaker 1: I believe it so a couple of researchers, one from
Speaker 1: NC State and another from our Deer University of Georgia. Uh,
Speaker 1: did some demographic numbers, crunched them and came up with
Speaker 1: three billion, three hundred three million, nine hundred ninety two thousand,
Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty three people in cities. And on
Speaker 1: that day there were three billion, three hundred three million,
Speaker 1: eight hundred and sixty six thousand, four hundred and four
Speaker 1: rural people. Do you know what percentage that breaks down
Speaker 1: to fifty something? It was fifty points something because they
Speaker 1: were projected at that since you brought it up past
Speaker 1: stats in eight hundred only uh, slightly more than two million,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, two of the world's population lived in the
Speaker 1: cities by nineteen hundred. That was and uh they predicted
Speaker 1: by it. Would you know why the shift Industrial revolution boom? Yeah,
Speaker 1: we went from an agrarian society to one where you
Speaker 1: could make the cheese in the city, and so everybody
Speaker 1: moved to the city, right. I thought it was tai food.
Speaker 1: I think that was that was a happy benefit of
Speaker 1: byproduct um and uh so people started moving to cities
Speaker 1: more and more. By nineteen ten, there were scores of
Speaker 1: cities around the United States that boasted a million or
Speaker 1: more people. Right. Yeah, they were kind of crappy though,
Speaker 1: they were. And one of the reasons why is because
Speaker 1: they were just kind of thrown together. Right. Somebody wanted
Speaker 1: to open a business, Well, you bought the land, built
Speaker 1: the business, and probably lived upstairs from it. Right. There
Speaker 1: was sprawl, cramp conditions, tenement housing, um, poor water quality.
Speaker 1: Can I read the quote? Yeah? From Henry Blake Fuller's
Speaker 1: novel with the Procession and the nineteen hundreds, they were
Speaker 1: describing Chicago, and the protagonist Truesdale Marshall said, Chicago is
Speaker 1: a hideous monster, so pitifully grotesque, grewesome, appalling. Yeah, not
Speaker 1: not a pretty picture now, And anybody who's familiar with
Speaker 1: Chicago now would be like, what that's Chicago. Chicago was
Speaker 1: the bomb, you know, that's what they say. That's exactly
Speaker 1: what someone would say. Right. The reason why somebody would
Speaker 1: say that today is because there was a guy named
Speaker 1: Daniel Hudson Burnham. Love this dude. He was Chicago architect
Speaker 1: and uh monsieur. Burnham came up with this thing called
Speaker 1: the City Beautiful Program, right, yeah, and I agree with it.
Speaker 1: Form build a form and function will follow, right. So uh,
Speaker 1: Mr Burnham's vision was to create municipal art like fountains, statuary,
Speaker 1: green space, parks, sidewalk and if you beautified the city,
Speaker 1: crime other social ills would kind of fall off at
Speaker 1: the very least because of the newfound civic pride, right,
Speaker 1: people want to keep it clean. You see some kids
Speaker 1: spray painting a beautiful fountain, You're probably gonna open his
Speaker 1: skull with your walking cane, right right, yeah, and he
Speaker 1: um he unveiled this at the eighteen nine World's Colombian
Speaker 1: Exposition that was one of the best ever in Chicago.
Speaker 1: And uh, he started applying those principles uh in between
Speaker 1: nineteen o two and nineteen o five in d C, Cleveland, Ohio, Manila,
Speaker 1: oddly in San Francisco. Well, hey, the Filipinos needs some
Speaker 1: help to you know. Um, and uh, the the whole
Speaker 1: thing really kind of came together for him since he
Speaker 1: was a Chicago architect. Uh in nineteen o six when
Speaker 1: he and another guy named Edward Bennett created the Plan
Speaker 1: of Chicago the Kitchen of the Future, right yeah, And
Speaker 1: that's basically the first example of well not true, because
Speaker 1: urban planning goes all the way back to Rome. But
Speaker 1: the first example of a comprehensive plan for an American city,
Speaker 1: growth plan for an American city. Right. And actually the
Speaker 1: Romans didn't necessarily have a comprehensive plan. They had really
Speaker 1: good architects who were who who Burnham based his ideas on. Right.
