Funnily enough how you can build cookie-cutter parking lots everywhere. Cookie-cutter roads everywhere. Cookie-cutter shopping malls and gas stations everywhere.
But any other bit of infrastructure? "oh no, local laws would not permit it because difficult legal landscape".
So this let me get this straight. This https://maps.app.goo.gl/Y7cvszoFfzxmAG6Q8 (Aurora, CO) and this https://maps.app.goo.gl/ByZfS93g82C1NkjdA (Derry, NH) and this https://maps.app.goo.gl/uUEdDNtcK5MfHZUW8 (Ankeny, IA) and literally hundreds if not thousands of these can be built from cookie-cutter designs so that they are really indistinguishable from each other. But when we talk about anything else, it's "impossible because US is like no other and also you have to make sure there's site-specific design because advanced environment laws actually conflict with the idea of using cookie cutter designs" or something
You keep arguing with a strawman. I’m not sure why.
No one is saying “advanced” environmental laws directly conflict with building specific projects. First, I would never call these laws advanced. They’re bad laws, in my opinion.
Second, what they do is not forbid specific designs. Instead, they allow many different entities to exercise fairly arbitrary veto power over large projects, unless their idiosyncratic demands are met.
To first order approximation, it is the idiosyncratic demands of unpredictable groups of complainants with the power to use lawsuits to delay projects, that lead to large bespoke projects.
The core of the argument is that the folks planning and designing those projects are responding to the threat of lawsuits. Most other countries have one feedback period, rather than allowing an arbitrary number of unknown groups to embroil projects in delaying lawsuits at many different points during planning and construction.
What I'm giving you is a sketch at how advanced environmental laws actually conflict with the idea of using cookie cutter designs. The ideas are at odds with each other.
--- end quote ---
> The core of the argument is that the folks planning and designing those projects are responding to the threat of lawsuits. Most other countries have one feedback period
People keep saying this is impossible to do a) cheaply and b) cookie-cutter style because "laws" whereas the US is littered with cookie-cutter designs indistinguishable from each other in scale much larger than anything we're discussing.
It's not that it's impossible. It's that for some reason the US is a) ignorant, b) assumes it's unique and special in each and every shape or form, c) extremely allergic to any kind of infrastructure except roads.
And then that same US turns around, paves an area the size of Pentagon in a village with population of 1000, and plops immense cookie-cutter designs there and no one blinks an eye.
Are you a non-native English speaker? You do seem to be picking a confusingly aggressive tone given that the topic is infrastructure, and I'm not sure if I should be attributing that to culture clash or if it is just a standard misunderstanding.
1. The context behind that quote was "nuclear reactors, bridges, stations". As far as I know parking lots are being built by private interests on private land and there is no regulatory body responsible for parking lots. So it would make sense that they use good design principles.
2. I wouldn't trust the cookie-cutter impression from looking at roads so much; the design isn't as much in the road itself as in where the road goes and flattening out / tunnelling through/bridging over the local environment (your example earlier of the Swedish Metro, according to Wikipedia, is actually interesting from this aspect because apparently they're putting more of the new parts underground for environmental reasons - if so that is quite slow and expensive relative to above ground construction). In my estimation it isn't that usual to get stories of road projects that are turned in knots due to environmental factors.
But if you want to take roads as different that is fine by me. The US does like building roads, maybe they've got the regulation for that under control.
3.
> Why do you think I put quotes in my last sentence?
I thought it was for emphasis. It isn't a direct quote because you're the person who is talking about impossible things or the US being special - I've been saying US law adds a layer of complications and drives costs up. It only makes things impossible in extreme cases (like what we see with the death of the US nuclear industry).
> Are you a non-native English speaker? You do seem to be picking a confusingly aggressive tone
Is ad hominem your go to argument or you just have no others?
As evidenced below I could ask the same question. I don't.
> The context behind that quote was "nuclear reactors, bridges, stations"
Yes, it was. And? How does this context make anything of what I wrote invalid?
How is it you can build thousands of these: https://maps.app.goo.gl/Y7cvszoFfzxmAG6Q8 across the country but when it comes to "bridges, stations" this becomes "advanced environmental laws actually conflict with the idea of using cookie cutter designs"?
> the design isn't as much in the road itself as in where the road goes and flattening out / tunnelling through/bridging over the local environment
> because you're the person who is talking about impossible things or the US being special
I'm not that person. You're literally spending all your time in this discussion saying how difficult and nigh impossible it is to build cookie-cutter designs for things like bridges and stations in the US. Even though the US is literally one big cookie cutter design from beginning to end for things that are significantly larger than that. I gave three examples of that.
> your example earlier of the Swedish Metro, according to Wikipedia, is actually interesting from this aspect because apparently they're putting more of the new parts underground for environmental reasons
There's no article on Wikipedia about Swedish Metro. This is the article on Wikipedia for Stockholm Metro: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_Metro Not a single sentence on that page mentions environment. Or ecology.
To expand on your frankly bizarre idea that building a station or a bridge is somehow extremely difficult and cannot be done with cookie cutter designs, here's a map of Stockholm's rail transport: https://sl.se/contentassets/7bf3767b47ed44ff98b06403c08eaa6b...
This includes: subway, commuter train, light rail and narrow-gauge railway.
See how it destroys less of the environment than any shopping mall in the US?
I mean, we could go on. Literally every single station in Stockholm area is cookie-cutter design. Even the 7 or so stations in the center in of the city that photographers like (see e.g. https://uncharted.io/@dominikgehl/exploring-the-stockholm-su...) are absolutely cookie-cutter with all elements absolutely standard and modular, and just have art added on top of them.
Somehow you're arguing that these are very challenging to build in the US because, quote: "It seems unlikely that a cookie cutter design could just be emplaced in different areas without running into problems in the environmental reviews" and "advanced environmental laws actually conflict with the idea of using cookie cutter designs".
I will reiterate: the US is a) ignorant, b) assumes it's unique and special in each and every shape or form, c) extremely allergic to any kind of infrastructure except roads.
And then turn around, look at huge swaths of land covered in cookie cutter shopping malls, and parking lots, and gas stations, and.... and say "yup, that is easy, and good design". If that field of concrete and asphalt could pass environmental review, so can any bridge or station.
Anyway, this is going around in circles, so I bid you a good day.
The original text did not include the word “directly”, which, ironically, is the reason your quote is not direct, and directly vs. indirectly is the substance of our disagreement.
But any other bit of infrastructure? "oh no, local laws would not permit it because difficult legal landscape".
So this let me get this straight. This https://maps.app.goo.gl/Y7cvszoFfzxmAG6Q8 (Aurora, CO) and this https://maps.app.goo.gl/ByZfS93g82C1NkjdA (Derry, NH) and this https://maps.app.goo.gl/uUEdDNtcK5MfHZUW8 (Ankeny, IA) and literally hundreds if not thousands of these can be built from cookie-cutter designs so that they are really indistinguishable from each other. But when we talk about anything else, it's "impossible because US is like no other and also you have to make sure there's site-specific design because advanced environment laws actually conflict with the idea of using cookie cutter designs" or something