Stadia, neighborhoods and land-use: London and Oakland

Inspired by this post on declining car use in the US population and this edition of the Guardian Football's "The Knowledge", I decided to get a clearer visual image of something I already knew from first-hand experience: how isolated and generally awful sports stadia are in the US, especially those devoted primarily to American football.

I selected two contrasting stadia with a similar seating capacity: Arsenal's grounds, The Emirates, located in north London (capacity 60,361) and the Coliseum in my beloved Oakland (capacity 63,026). This is what the former looks like via Google maps:

Note its setting: despite being located next to a major motorway, immediately to the west, the Emirates is set into an actual neighborhood - it is a part of the area. You can walk from your house to the stadium, and after the match, you can easily walk to a pub and get a drink or something to eat. And no giant parking lots ("car parks") setting it off from everything else.

Now take a look at the Coliseum:

The first thing you notice is the sea of asphalt virtually surrounding the stadium. You have to walk ages just to get anywhere - and in the case of the Coliseum, that anywhere happens to be industrial areas with no amenities (unless you count broken glass as an amenity). Entirely built with the automobile in mind, the Coliseum virtually demands that fans going to see the Raiders or A's get as far away as possible as soon as the game ends.

It's true that the Emirates benefits from better public transit service, with a rail station and several Tube stops in walking distance. But there is a BART station right at the Coliseum, so the Coliseum is served to some extent by public transit as well. The major difference between the two stadia, then, is how they fit into their respective neighborhoods - the Emirates is a part of it, and invites locals to come to matches and other supporters coming from elsewhere to stay, mingle and spend money before and after matches. In strong contrast, the Coliseum is difficult to access, especially for pedestrians or cyclists, and seems designed to send people elsewhere to spend their time and money.

Other examples can be easily pointed to that support this general situation (e.g., take a look at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, NJ or RFK Stadium in Washington DC). Capacity and size are not necessarily deterrents to siting stadia in dense areas of cities, so long as the automobile is not made king in the equation. But from an economic viewpoint - and especially, as is often the case in the US, public money is used to finance these facilities - stadia should be located in areas where their potential can be fulfilled to the greatest extent - in dense neighborhoods.

Capitalist Jesus, Catholic edition

Ayn Rand, Jesus, and a Catholic priest walk into a bar...

A series of recent developments are renewing questions about the Catholic bishops' alignment with the Republican Party, with much of the attention focusing on comments by Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput, who said he "certainly can't vote for somebody who's either pro-choice or pro-abortion."

So it's a priest is anti-choice - ok. And he's using his position as a Catholic priest to argue against voting for any candidate who is pro-choice - ok, we've seen that before. 

But then comes this:

In a wide-ranging interview published last week (Sept. 14), Chaput also echoed the views of a number of prominent bishops when he praised Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan for trying to address the "immoral" practice of deficit spending through his libertarian-inflected budget proposals. 

"Jesus tells us very clearly that if we don't help the poor, we're going to go to hell. Period. There's just no doubt about it," Chaput told National Catholic Reporter. 

"But Jesus didn't say the government has to take care of them, or that we have to pay taxes to take care of them. Those are prudential judgments. Anybody who would condemn someone because of their position on taxes is making a leap that I can't make as a Catholic."

Right - so it's ok to use the government, as a Christian, to impose your "morality" on women on something the bible says nothing about (reproductive freedom) - but it's not ok to use the government to help the poor, which Jesus "very clearly" said to do.

Please, Archbishop Chaput, tell me about "rendering unto Caesar" and camels, rich people, and needles - if you can take time from your libertarian quest, that is.

(h/t digby)

Cyclist dangers

Even as cyclists, our first reaction to stuff like this is to ask "was s/he wearing a helmet", rather than "who was at fault?", "what was the driver doing?", or - much more basically and pertinently, "how safe is that intersection/area?"

Olympic cycling gold medalist Bradley Wiggins has prompted debate over whether cyclists should be forced to wear helmets following the death of a 28-year-old man in collision with a bus outside the Olympic Park.

Very few people wear helmets in the Netherlands. Everyone rides. No one is scared. It's very safe.

Got a bridge to sell you...

You'd have to be an idiot to invest in this:

The float stands to net the Glazers around $150m (£96m), despite previous assurances that proceeds would go towards paying down the club's debt. 

