I recently hopped in my car and drove from Seattle to Boise, Salt Lake City, Santa Fe, Flagstaff, Vegas, Bakersfield, then San Francisco, and back to Seattle.
Coming from Seattle, a city that is clearly thriving in nearly every way, I started to notice little similarities in some of these other cities. Boise had a small tent city near the Capitol. Salt Lake City had obviously consolidated it’s roadways for bike lanes. And on it went.
I was also recently in Milwaukee, and noticed this same trend. It was starting to adopt some of the ideas that made Seattle the shining city on a hill that it is. So I imagined every mayor in the United States calling the Seattle Mayor to ask, “what’s your secret? How did you build such a utopia up there in the Pacific Northwest?”
“Just do the opposite of what everyone wants, and they’ll vote you in again and again to keep doing it.” I imagine this had to be the answer. And here’s the elaboration.
First, eliminate crime. No, no. Not by enforcing laws. Do it the Seattle way. Stop enforcing laws. Just redefine crime. If nothing is a crime, then there can be no crime. Once you’ve eliminated crime, people will feel safer.
And once you’ve eliminated crime, you can defund your police force. Nothing will make your citizens feel safer than knowing someone on the street can clock you in the back of the head as you’re walking on the sidewalk and no one will, or can, do anything. If the police don’t see it, they’re not allowed to act, which will give more shoppers a thrill as it increases their chances of seeing a shoplifter in action as they casually saunter out the front door with armfuls of merchandise as the staff stands idly by.
Speaking of shoplifters, don’t forget the tents. This is where many of them live. People love camping in the great outdoors, and nothing inspires them like seeing tents in their city everywhere they go. The more tents, the more inspired they get. And when these people in tents are free to do anything they want – because there’s no more crime – you’ll be amazed how much people will gravitate toward the areas with the most tents.
Unfortunately, some of the people in tents take drugs that are potentially harmful to them – and others when those people are on them. The best way to help these people is to give them free needles. This makes them feel less self-conscious about doing drugs in public, and the clean needles and access to more drugs (because illegal drugs aren’t illegal anymore), will make sure this now legal activity is safe for everyone.
While the tents and drug-addled homeless people are fun to watch, you’ll want more decoration. The best thing to do is find a company or two that will place electric scooters all over the city. Nothing says clean and safe like these metal nuisances splayed on the sidewalks and in the streets of every avenue. Oh, and make sure you get the most gaudily painted ones you can find – like bright red or florescent green – so they really catch your eye as you try and walk over them.
We’ve also found in Seattle that, like scooters, everyone likes a ferris wheel. It doesn’t matter that it will completely remove any charm or character unique to your city, because you’re going to want to keep up with every other city, like St. Louis, New York, Atlanta, Las Vegas, and all the others that bought into the idea that nothing improves the skyline of a beautiful city like a soulless, cookie-cutter ferris wheel.
Once you’ve build this thriving metropolis, people are going to want to get to it, and they’re going to want to drive their cars. People are happy in their cars, and we want to keep them in their cars as long as possible, so make sure to pare down your roads from three or four lanes down to one. You can do this by adding bus lanes, bike lanes, parking lanes, decorative flower pots, and outdoor dining areas that extend into the street (made imperative by COVID, thank Allah). Citizens will come from miles around to spend the extra 30-45 minutes in their car in the one lane you’ve dedicated just for them.
With all those people trapped downtown, business are going to want to be downtown to serve them. That means space is going to be tight, and not every business will be able to be there. By raising the minimum wage and business taxes, you will make sure to attract the best businesses around, because those are the ones who can afford to pay the highest taxes and the most forced wages to their staff.
And with all the people from around the country who will naturally be attracted to all of this glory and wonderment, you’re going to need places for them to live. So rezone as much of the surrounding area as you can so developers are encouraged to tear down single-family homes and put up 15-story apartment buildings. This way, you can get more people in the area and make more single-lane roads for them all to drive in when they need to get somewhere.
Every so often, even though you’ve moved the roads from four to just one lane, traffic may still move a little too quickly, and you don’t want even one person to get hit by a car (which is far more likely, now that you’ve got homeless and criminals drifting and wandering aimlessly all over the city). The best way to solve this, that drivers absolutely have embraced in Seattle, is to lower the speed limit. Doesn’t matter where. If it was 40mph, make it 30. If it was 30, make it 25. It doesn’t matter because people in Seattle will drive five miles per hour slower, no matter what you make it.
Lowering the speed limit will also benefit those who you are now encouraging to protest on the highway. More and more, liberals like to take to the highways and crowded intersections to stage their protests, preventing emergency vehicles from providing timely assistance and keeping parents from seeing their families or kids. If you lower the speed limit, you may prevent one protester from losing their life by walking out into moving traffic. (And you know how important something is if it “saves just one life.”) It will also lessen the chance the people may enjoy the consequences of walking in traffic.
Finally, advertise clearly to leftists around the country that you’ve done all this for them. Because leftists are the only people on earth who will see you do all this, think it makes perfect sense, and vote for you to do even more of it. Once you’ve attracted enough leftists, you can out-vote the rest of the state who will overwhelmingly vote Republican because they would never be caught dead in your city because they’re all wondering how in the world you could do any of these things and think they’re going to have good results.
And that’s how you build a thriving city. Obviously, it must work, because cities all around the country are adopting and implementing these ideas. Hopefully, you’re city will be next.
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