America's First Medal at the Nazi Olympics Was for Town Planning | Hacker News Reader

America's First Medal at the Nazi Olympics Was for Town Planning

atlasobscura.com

70 pointssamclemens33 comments

I wanted to understand why the arts were dropped from the Olympics.

"In 1949, a report was presented at the IOC meeting in Rome which concluded that practically all contestants in the art competitions were professionals, and that the competitions should therefore be abolished and replaced with an exhibition without awards or medals"

"At a 1951 meeting, the IOC decided to reinstate the competitions for the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki"

"The issue continued to be debated within the Olympic Movement, and at the 49th IOC Session in Athens, 1954, the IOC members voted to replace the art contests with an exhibition for future Olympics"

"The IOC officially began allowing professional athletes to compete in the Olypmic Games in 1988, basically leaving it up to the individual sporting federations to decide if they would permit it"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_competitions_at_the_Summer... http://sports.stackexchange.com/questions/14378/why-are-prof...

> Yes, from 1928 until 1948, town planning was an actual Olympic sport.

I suddenly feel a discomfort that could be my mind changing about synchronized swimming and golf.

Chess has been pushing to be in the Olympics for years. This mostly seems to be a dream of a few of the top people while everybody else thinks it is a waste of time. It also means that Chess players are subject to doping regulations.

http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1827716,00...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/chess/11677916/Chess-at-t...

Table tennis is right after synchronized swimming on my list.

Table tennis ahead of dressage/equestrian!?

Well, yes. Horses are interesting even when ridden by people wearing silly costumes.

Oh, I got one: ice dancing.

Someone needs to re-read the Robert Moses biography. In that era, Moses was in the process of finishing the construction of the entire state park system, and was building thousands of parks in NYC.

And also destroying and redlining minority communities in NYC for decades to come.

The man's legacy is decidedly mixed.

True, but this doesn't change the fact that the statement in the article is factually untrue.

Moses preferred roads over all other transport mechanisms, and was shockingly effective in his ability to basically make everyone do what he wanted (even if it involved clearly terrible ideas). He was, though, responsible for many New York state and city parks, and really got into road building as a method to get people out to the new parks he was creating.

Now, his definition of "park" as a very developed area with landscaping, sports facilities, playgrounds, etc. with all previous plant life getting killed with a bulldozer is another matter that hasn't really held up over time, but I'm digressing at this point. The Power Broker really is a fascinating read.

And Jane Jacobs spent a significant portion of her life proving his ideals at best short-sighted, and at worst out-right wrong. History remembers Jacobs far more fondly.

Death and Life of Great American Cities is now town planning 101.

> Death and Life of Great American Cities is now town planning 101.

And we're already feeling some of the big problems from that now. Likely more will occur in the next 10-20 years.

Jane Jacobs isn't a magical perfect bible for cities -- her ideas (as practiced in every major US city today) are in part responsible for generating an explosion in housing costs, a decrease in the quality of urban transportation, and some major gentrification + displacement of residents.

I don't fault her for this -- her ideas were great and relevant for decades -- but urban planners today are blindly following her every word as if it's gospel, and ignoring the many bad side effects her ideas, when left unchecked for so long, are now causing.

http://www.governing.com/topics/economic-dev/is-it-time-to-r...

Jacobs was right and wrong, just as Moses was. The reality of the situation in NYC, like every other city, was that cheap capital was driving anyone in high density housing with means to the suburbs. Swaths of Brooklyn didn't turn into slum because of Moses -- it was because working class jobs went to Jersey, and ethnic communities of Irish, Italians, Germans and Norweigans went to Jersey and Long Island. The vibrant, connected communities were dead men walking.

The same force that made homes cheap: the Federal government, is what created the monster that Moses became in the latter half of his career. Because Moses knew how to get shit done, NYC got most New Deal money. Because Moses could get shit done, NYC got more housing money than anywhere else. Hell, something like 75% of total east coast concrete production went to the NY metro area due to Moses projects.

You really owe it to yourself to read "The Power Broker", because the transition of Robert Moses from a progressive reformer to an unstoppable weilder of power, guided by a modern, engineering driven agenda, bears a lot of resemblance to the Silicon Valley titans today.

