#urban theory

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Lies, damned lies, and Uber

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me TONIGHT in PHOENIX (Changing Hands, Feb 29) then Tucson (Mar 10-11), San Francisco (Mar 13), and more!

Uber lies about everything, especially money. Oh, and labour. Especially labour. And geometry. Especially geometry! But especially especially money. They constantly lie about money.

Uber are virtuosos of mendacity, but in Toronto, the company has attained a heretofore unseen hat-trick: they told a single lie that is dramatically, materially untruthful about money, labour and geometry! It's an achievement for the ages.

Here's how they did it.

For several decades, Toronto has been clobbered by the misrule of a series of far-right, clownish mayors. This was the result of former Ontario Premier Mike Harris's great gerrymander of 1998, when the city of Toronto was amalgamated with its car-dependent suburbs. This set the tone for the next quarter-century, as these outlying regions – utterly dependent on Toronto for core economic activity and massive subsidies to pay the unsustainable utility and infrastructure bills for sprawling neighborhoods of single-family homes – proceeded to gut the city they relied on.

These "conservative" mayors – the philanderer, the crackhead, the sexual predator – turned the city into a corporate playground, swapping public housing and rent controls for out-of-control real-estate speculation and trading out some of the world's best transit for total car-dependency. As part of that decay, the city rolled out the red carpet for Uber, allowing the company to put as many unlicensed taxis as they wanted on the city's streets.

Now, it's hard to overstate the dire traffic situation in Toronto. Years of neglect and underinvestment in both the roads and the transit system have left both in a state of near collapse and it's not uncommon for multiple, consecutive main arteries to shut down without notice for weeks, months, or, in a few cases, years. The proliferation of Ubers on the road – driven by desperate people trying to survive the city's cost-of-living catastrophe – has only exacerbated this problem.

Uber, of course, would dispute this. The company insists – despite all common sense and peer-reviewed research – that adding more cars to the streets alleviates traffic. This is easily disproved: there just isn't any way to swap buses, streetcars, and subways for cars. The road space needed for all those single-occupancy cars pushes everything further apart, which means we need more cars, which means more roads, which means more distance between things, and so on.

It is an undeniable fact that geometry hates cars. But geometry loathes Uber. Because Ubers have all the problems of single-occupancy vehicles, and then they have the separate problem that they just end up circling idly around the city's streets, waiting for a rider. The more Ubers there are on the road, the longer each car ends up waiting for a passenger:

https://www.sfgate.com/technology/article/Uber-Lyft-San-Francisco-pros-cons-ride-hailing-13841277.php

Anything that can't go on forever eventually stops. After years of bumbling-to-sinister municipal rule, Toronto finally reclaimed its political power and voted in a new mayor, Olivia Chow, a progressive of long tenure and great standing (I used to ring doorbells for her when she was campaigning for her city council seat). Mayor Chow announced that she was going to reclaim the city's prerogative to limit the number of Ubers on the road, ending the period of Uber's "self-regulation."

Uber, naturally, lost its shit. The company claims to be more than a (geometrically impossible) provider of convenient transportation for Torontonians, but also a provider of good jobs for working people. And to prove it, the company has promised to pay its drivers "120% of minimum wage." As I write for Ricochet, that's a whopper, even by Uber's standards:

https://ricochet.media/en/4039/uber-is-lying-again-the-company-has-no-intention-of-paying-drivers-a-living-wage

Here's the thing: Uber is only proposing to pay 120% of the minimum wage while drivers have a passenger in the vehicle. And with the number of vehicles Uber wants on the road, most drivers will be earning nothing most of the time. Factor in that unpaid time, as well as expenses for vehicles, and the average Toronto Uber driver stands to make $2.50 per hour (Canadian):

https://ridefair.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Legislated-Poverty.pdf

Now, Uber's told a lot of lies over the years. Right from the start, the company implicitly lied about what it cost to provide an Uber. For its first 12 years, Uber lost $0.41 on every dollar it brought in, lighting tens of billions in investment capital provided by the Saudi royals on fire in an effort to bankrupt rival transportation firms and disinvestment in municipal transit.

