Anarchy Comes to Beverly Hills

What would a city be like with planners? Behold the disturbing dystopian vision!

Via Tim Lee, who calls this "the most elaborate urban planning straw man you'll ever watch." I'm just impressed that the filmmakers are holding up Beverly Hills as their model of great planning. I've been to that dull little citadel of class segregation. I'd rather live in the dystopia.

Comments

[Warty]

joe, don't come back.

[P Brooks]

Businesses and homes on the same street = BLIGHT!!!!

[Jeremy]

What's funny is this is just paste-ins of downtown LA. A place I'm rather sure a has planning dept.

[Fiscal Meth]

+1
They could have driven a few miles away from Beverly Hills in any direction and found a perfect movie set for their dystopia. Beverly Hills is also a shithole, just in a different way.

[Gus]

Where can I learn more about Islam? I'm thinking of converting. Amish life is hard work and there's never any time for masturbating, drinking or drugging.

[Number 2]

They wasted taxpayer money on this?

[CatoTheElder]

That was the second question that occurred to me. The first was, "Who paid for this propaganda?"

[Cyto]

"I'm just impressed that the filmmakers are holding up Beverly Hills as their model of great planning. I've been to that dull little citadel of class segregation. I'd rather live in the dystopia."

I have to agree with this. On my first visit to the west coast some 15 years ago I was interested to take a drive through Beverly Hills to see how the other half lives. We kept waiting to see the upscale area - until we realized we were driving down the Rodeo drive that we kept hearing about. It wasn't as nice as the local shopping district back home. Really not close - kinda dirty in fact. Sure, the shops were expensive, but come on... So we headed to the neighborhoods behind the "Beverly Hills" sign. Nice. Not crazy nice, but nice. Fairly average city suburb. Not what I expected from all the hype. I was told that the fancy folk had moved out to Bel Air.

[hmm]

Look the first rung of regulator capture, planning and development.

[dennis]

Urban planning statist douche is probably the most annoying statist douche of all.

[Restoras]

You know who also had a city planner...

[Almanian]

Mayor Bloomberg?

[Restoras]

Close!

[Corporate Drone]

This video is exactly 9 minutes longer than my attention span. Sorry.

[R C Dean]

What would a city be like with planners?

Umm, Houston?

[Spoonman.]

But if there were high-rises spread evenly throughout a city, people might not have uninterrupted views of the sky, and this would be awful.

Even in Houston, though, dipshits manage to stop some high-rises. Near Rice there are people who have had "STOP ASHBY HIGH RISE" signs on their lawns for so long they've arranged their landscaping around it.

No joke. And it was just going to be a ten-story building two miles from downtown.

[davek]

What a sickening piece of nonsense.

[MWG]

TLDNW

[Dave T]

IAWTC

[omg]

Today's lesson, kids: Why are skyscrapers built?

The reason skyscrapers are built is because land prices are very high. Since the land is in such demand, you can "increase" the amount of property by creating a building with many floors. You do not see skyscrapers in the middle of the country, because land is not in demand and is not valuable. They would simply expand the building horizontally, to save money.

In the next lesson, we learn why refineries wouldn't be built in the middle of the city even without the deadbeats in the planning commission.

[KPres]

I stopped watching after I saw the refinery was built on what would have been the most expensive land in town.

[John Farrier]

I've watched the whole film, and I still don't see a downside to getting rid of urban planning departments.

ZOMG! People doing what they want with their own property! How horrible!

[Rock Action]

Worst Jimmy Stewart ever? Maybe if they'd played off Vertigo and had Kim Novak in it, I'd be game. But this is cloying about two minutes in.

[Kevin Finning]

Say what you want about the video, that Jimmy Stewart in dead-on, especially when he shrieks Happy New Year.