From what I've seen of Texas during my visits I have to ask: WTF kind of alternatives are there? Houston is 80% ramps and intersections, and walking practically anywhere is impossible due to the roads effectively dividing up the city.
No matter where you're going in Houston, you're going to need a car. It's among the cities least suitable for moving around without a car I've ever been to.
Texas simply put is built for cars. Some new areas are more walkable and bikeable but you are right, it's not convenient or safe to bike or walk a lot. And cars are still assholes to bikers.
Texas, and America, need a culture change of we want to fix transit.
Fair point, do you know if there is any truth to the idea that the auto manufacturers and the oil Libby "conspired" to make out cities more car friendly and less walkable?
Aside from that, though, I don't think it really matters whether other conspiracies existed or not. The same outcome of car-dependency and suburban sprawl was a fait accompli back then because of:
The prevailing attitude of the public, who were (a) justifiably fed up with the squalor of early-20th-century cities, (b) thoroughly enthralled by the mid-century "American Dream" (read: single-family house with a white picket fence etc.) and car-culture ('freedom of the open road', drive-ins, cars as status symbols, etc. -- helped along by things like GM's Futurama, of course), and last but not least, (c) racist AF and engaging in White Flight.
The Suburban Experiment was inevitable because of the above factors, regardless of any collusion between GM and Standard Oil. Besides, since their interests were aligned anyway, if they did collude they probably just agreed to do the same things they already were going to do to begin with.
(By the way: I could've sworn I read or heard something somewhere about Frank Lloyd Wright himself being involved with the establishment of the FHA and maybe even having a hand in writing some of the publications I cited, but for the life of me I can't find the reference anymore. Anybody else know anything about it?)
Do you think it's an instance level thing? I want to post somewhere and ask. I never gave much thought to what instance I am on, I just kinda looked for a big one when I first learned about Lemmy
If it's the slur filter, then it's an instance level thing yes. It's not censored on my end, and it's on lemmy.world, so I assume this is maybe a bad regex.
I actually can't see your URL, because it's censored before being federated. However I can see me typing "removed" on my end. However if I visit your instance it's shown as removed