The difference is, Moses was crushed by Nelson Rockefeller, who had a bigger ego, equal political instincts and unlimited money and influence. These guys made Larry Ellison look humble. Not sure what will be able to stop the next Robert Moses like figure.

I will read The Power Broker, thank you for the reco. Most of my interest with this comes from my responsibility to design architectures for ultra-large ecosystems. It is incredibly difficult, as both of these people found out, to define what "healthy" is. On top of that, its almost impossible to predictably seed the right changes to get there. I take each of these leaders thoughts on human principled design very seriously.

He's still very, very hated here. He really fucked this city up.

Perhaps. But he didn't screw up the parks, NYC has aworld class park system in many respects.

It would be interesting to see what would occur in terms of the interest in being employed in professions that would be associated with the arts if they were to be reintroduced into the Olympics, perhaps it would change people"s perspective of stuff such as architecture. At the same time if they were to reintroduce all of the past art competitions in the summer Olympics the music category could be extremely controversial depending on what styles of music are allowed.

I was wondering if there were any other government regimes to host the olympics that are now considered unfavorable, from a US perspective

By America, you mean Chicago, right? That's the only well planned city I can think of off the top of my head.

Agree whole heartedly.

When I visit Chicago, I get the distinct sense that things were done deliberately, with beautiful architecture to boot.

I suspect it has to do with the fact that the city burned down and they got a redo - twice.

First plan, 40 years before the fire:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Thompson_Chicago_pla...

Brennan's street numbering and naming reform:

https://www.wbez.org/shows/wbez-news/the-unsung-hero-of-urba...

The Burnham Plan:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burnham_Plan_of_Chicago

The U of C "community area" divisions:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_areas_in_Chicago

edit: I generally think of other cities as places where people put their garbage in the street and streets turn back on themselves.

And lifted up 6 feet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_of_Chicago

At first I read that article going "No way, that's crazy", then it gets to the part about moving all of the wood framed structures out of town and my mind was blown.

That had to be staggeringly expensive.

Chicago also made its river run backwards: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_River#Reversing_the_fl...

Chicago has one of the craziest histories of any city in the last 150 years that I can think of.

I don't have much knowledge of many cities, but Milwaukee always seems well designed to me.

Indianapolis was designed from scratch, similar mold to Washington.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Ralston

DC is a horribly laid out city. Indianapolis adds 2 diagonals which is tolerable, but DC is a mess.

Top 10 worst traffic for X years running, which is sadly an improvement it used to contend for #1. It does not even have an interesting pattern with roads at seemingly random angles. http://www.apco2015.org/hotel-travel/shuttles-and-parking/

DC gets a lot of flak about its traffic (which is deserved), but much of it is outside of their control. I66 for example is outrageously undersized for an artery into a major city, but that mess is in Virginia and outside of DC's zone of control. The whole I95 and 270 mess is also a state issue.

That said, the undersized DC Metro system is largely in the hands of the local government, although not directly controlled by the city council (like most metro boards). It was somewhat unlucky in that their initial buildout happened right as the car boom took hold and killed metrorail expansions all across the US. Even cities with well regarded systems like New York have suffered from a lack of expansion to cover growth since the 50s. Just look at how badly underserved Queens is.

A main artery heading north aka 29 would do a lot to relieve congestion. GW parkway to 495 - 270 is a huge choke point.

It's also got excessive parks with a poor layout. Rock creek park for example is a great location for a major road surrounding it with housing and you could dramatically reduce the need for commuting. I mean really a public golf course, yea that's a great use of space.

Congressional aides I used to work with said it was on purpose to make invasion more difficult and provide navigation advantage to defenders of the city.

Philadelphia was built as a grid in the 17th century, with five public squares, four of which are now parks, the fifth is city hall, in the center of the city. It's old enough to have respectable (for an American city) transit infrastructure - electric trains, subways, trolleys, buses, an active ferry to Camden, and more. Fairmount park is one of the largest urban parks in the world, although getting a straight answer about acreage can be a little tricky.

I think Savannah, GA is the most beautiful laid out city in the country. The perfect grid, symmetry, and plentiful squares and architecture are second to none.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com