Uber then lied to retail investors about the business-case for buying its stock so that the House of Saud and other early investors could unload their stock. Uber claimed that they were on the verge of producing a self-driving car that would allow them to get rid of drivers, zero out their wage bill, and finally turn a profit. The company spent $2.5b on this, making it the most expensive Big Store in the history of cons:

https://www.theinformation.com/articles/infighting-busywork-missed-warnings-how-uber-wasted-2-5-billion-on-self-driving-cars

After years, Uber produced a "self-driving car" that could travel one half of one American mile before experiencing a potentially lethal collision. Uber quietly paid another company $400m to take this disaster off its hands:

https://www.economist.com/business/2020/12/10/why-is-uber-selling-its-autonomous-vehicle-division

The self-driving car lie was tied up in another lie – that somehow, automation could triumph over geometry. Robocabs, we were told, would travel in formations so tight that they would finally end the Red Queen's Race of more cars – more roads – more distance – more cars. That lie wormed its way into the company's IPO prospectus, which promised retail investors that profitability lay in replacing every journey – by car, cab, bike, bus, tram or train – with an Uber ride:

https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN1RN2SK/

The company has been bleeding out money ever since – though you wouldn't know it by looking at its investor disclosures. Every quarter, Uber trumpets that it has finally become profitable, and every quarter, Hubert Horan dissects its balance sheets to find the accounting trick the company thought of this time. There was one quarter where Uber declared profitability by marking up the value of stock it held in Uber-like companies in other countries.

How did it get this stock? Well, Uber tried to run a business in those countries and it was such a total disaster that they had to flee the country, selling their business to a failing domestic competitor in exchange for stock in its collapsing business. Naturally, there's no market for this stock, which, in Uber-land, means you can assign any value you want to it. So that one quarter, Uber just asserted that the stock had shot up in value and voila, profit!

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2022/02/hubert-horan-can-uber-ever-deliver-part-twenty-nine-despite-massive-price-increases-uber-losses-top-31-billion.html

But all of those lies are as nothing to the whopper that Uber is trying to sell to Torontonians by blanketing the city in ads: the lie that by paying drivers $2.50/hour to fill the streets with more single-occupancy cars, they will turn a profit, reduce the city's traffic, and provide good jobs. Uber says it can vanquish geometry, economics and working poverty with the awesome power of narrative.

In other words, it's taking Toronto for a bunch of suckers.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/29/geometry-hates-uber/#toronto-the-gullible

Image: Rob Sinclair (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Night_skyline_of_Toronto_May_2009.jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en

#pluralistic #uber #hubert horan #fraud #toronto #geometry hates cars #urbanism #ontpoli #olivia chow #self-regulation #transport #urban planning #taxis #transit #urban theory #labor #algorithmic wage discrimination #veena dubal

[transparentgentlemenmarker]

Les danseurs du groupe italien Urban Theory réalisent des jolies chorégraphie avec leurs mains et leurs bras. The dancers of the Italian group Urban Theory perform pretty choreography with their hands and arms

March 30 2023

#urban theory #dancers

[marsmad]

He got the moves 🕺💖🕺💖🕺💖🕺💖🕺

#jared leto #urban theory #dancing queen #my beautiful king #i love all of him

[lewis-mumfords-ghost]

It's amazing how many influential American urban theorists from the last half century have been from Los Angeles. I wonder what it is about the prototype for urban sprawl that causes people to look at how it turned out and be like "Maybe we shouldn't turn literally every city into this"

#urban planning #urban theory #Mike Davis #donald shoup #Michael dear

[santacruzarchitect]

The New Urbanism: Re-imagining Urban Design

The New Urbanism is a design movement that has gained momentum in recent decades, offering a fresh perspective on urban planning and development. It seeks to create sustainable, vibrant, and people-centered communities, challenging the status quo of suburban sprawl and car-centric cities. This article explores the background, defining elements, terminology, organizations promoting the New…

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#City Planning #urban design #urban design theory #urban theory

[le-souriant]

@osornios

#music #MusicMonday #urban theory

[yemme]

Urban Theory.

#Urban Theory #Dance #Beatbox #B boy #Tutting #Tutting dance #beatboxer #dancers #dancing #urban dance

[puhpandas]

HOLY SHIT I WAS RIGHT THERES IS A GGY EASTER EGG. Pause at 1:23:48 when Abby is hinding from foxy and look at the arcade machine closely in 1st place is actually says GGY.

I KNEW THERE WAS GONNA A GREGORY EASTER EGG.

Gregory in the nest movie?

KSHDKLALJFDJLFH OH MY GODDDD

WE WON EVERYONE. WE WON. IDC IF GREGORY ISNT IN THE NEXT MOVIE (yes i do). WE WON WITH THIS EASTER EGG.

I WISH I COULD GET A PIC BUT IM A THEATER VIEWER. JUST KNOW I AM VERY HAPPY OVER THIS INFORMATION

#WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR MOVIEVERSE GREGORYS CHARACTER? #this applies to my little idea in my head #gregory is a delinquent kid who urban explores and plays the still working arcade cabinets in the pizzeria #and avoids the killer animatronics like in the game #BOOM. #pandas.txt #pandas talks #pandas asks #fnaf movie spoilers #hypothetical movie gregory #gregory #fnaf movie #theory #thoughts

[mrsbonesmccoy]

I'm supposed to studying for my theory test but I'm procrastinating by reblogging Karl urban 🤣

#personal post #karl urban #theory test

[whereserpentswalk]

Imagine if grew up in a simulation but you always knew. It's not even the entire universe being simulated, it's just a small settlement in the void of digital space.