Speaker 1: They had a lot of municipals are, a lot of
Speaker 1: great municipal gathering spaces. They had the aqueducts, sewers, harry water,
Speaker 1: they had sewers and public houses that were placed in
Speaker 1: areas where everybody could enjoy them. Right. And that is
Speaker 1: one of the tenants of urban planning that we'll get
Speaker 1: to is not to exclude any people's because of like
Speaker 1: geographic location or like socio economic conditions. Right. So, so
Speaker 1: Burnham basically throws down the gauntlet and says, I have
Speaker 1: created urban planning. Right, good for him, good for all
Speaker 1: of us. And it kind of took off. In addition
Speaker 1: to the Romans, which borrowed heavily from, he also leaned
Speaker 1: a lot on the Parisians. Have you ever been to Paris?
Speaker 1: I have. It's a gorgeous city, awesome, awesome city. Apparently,
Speaker 1: back during the seventeenth century, during the reign of Louis
Speaker 1: the fourteenth UM, there was a lot of really good
Speaker 1: planning going on, or at least public architecture being raised
Speaker 1: in areas that weren't really settled. But these these uh
Speaker 1: court architects had the foresight to be like, well, people
Speaker 1: are kind of spreading out over here. They're probably gonna
Speaker 1: need this land eventually, so we're gonna put some parks
Speaker 1: over here and just attract them. And sure enough, that's
Speaker 1: where people started to settle. So that concept and then
Speaker 1: the concept of equality uh for citizens, as far as
Speaker 1: the urban planners concerned, um or really, they kind of
Speaker 1: formed the foundation of Burnham's principles. Right, Yes, should we
Speaker 1: just simply state the goal of urban planning, let's do.
Speaker 1: I'm actually gonna read it because it's it's just so
Speaker 1: succinctly put here. It is to guide the development of
Speaker 1: a city or town so that it furthers the welfare
Speaker 1: of its current and future resident by creating convenient, equitable, healthful, efficient,
Speaker 1: and attractive environments. That says it all. But you would
Speaker 1: be a pretty shoddy urban planner if you built a
Speaker 1: fountain somewhere and went to, uh, it's the park of
Speaker 1: the future, Like it's a lot more than that, right, sure.
Speaker 1: So there's basically three main things that an urban planner
Speaker 1: takes into account when creating a plan for an existing city.
Speaker 1: There's also planned communities, also called new towns or new cities.
Speaker 1: Right did you know Columbia, Maryland was one of those
Speaker 1: until I read this built from the ground up. It
Speaker 1: was one of the United States first plan communities, which
Speaker 1: is different than a suburb. Right, this is the town's
Speaker 1: and they said, we we want a city, build it
Speaker 1: for us, and uh they did. Yeah, and it's grown
Speaker 1: since then. Same with rest in Virginia and uh, the
Speaker 1: government often gets into the acts. Alamos, Oak Ridge, both
Speaker 1: of those are planned towns for a very important reason. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Manhattan Project. I am the bringer of death, destroy
Speaker 1: of worlds. I have become death. I think whatever, good
Speaker 1: old Philipoppenheimer and wait for the evening, Yes it is Robert.
Speaker 1: So the three things that they take into account, Urban
Speaker 1: planners take into account of the physical environment, right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: That means obviously where it is, uh, what the climates
Speaker 1: like you gotta got you know, if you're building in Seattle,
Speaker 1: you gotta take into account the misty rain that falls. Sure,
Speaker 1: and also if you, especially if you're planning a town
Speaker 1: from the ground up, and especially if it was the
Speaker 1: early twentieth century, you were likely to take advantage of
Speaker 1: a river. Uh, specifically a fall line where the river
Speaker 1: runs out of the mountains and into the sediment the
Speaker 1: delta right towards the ocean. Coastal plains of course, very popular. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so um and also Chuck, speaking of rivers and water,
Speaker 1: people love to settle by water for trade, for drinking water.
Speaker 1: It's really important, um. As water scarcity continues. By I
Speaker 1: think five an estimated quarter of the world's population are
Speaker 1: going to be without access to clean drinking water. I
Speaker 1: predict that a lot more people are going to show
Speaker 1: up in areas where there are there is water, whether
Speaker 1: it's already established or they're going to found new areas
Speaker 1: towards the headwaters or the tall lines, makes sense, right,
Speaker 1: And our migration patterns are going to shift radically within
Speaker 1: the next fifty years. That means other areas will be
Speaker 1: deserted too. Yeah, that's gonna be weird. It is gonna
Speaker 1: be weird, and it's gonna be a big challenge for
Speaker 1: urban planners who also take into account the social environment, right,
Speaker 1: that is UH, groups that um a city's residents belong
Speaker 1: to neighborhoods, um workplaces. UH in policies. You've seen slum
Speaker 1: Dog Millionaire, I have a great movie. So in the
Speaker 1: in Mumbai, I think fifty of the residents live in
Speaker 1: the slums. Those are pretty serious slums too. And in
Speaker 1: Africa you mentioned this aim deal with water in Nairobi,
Speaker 1: uh and Lagos, more than six of households aren't connected
Speaker 1: the water, so that that's not very good urban planning.