The US filing warns potential investors: "Anti-takeover provisions in our organizational documents and Cayman Islands law [where Manchester United are incorporated] may discourage or prevent a change of control, even if an acquisition would be beneficial to our shareholders, which could depress the price of our shares and prevent attempts by our shareholders to replace or remove our current management."...
Andy Green, a football finance writer behind the andersred blog, calculates that £520m has been taken out of United since the Glazers took the club over in 2005, with most of that figure being accounted for via interest and fees related to the club's borrowings. Meanwhile, of the £520m, £38m has been paid directly to the Glazers via £28m in consultancy fees to their companies and a £10m dividend. (emphasis added)

Got that? Even if a takeover benefits the corporation, the corporation's by-laws prevent that from occurring. Late capitalism - why didn't we think of this sooner?


If you think just handing over your money to rich assholes is the thing to do, and especially if you like Manchester United - well, here you go!

Privacy for some, drones for everyone else

So - people who are concerned about spying technology should be spied upon:

"If you're concerned about it, maybe there's a reason we should be flying over you, right?" said Douglas McDonald, the company's director of special operations and president of a local chapter of the unmanned vehicle trade group.

Who is this "we", I wonder? Big business in a league with unsupervised law enforcement agencies?


Speaking of which:

"We are not out there to abuse people's rights, but at the same time we're out there to protect public safety," said Grand Forks Sheriff Robert Rost. "The public perception is that Big Brother is going to be snooping on them and that is not the case at all. It will not be misused."

There you go - a cop says people's rights will not be abused, and you should believe him, and if not, then a drone might make its way to your house.


But some people will always have privacy:

And for all the assurances, there is much that isn't said or revealed. Some of the equipment used by the university can't be seen by the public because of federal privacy rules. Although legal, anyone photographing outside the base can find themselves being questioned by county, state and Air Force law enforcement. When asked how many times U.S. Border Protection has dispatched drones at the request of local police, a spokeswoman for the agency said it does not keep those figures.

No privacy for individual citizens, but complete "privacy" for the government, law enforcement, and corporations. Winning the future!

Pity the rich

Pity the rich art collectors:

Alan M. Dershowitz, the Harvard law professor, is in a similar bind. An antiquities collector, he is eager to sell an Egyptian sarcophagus he bought from Sotheby’s in the early 1990s. But he is stymied, he said, because auction houses are applying tighter policies to the items they accept for consignment.

“I can’t get proof of when it came out of Egypt,” Mr. Dershowitz said.

He didn't seem too worried back in the day about whether or not there was proof of whether it was looted or not. Only when his money is at stake do such things matter.

Pity the rich:

“Even objects that entirely lack history are also not necessarily smuggled or looted,” said William G. Pearlstein, a New York lawyer who advises collectors and dealers in the antiquities trade. “Many owners simply failed to keep records of their objects, which they treated like other household possessions.”

Of course! Because it is entirely sensible to treat antiquities that cost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars just like other household items, like a coat rack, or a potato masher.

Pity the rich:

What is clear is that collectors are uneasy. They worry that placing undocumented items for auction exposes them to litigation from foreign nations or perhaps a seizure effort from United States authorities acting as their agent. Many expressed their concerns at a forum in March, hosted by the Asia Society in New York and titled “The Future of the Past: Collecting Ancient Art in the 21st Century,” where collectors spoke of a “climate of fear.”

A real "climate of fear" it is, when one can't sell cultural property that may very well have been looted or illegally and unethically exported any old time one wants. Who knows what's next in this "climate of fear"? Gulags and re-education camps, perhaps?

Pity the rich:

One former museum director suggested that when a museum declines a gift, it can strain relations with a longstanding benefactor. Marc F. Wilson, who oversaw the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Mo., from 1982 to 2010, said museums must be more careful but ought not leave benefactors feeling, in effect: “You can’t take my items? So you can’t take my $30 million either?”

Because we all know that altruism and philanthropy aren't cheap - especially for the rich! Pity them!

Paging the "job creators"

Economic genius Steve King (R-Iowa) on the unemployed:

"One of the things is, people are told they don't need to create opportunities," he said. "It's up to somebody else to offer them a job."

Yeah, because you and your rightwing associates can't shut up about the "job creators" and how they have to be coddled or else they will have their feelings hurt and "Go Galt" and renounce their citizenship and move to Singapore, or whatever. 

Isn't it the job of the "job creators" to offer all these people a job? Duh.