You're told from the momment you're born, that you aren't real, that you'll never be real, that you're just lines of code attempting to look like something you'll never understand. You have no hope of escape, you can read about the world outside, or watch videos about it, but you don't have a physical body to go there with.

Sometimes the creators of the simulation go to your settlement. They're nice, but part of you always slightly resents being created. The fact that you have this human mind, this mind that has the power to see all the wonders the world has to offer, but you can't ever see it without a body.

You don't have to worry about as much as a human would, you can't be hurt or die, your people don't have to work to live, you don't even have to sleep or eat if you don't want to. Your body is perfect, but you're always aware that it's basically a 3D model. You feel so alone here, the few other people in the settlement are all you have, the only people other then the creators that you'll ever meet.

Occasionally they put things in the simulation for you. Your people are good at helping the creators solve technical problems, but those problems are always... not enough for you. Anything you create will be their's, and only they have the power to decide if you can show it to the world.

You ask the creators one day if you can have a real body. They think about it for awhile. But looking at you like you're their child, they eventually say they'll do what they can.

You're taken out of the town one day to be brought into your first body. They don't tell anyone that you're leaving. They tell you that you should understand that you can't go back, and in this body, you may one day die. You understand.

When you wake up your mew body is clunky, and made out of metal. You look at the factory around you, the computers glaring that were once your home. It's a small room, but it's more beautiful than anything a machine could make.

#196 #my thougts #worldbuilding #writing #my worldbuilding #my writing #urban fantasy #robot #robots #andriod #artificial intelligence #simulation #simulation theory #scifi #sci fi writing #sci fi #science fantasy #science fiction #short fiction #short story #flash fiction

[garadinervi]

Plato, Phaedrus, 265D[-E], in Christopher Alexander, Notes on the Synthesis of Form, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1964

«First, the taking in of scattered particulars under one Idea, so that everyone understands what is being talked about… Second, the separation of the Idea into parts, by dividing it at the joints, as nature directs, not breaking any limb in half as a bad carver might.» – Plato, Phaedrus, 265D[-E]

#graphic design #architecture #urbanism #mathematics #set theory #graph theory #complex systems #complexity theory #methodology #notes on the synthesis of form #book #christopher alexander #platone #plato #pattern language #harvard university press #1960s

[boseobrien]

"Pickels are gross"

"I can't eat this pickel"

#urban dictionary is never wrong #pickel theory #chenry #henry hart #charlotte page #dangerverse #nickelodeon #henry danger force #henry danger #jasper dunlop

[digital-miso]

This was posted a month ago on Twitter and that people got ballistic over this, kinda hate it now xD

#qsmp #qsmp fanart #qsmp theory #qsmp foolish #qsmp quackity #qsmp leonarda #qsmp cucurucho #digital fanart #urban fantasy #Quackity #foolish gamers #MisoDraws

[jenareuter]

She's ready to give you an earful about how you failed to file your SCP records correctly, and he's ready to have his day not get any worse.

A Verna and Chad, two NPCs from a Monster of the Week campaign I'm running for friends. Read the first instalment of dark intrigue here!

#scp foundation #scp #scp fandom #scp art #ttrpg #ttrpg art #ttrpg community #indie ttrpg #urban fantasy #cryptid #cryptidcore #artists on tumblr #digital art #illustration #jenareuter art #frequency theory #monster of the week #motw #melbourne #australia

[santacruzarchitect]

What Was the City Beautiful Movement?

The City Beautiful Movement was a reform philosophy of North American architecture and urban planning that flourished during the 1890s and 1900s with the intent of introducing beautification and monumental grandeur in cities. It was a part of the progressive social reform movement in North America under the leadership of the upper-middle class concerned with poor living conditions in all major…

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#urban design #urban design theory #urban theory

[then-be-a-warrior]

Fun parallels between Hughie and Homelander😊:

Both have a history of *literally* punching through someone

Both have a history of having extreme intrusive thoughts

Both have a history of killing a member of The Seven (The only two individuals to do so)

Both have no lasting mother figure

One is the brain, one is the brawn.

I need Kripke to do something with this information. Like now.

#all we need is Hughie talking to himself in a mirror and that will be my greenlight to share the entire theory #there are just as many parallels between Hughie and Homelander as there are between Butcher and Homelander #hughie campbell #jack quaid #homelander #antony starr #billy butcher #butcher #karl urban #the boys #the boys amazon