Speaker 1: So if if Lagos, Nigeria said, hey, we want an
Speaker 1: urban plan, we want a master plan for our city,
Speaker 1: probably one of the first things that this urban planner
Speaker 1: would come up with was a way to get water
Speaker 1: equitably throughout the town. Right. And then there's also the
Speaker 1: economic environment and really important. Yeah. Basically you want to
Speaker 1: take into account existing businesses, but also figure out a
Speaker 1: way to attract new businesses and let the economic engine thrive. Right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The future part of it is UH one of the
Speaker 1: key components of urban planning and one of the reasons
Speaker 1: it's criticized is some some critics will say that they
Speaker 1: take too much the future into account, too much, and
Speaker 1: they don't concentrate enough on what we need right now.
Speaker 1: But we'll get to a little more of that later.
Speaker 1: We will. Let's keep on with the master plan show. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: what's a mess your plan? Josh? Uh, Well, it's not
Speaker 1: as ominous or sinister as it sounds. Basically, it is
Speaker 1: exactly what it sounds like. Take away the ominous sinister part.
Speaker 1: It's the master plan for this community. How the how
Speaker 1: the transportation sector figures in or will figure it sure,
Speaker 1: how land use will be um factored in the future,
Speaker 1: um airports, water, sewage, right, parks, neighborhoods, housing again, economic development. Basically,
Speaker 1: you have to take all these components. People living in
Speaker 1: the city, people working in the city, how they're getting
Speaker 1: from home to work, what they're seeing along their route,
Speaker 1: and then how they're sustaining themselves food, water, that kind
Speaker 1: of thing, and creating a plan for the future, right
Speaker 1: and that the urban planning doesn't stop though at this
Speaker 1: like uh, pie in the sky, goog, we should just
Speaker 1: do this. This would be great. It has to be feasible,
Speaker 1: it has to be workable. They got to show how
Speaker 1: much it costs and how it's going to be carried
Speaker 1: out to They can't just present some some nebulous, awesome
Speaker 1: goal that can never be reached. Have you seen a
Speaker 1: master plan? Uh? No, have you? They are ridiculously detailed.
Speaker 1: Really Yea. Often they'll have UM, it'll it'll look kind
Speaker 1: of like a big blueprint's commanded like hundreds of pages
Speaker 1: right right, But the way that I've seen it done
Speaker 1: is um. Each page is like a transparency but they're huge. Um.
Speaker 1: And then so you'll have like the physical the geography
Speaker 1: of the of the area city right. Then the next
Speaker 1: is um the infrastructure, and the next page that overlays
Speaker 1: it until you have like this thick Oh it literally builds.
Speaker 1: You look over it and you can see the whole
Speaker 1: master plan, but it's it's sector by sectors, bit by bit.
Speaker 1: That's really interesting. It's like a flipbook. Right. You also
Speaker 1: need public support for this, Yeah, that's one of the keys.
Speaker 1: You have to get your your the public on your side,
Speaker 1: or you're dead in the water. Because, as everyone knows,
Speaker 1: if the public is against you, the politicians are gonna
Speaker 1: start listening and they're not gonna go against the public
Speaker 1: too much either. They will some, but if the public
Speaker 1: is really really against something, then the politicians have to
Speaker 1: put the brakes on you. Back when I was a
Speaker 1: cub reporter for a weekly down in Henry County, there's
Speaker 1: this group called Neighbors Opposed to Parker Road development and
Speaker 1: not that they called the acronym NOPE. And they were
Speaker 1: just like this grassroots group of neighbors that became like
Speaker 1: this political powerhouse that we're fighting this development that was
Speaker 1: going to take over a really beautiful field in their area.
