Comment by renewiltord
9 hours ago
Haha, this is both entirely true and entirely the reason why NYC is pretty much stuck where it is. If cities were parables, NYC would be The Parable of the Tragedy of the Commons. Globally, among cities I've been to it would have to be Delhi, but NYC is certainly in that category of South Asian cities where the infrastructure is far outpaced by the population and the population is like a swarming rat king constantly jockeying for a few inches more.
It's a viral race to the bottom.
This just sounds like an argument to ban cars for private use and invest more in transit.
Certainly it sounds like that. However whatever cultural transformation turns Man into Rat King has already occurred so you'll notice that it costs over a billion dollars per mile of subway in NYC. Everyone who hasn't figured out how to leech off the government is a fattened milk cow whose production is harvested industrially.
New Yorkers are already incapable of non-extractive development. Like the GP they have been transformed into zero-sum zombies by their city. A cautionary tale of culture.