Cars are touted as enabling freedom while the prisons do the opposite. At peak times though the former can be much more like the latter
Photo is credited to oh.yes.melbourne
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Cars are touted as enabling freedom while the prisons do the opposite. At peak times though the former can be much more like the latter
Photo is credited to oh.yes.melbourne
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Cars are go-forward machines; that is our model for engaging with them. When they are not going forward we question their worth without considering the infrastructure which created the circumstances in which going forward is not possible. Futile honking results.
Cars are also sit-idle machines — made ubiquitously available by squatting disproportionately vast tracts of land.
I find my car very useful and not at all prison-like. It enables me to go places where I charge substantial sums of money for my time. It enables me to hitch up a trailer to take my fruit to market in the season and it’s mighty handing for the occasional trip to the airport. I would prefer it to be electric but all in good time…
I also find cars useful, but it feels pretty prison like when I want to not use it them.
Agreed. Cars are useful for many things, but efficient travel in congested peak-hour roads is not one of them.
Hence good public transport and cycling/walking amenity being an important part of a 21st-century city.
If you want to taste real freedom then you need to cycle. You are always going forward at the rate you choose.
Since when was ‘freedom’ synonymous with ‘having your goolies lashed by rain driven by 70 kmh winds’? 😛
Even into a southerly headwind, you’re still going faster than people stuck in their cars in stationary traffic. Getting home at the same time as always for a warm welcome and a hot shower works for me.
The prison is a little better looking than some apartments on Nelson St!
Remember how the right whingers and The Herald carried on about how dreadful it was that the prisoners would have “fabulous harbour views” from the new prison? They even published the names of the Commissioners who made the decision on the rebuild. All lies and sloppy “journalism” and debunked on the most basic research.
The obvious thing to note is that those in Mt Eden *know* they are in a prison.
Those on the motorway would argue that they are truly free, but are they?
This photographic oxymoron brings to mind the song “Cage of Freedom” by Jon Anderson, (from the Georgio Morodor 1980’s re-release of that 1920’s Sci-Fi Classic film “Metropolis”)
The first verse reads:
Cage of freedom
That’s our prison
Where the jailer and captive combine
Cage of freedom
Cast in power
All the trappings of our own design
Blind ambition
Steals our reason
We’re soon behind those invisible bars
On the inside
Looking outside
To make it safer we double the guard
Cage of freedom
There’s no escaping
We fabricated a world of our own….
Could substitute the phrases “Where the jailer and captive combine” to “Where the driver and captive combine” and “Double the guard” to “Double the lanes”.
Then it becomes a plan, a plan, so cunning, you could put a tail on it and call it a RoNS
When I worked at Auckland City Council the board or Auckland Grammar wrote asking the Council to try and zone out the prison as they felt it to be an unsuitable neighbour for their posh school. The Chief Planner wrote back noting that the founders of the school didn’t think that when they built next to the prison in the first place.