Speaker 1: And for years and years and years they fought. They
Speaker 1: showed up a city council meetings, county zoning meetings, everything
Speaker 1: they could show up to. They show up in these
Speaker 1: yellow shirts and they created this really loud voice and
Speaker 1: it was really admirable. Uh. And ultimately they there was
Speaker 1: a compromise of struct so it wasn't like this this
Speaker 1: terrible tract housing that the county had plenty of already.
Speaker 1: It was nicer housing with fewer lots per acre. And
Speaker 1: then I think like sixty of this land was dedicated
Speaker 1: uh imperpetuity green space like a park. Yeah, so they
Speaker 1: really they really did a lot. Yeah, we got the
Speaker 1: belt Line here in Atlanta, which is u a project
Speaker 1: which has a lot of green space that's tied to
Speaker 1: a light rail line all over the city, which is awesome,
Speaker 1: And I love this idea until I heard that I
Speaker 1: was gonna be like eighty five years old by the
Speaker 1: time it was finished. It's gonna take a while. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's actually since I brought it there. That's another
Speaker 1: one of the criticisms is that it's very time intensive
Speaker 1: to to do many of these plans, and the fact
Speaker 1: that that these processes take too long. Current residents are like, well,
Speaker 1: what I don't want to like give up my tax
Speaker 1: money for something that's going to be around in forty years, right,
Speaker 1: that's part of it. And also if you're in a
Speaker 1: kind of a new urban area, um, this thing is
Speaker 1: gonna evolve and change and go well beyond the plan
Speaker 1: before it be implemented. So time is definitely of the essence. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: And you said that, you know, the politicians often will
Speaker 1: not go along. That's not necessarily true in my experience. Well,
Speaker 1: spend go along with the developers dollars, and they actually
Speaker 1: do have legal authority to flex their muscles here there.
Speaker 1: There's this thing called eminent domain. Yeah. I think we
Speaker 1: talked about that in the squatting episode. Okay, I thought
Speaker 1: you meant we already talked about it in this podcast. No, no,
Speaker 1: of course I was zoning out or something like that.
Speaker 1: But speaking of zoning, oh yeah, nic zoning laws have
Speaker 1: a lot to do with it too, And that's where
Speaker 1: the well, the planners have to be aware of all
Speaker 1: these zonning laws, which is, you know whether or not
Speaker 1: an area is zoned for like business or for mixed
Speaker 1: use or for family only um housing. But that's where
Speaker 1: the politician can can flex their muscles as well, get
Speaker 1: zoning laws changed, and they can get the cops out
Speaker 1: there and be like, tear it down or we'll club you.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's true. Yeah, so Chuck. Not everybody's all hip
Speaker 1: on the urban planning thing, right, especially the early twentieth
Speaker 1: century version Burnham's original vision. There was a lady by
Speaker 1: the name of Jane Jacobs who wrote a book in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty one death in Life of Great American Cities.
Speaker 1: She is awesome. Yeah, I researched her a little bit. Um.
Speaker 1: She passed away not too long ago, and the Rockefeller
Speaker 1: Foundation actually created something called the Jane Jacob's Metal and
Speaker 1: that recognizes individuals who have made a significant contribution to
Speaker 1: thinking about urban design. She was radical at the time. Dude,
Speaker 1: early sixties. Yeah, And what she came up with, Chuck was, um,
Speaker 1: that basically five main points, right. And the first is
Speaker 1: that the city is an ecosystem. And like you said,
Speaker 1: this was radical. This is that nobody looked at a
Speaker 1: city like this before. They're all drunk and you're smoking
Speaker 1: and drinking at work all day. I didn't think about
Speaker 1: that game, right, So, so Jane Jacobs just was the
Speaker 1: one who was sober and stopped and paid attention. Right, Okay,
Speaker 1: So if a city is an ecosystem, that means it's
Speaker 1: constantly evolving and moving and thriving. And if you look
Speaker 1: at it and each aspect of it as a system
Speaker 1: that's interconnected with the rest of the system to make
Speaker 1: up this organism or ecosystem, idealy you have a concept
Speaker 1: of what the city actually looks like, not what you
Speaker 1: want it to look like. Right. Um, you also have
Speaker 1: to take into account, um, the community. Right. Well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and she she was a big critic of a lot
Speaker 1: of urban planners that many times weren't even from that city,
Speaker 1: would be hired and brought in and uh not put
Speaker 1: their feet to the pavement and talk to the local residents.
Speaker 1: And she thought that was obviously a big key was
Speaker 1: called bottom up planning, and that was radical at the
Speaker 1: time too, as was mixed use development. That was she
Speaker 1: was kind of the first champion of mixed use development, right,
Speaker 1: which we're really starting to see today. Even now it's
Speaker 1: not really taken off at least. I can't say, um
Speaker 1: for other towns necessarily, but in Atlanta, oh yeah, man everywhere, Yeah, um, live, work, play, right,
Speaker 1: but it's but nobody's necessarily subscribing to it. You know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of them are sitting empty at this point.
Speaker 1: They definitely are, um, but I do think that in
Speaker 1: the future that's pretty much what we're gonna have to have. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And her mixed use wasn't only the modern thing that
Speaker 1: we see where there's like an apartment upstairs from a
Speaker 1: from a chapeau shop. It was she thought building should
Speaker 1: vary in age and condition as well, so like don't
Speaker 1: just go in and bulldoze everything and build everything up new. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she wanted different ages, conditions, and rental properties, own ownership properties.
Speaker 1: That's what she means. Um. She also thought all of
Speaker 1: it should be packed together, which is definitely counterintuitive, especially
Speaker 1: for the time. Everybody thought the closer you put people together,
Speaker 1: the more crime and other special ills are going to
Speaker 1: break out. Right. Her point was, no, you put people
Speaker 1: together and in this this mixed use area, and you're
Speaker 1: going to have city life seven. It's not just you know,
Speaker 1: when five o'clock comes to places deserted, there's always going
Speaker 1: to be people around. Things are always going to be open.
Speaker 1: Um and and she called for higher density. Lastly, she
Speaker 1: also said that a lot of emphasis should be placed
Speaker 1: on local economies. Yeah, this is what I'm the big
Speaker 1: fan of. UM. She was definitely not in favor of
Speaker 1: going and tearing down the old mom and pop shops
Speaker 1: to put in a large corporation because it's quote unquote
Speaker 1: more stable. She thought the stability of the small business
Speaker 1: in small entrepreneurs was was the way to go. You
Speaker 1: could do that by revitalizing downtown UM or having certain
Speaker 1: districts be very niche like the Hammock District in the
Speaker 1: Max Scorpio episode of The Simpsons, right, or the Garment District,
Speaker 1: the Garment District, Hells Kitchen, the meatpacking district, right Exactly.
Speaker 1: New York has a lot of districts, and what she
Speaker 1: was saying is, so you have a district over here
Speaker 1: in Manhattan that specializes in garments, and then you have
Speaker 1: a district over here in Brooklyn that specializes in meat.
Speaker 1: Somebody in the garment district is going to go, I
Speaker 1: need some meat and goes over to Brooklyn and vice versa, right,
Speaker 1: and it all works. Yeah, So it's cross pollination of
Speaker 1: towns or different parts of town to get people out
Speaker 1: and about rather than over to the old Navy, slash target, slash,
Speaker 1: bed bath and beyond. It's so ubiquitous here in Atlanta.
Speaker 1: Have you seen that postcard? It says, um Atlanta like
Speaker 1: no place else but then Atlanta. The font is kind
Speaker 1: of big, and then the background within each letter is
Speaker 1: like a target, an old navy, a bed bath and beyond.
Speaker 1: It is very The light just changed in here because
Speaker 1: the sun that was really weird. We're not used to windows.
Speaker 1: Oh I'm tripping. Uh. So her ideas were revolutionary, and
Speaker 1: they in the early sixties built on kind of the
Speaker 1: modern foundation of what urban planners many times due today.
Speaker 1: You know, although she was criticized for fostering gentrification. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I could see that there's a there's a real problem
Speaker 1: with it, especially in areas that have extensive suburbs. People.
Speaker 1: White people come out of the suburbs into the old
Speaker 1: town by cheap property and do it enough in droves
Speaker 1: that they drive out the lower classes who have to
Speaker 1: go out to the slightly outer suburbs or the inner suburbs,
Speaker 1: and then they push white people already there further out,
Speaker 1: and it becomes a sufficious cycle where white flight takes
Speaker 1: place exactly through gentrific cases. Not good, that's not that's good.
Speaker 1: She She counted that though, gosh, I wish I had
Speaker 1: a quote with me. I can't remember what it was,
Speaker 1: something that was shut up, shut it. Yeah, that was it,
Speaker 1: I think now. It was something about um, mixed communities
Speaker 1: and mixed races and everyone kind of living together. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So she wasn't for driving out, you know, the poor
Speaker 1: people or anything like that. Well no, I mean who
Speaker 1: is jerks rich people? I guess so, um, chuck, we
Speaker 1: finally arrived at my favorite part the future, right right? Yeah?
Speaker 1: About what fourteen years after Jane Jacobs wrote her book,
Speaker 1: NASA got a few people together. They did in to
Speaker 1: plan the city in the sky. They've been we've been
Speaker 1: planning space development, urban planning. I guess that would be
Speaker 1: would that be urban lunar urban lunar planning for a
Speaker 1: long long time. What they came up with was a
Speaker 1: city that's a wheel, right, as Journey says, the wheel
Speaker 1: and the sky keeps on turning, and this wheel would
Speaker 1: actually spin, it would rotate on an access yes, alright,
Speaker 1: the wheel and this guy would keep on turning on
Speaker 1: Um and through this it would actually create gravity and
Speaker 1: allow for movement of air. Right, so people could do
Speaker 1: anything that they wanted to on Earth as long as
Speaker 1: you know, there was an old navy in this wheel
Speaker 1: city UM, and they could also breathe and not float.
Speaker 1: And I think also everybody was issued an orange bell
Speaker 1: bottom jumpsuit too. As far as the nineteen said, five
Speaker 1: guys came up with you've been working on that one
Speaker 1: just now. Okay, Yeah, that's good. And Mars too. They're
Speaker 1: talking about colonizing Mars obviously. Yeah, we're talking about terrist
Speaker 1: eating you remember, So maybe one day we will live
Speaker 1: on the Moon and on Mars. And that's where some
Speaker 1: serious urban planning has gotta go on. Check. I wanted
Speaker 1: to talk to you about something real quick. One of
Speaker 1: the things that one of the trends that we're seeing,
Speaker 1: especially with mixed use development UM is a focus on
Speaker 1: the city center going upward rather than outward. You and
Speaker 1: I live in one of the most sprawling cities in
Speaker 1: the country, and I would say one of the least
Speaker 1: well planned cities. Yeah, our transportation is awful. You know
Speaker 1: what they're proposing right now. We have traffic problems. So
Speaker 1: they're proposing on making each UH side northbound in southbound
Speaker 1: eleven lanes apiece. Well, I thought they did studies that
Speaker 1: said that if you just build more lanes, will just
Speaker 1: be more cars. They're doing it anyway, that's just stupid.
Speaker 1: All right. We have a plus sign rapid trans that
Speaker 1: system that has like eleven stops on it. Right, it's terrible,
Speaker 1: and we have terrible, terrible sprawls. So commutes are awful.
Speaker 1: People throttle one another during traffic. Well, Atlanta grew really
Speaker 1: fast and we weren't prepared. I mean I grew up here.
Speaker 1: I remember in the nineteen seventies Atlanta was, I don't know,
Speaker 1: a quaint southern city, and then you know, the population
Speaker 1: booms so fast and there was zero foresight in Atlanta.
Speaker 1: City government is notoriously rotten and corrupt. So this is
Speaker 1: what we've gotten now is a big mess. Do you
Speaker 1: know how big Metro Atlanta is. It didn't like close
Speaker 1: to five million people or something. No, no, not population
Speaker 1: like size six thousand square miles. I don't even know
Speaker 1: what that means. Technically speaking, Metro Atlanta encompasses six thousand
Speaker 1: square miles and a hundred and ten smaller municipalities. Cheeze
Speaker 1: in that nuts is a sprawl six thousand square miles. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't understand that. That's nothing compared to l A though. No,
Speaker 1: that's pretty sprawling as well. Out from Phoenix, I think
Speaker 1: is the most sprawling city in the country. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: those desert you know, they can just go as far
Speaker 1: as they want. I remember leaving town in l A
Speaker 1: was so frustrating because you would get in your car
Speaker 1: to like go out of town for the weekend, and
Speaker 1: you would drive dude for like an hour and a
Speaker 1: half without a break in everything. It was still just
Speaker 1: stuff and people everywhere. And then eventually you would get
Speaker 1: to a point where you know, they would be like
Speaker 1: land space and exits that didn't have much going on,
Speaker 1: but it just seems like it was all connected as
Speaker 1: a big, huge mess. They called the south Land. Well again,
Speaker 1: I predict larger population densities or higher population densities in
Speaker 1: cities that have access to clean water. New York had
Speaker 1: had it right. They were forced to grow up instead
Speaker 1: of out, obviously, but well they did both last to Connecticut,
Speaker 1: New Jersey. You're just part of New York. Although people
Speaker 1: are going to write in and say, no, we're not.
Speaker 1: My friend Robert actually he's a fan of the show.
Speaker 1: He's uh urban planner, or was in l A. And
Speaker 1: when I saw him in l A and said, hey man,
Speaker 1: what are you doing out here? He said, Oh, I'm
Speaker 1: an urban planner. Nice work. Screw up. Yeah, he's in Boston.
Speaker 1: I don't think he still does that. Hello Robert, Hey Robert,
Speaker 1: And Hello oh Claire, Wisconsin. Why not? So that's it
Speaker 1: for urban planning, right? Do you have anything else, Terry?
Speaker 1: You got anything? Uh? If you want to learn more
Speaker 1: about urban planning, including all the bullet points chuck and
Speaker 1: eyes so faithfully read in this podcast, you can type
Speaker 1: that into the handy search bar at how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com, which means it's time for a listener mail. Yeah, Josh,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this uh from Andrew and Cleveland and
Speaker 1: it's about his brother and I like brother stuff. Because
Speaker 1: I have a brother. I want to thank the two
Speaker 1: of you for letting me spend a few hours with
Speaker 1: my brother recently. My older brother lives in New Orleans
Speaker 1: with his wife and a younger sister who lives with
Speaker 1: our and I have a younger sister who lives with
Speaker 1: our father in New York. I live in Cleveland, about
Speaker 1: an hour from our mother. You got that, yeah, Okay.
Speaker 1: A few months ago, my brother, serves in the army,
Speaker 1: got a call that he was being brought uh for
Speaker 1: a tour of Iraq, so he's he was leaving had
Speaker 1: been several years since we had visited him, so my
Speaker 1: sister and I could up a plan to drive across
Speaker 1: the country to pay him a surprise visit. The plan
Speaker 1: was for my sister to fly into Cleveland, he would
Speaker 1: get into my truck, and we would drive the whole
Speaker 1: way to New Orleans, with about a day to spend
Speaker 1: with my brother before he left. Disaster struck with the weather,
Speaker 1: My sister's plane was delayed because of snow in the east,
Speaker 1: and it was delayed twelve hours and really limited our options.
Speaker 1: What it came down to was I would have to
Speaker 1: pick up my sister from the airport at three and
Speaker 1: drive the entire fourteen hours by myself because my sister
Speaker 1: is too young to drive and hopefully get to my
Speaker 1: brother's house before he leaves at eight am. So driving
Speaker 1: through the night is no fun. Josh, he's concerned about
Speaker 1: getting their period. But then a miracle, my sister's iPod
Speaker 1: had I believe every episode stuff you and know on it,
Speaker 1: and I've never even heard of you guys before this.
Speaker 1: Curious I turned on the podcast and my brain was
Speaker 1: immediately filled with interest in laughter, the science, humor and
Speaker 1: discussions drove the fatigue from me, and I listened to
Speaker 1: you guys non stopped while my sister slept. I think
Speaker 1: he has this confused for radio lab. I think so too.
Speaker 1: I was actually surprised when I arrived in New Orleans
Speaker 1: because it felt like time just flew by. Upon arriving,
Speaker 1: we surprised my brother were able to spend just a
Speaker 1: couple of hours with him over breakfast with he and
Speaker 1: his wife. It was a joyous but tearful day, and
Speaker 1: my brother told me he could not have wished for
Speaker 1: a happier thing to happen. Very cool, So thank you
Speaker 1: guys very much for the podcast. It gave me two
Speaker 1: hours with my brother that I otherwise would have missed.
Speaker 1: And I am now an avid fan of your show.
Speaker 1: I listened every week and I'm reminded of breakfast with
Speaker 1: my brother and it makes me smile. Sweet from Andrew
Speaker 1: and Cleveland. That's really awesome. Yeah, we've already gotten road
Speaker 1: trip stories from the Cannonball Run episode. Right yeah. Okay,
Speaker 1: So if you have a tear jerking story about your
Speaker 1: sibling or family member, and remember family is what you
Speaker 1: make it, sure um send it in an email to
Speaker 1: Stuff Podcast at how stuff works dot com. For more
Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. Want more how stuff works, check out
Speaker 1: our blogs on the house. Stuff works dot com home page.
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