Back to the main page

Mailing List Logs for ShadowRN

Message no. 1
From: Achille Autran aautran@*************.fr
Subject: Marseille and city planning (was Re: French Foreign Legion)
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 2000 03:31:13 +0200
From: "Gurth" <gurth@******.nl>
Date: Tue, 25 Apr 2000 19:41:32 +0200

> > It is indeed plausible. But it would be like turning Rotterdam or
> > Chicago into La Haye (sp ?)
>
> You mean the Dutch city? Den Haag (or The Hague to our English-speaking
> readers).
>
Yes, the one with the International and European Justice Court. Thanks,
I had for a while wondered where was located this damn' Hague Datahaven
:)

> > or Malibu Beach: a major spirit-of-the-city screwing.
>
> Many would argue that any change made to Rotterdam would be a good one :)
>
> > Marseille is a large port (as large as Seattle), this alone firmly
> > shapes its economy and spirit.
>
> I don't doubt that, but again: a lot can change in 50 years. What if trade
> dries up for some reason, for example? Also, you can have both a port and
> a tourist industry in the same city (I live about 10 km away from a city
> that does both these things fairly well).

I may have sounded a bit assertive before, but I am a bit sentimental
about this city. You were probably a bit irritated after reading that
"the flood washes away much of the Netherlands". Not for sheer
patriotism but thinking "F*** ! I would have LOVED to set my game
there !" and change 'official' 'history' into something that suits you.
Marseille is a city I am rather attached to, and where I know I can
describe vividly people and places.

Back to answer: I assume you're talking about Amsterdam, whose tourist
crowd is freaking. It has been a trading hub for centuries or more, and
has a decent harbour. Is it free of Mafia and Yakusa inluence ? Has
black market disappeared ? Anyone can answer this... Cyberpirates!
stated that Marseille wasn't a good place for smugglers, because there
were tourists. It would be like saying "don't go to Amsterdam if you
want sex and drugs... there are tourists !" - I am not abusive about
Amsterdam here, it's a fact.

We had a discussion a few days ago with some friends, about the fact
that cities changed, but they didn't changed THAT much. Their morphology
kept its general shape, and main activity (usually due to geography) is
stable. The physionomy (buildings, road plan) of old and dense cities,
that can't spread much around, evolves very slowly (even not at all,
except in cases of major diasaster like fire or war bombing). That's why
I can't see Marseille's 2600 years old trading past disappear in half a
century.

But that's an european point of vue. In Europe most city centers are
more than five centuries old, and stable. That's not the case in the US,
except for some cities like New-York or San-Francisco (not age, but
stability) from what I've heard. Hey you westerners ! Does the shape of
the cities you live in changes noticeably or drastically over a few
decades ?
And more generally, how can SR evolution change 'denizenship' and cities
(without major disasters) ?
Message no. 2
From: GuayII@***.com GuayII@***.com
Subject: Marseille and city planning (was Re: French Foreign Legion)
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 2000 02:43:16 EDT
In a message dated Wed, 26 Apr 2000 9:32:31 PM Eastern Daylight Time, Achille Autran
<aautran@*************.fr> writes:

Hey you westerners ! Does the shape of
> the cities you live in changes noticeably or drastically over a few
> decades ?

Well, up until 30 years ago, the Silicon Valley (San Jose), California used to be mostly
orchards and canneries. Then the high-tech business moved in. In conmparison, my mom grew
up in a small town of 600 in North Dakota. That place hasn't changed much since the late
1800's.

Cash
Message no. 3
From: Gurth gurth@******.nl
Subject: Marseille and city planning (was Re: French Foreign Legion)
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 2000 11:13:06 +0200
According to Achille Autran, at 3:31 on 27 Apr 00, the word on the street
was...

> I may have sounded a bit assertive before, but I am a bit sentimental
> about this city. You were probably a bit irritated after reading that
> "the flood washes away much of the Netherlands".

Certainly, and most because (as I've said many times before) I just can't
see it happening. Suspension of disbelief will only go so far.

> Back to answer: I assume you're talking about Amsterdam, whose tourist
> crowd is freaking. It has been a trading hub for centuries or more, and
> has a decent harbour.

Uhh... no, I was not talking about Amsterdam. If there is one city I don't
care to visit, it's Amsterdam... What all the tourists see in it, I have
_no_ idea (and nobody had better say "marihuana" because you don't need to
go to Amsterdam for that, either :)

> Is it free of Mafia and Yakusa inluence ? Has black market disappeared ?
> Anyone can answer this... Cyberpirates! stated that Marseille wasn't a
> good place for smugglers, because there were tourists.

That makes little sense, I agree. Tourists would, IMHO, provide excellent
cover for your smuggling operations -- where do you stand out more, on a
sea where nobody is around for kilometers, or on a sea that's crowded with
little yachts?

> But that's an european point of vue. In Europe most city centers are
> more than five centuries old, and stable.

Very stable. The other city near where I live had its center bombed away
during the war, but it was rebuilt almost as it was before (unlike
Rotterdam).

> And more generally, how can SR evolution change 'denizenship' and cities
> (without major disasters) ?

That's the thing -- there are so many disasters in SR's history that
_something_ is bound to change, IMHO. Especially in North America, cities
might change a lot because of the whole NAN issue: cities in the newly-
created NAN would be emptied, those in the rest of the continent would
have far more inhabitants than they do today. Still, it will only go so
far, and all that doesn't impact Europe in any way.

--
Gurth@******.nl - http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
"There are millions of people who've got nothing to say to each other,
and who do it on mobile phones" --Ian Hislop, on Have I Got News For You
-> NAGEE Editor * ShadowRN GridSec * Unofficial Shadowrun Guru <-
->The Plastic Warriors Page: http://shadowrun.html.com/plasticwarriors/<-

GC3.1: GAT/! d-(dpu) s:- !a>? C+(++)@ UL P L+ E? W(++) N o? K- w+ O V? PS+
PE Y PGP- t(+) 5++ X++ R+++>$ tv+(++) b++@ DI? D+ G(++) e h! !r(---) y?
Incubated into the First Church of the Sqooshy Ball, 21-05-1998
Message no. 4
From: Jill jmenning@*******.com
Subject: Marseille and city planning (was Re: French Foreign Legion)
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 2000 08:06:07 -0500
At 01:43 AM 4/27/00, Cash wrote:

>In a message dated Wed, 26 Apr 2000 9:32:31 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
>Achille Autran <aautran@*************.fr> writes:
>
>Hey you westerners ! Does the shape of
> > the cities you live in changes noticeably or drastically over a few
> > decades ?
>
>Well, up until 30 years ago, the Silicon Valley (San Jose), California
>used to be mostly orchards and canneries. Then the high-tech business
>moved in. In conmparison, my mom grew up in a small town of 600 in North
>Dakota. That place hasn't changed much since the late 1800's.

A lot of those small farming/ranching towns are actually shrinking, from
what I've seen. My family came from a blink-and-miss-it town in the middle
of South Dakota (like North Dakota, but with a few more trees :o) ) and
it's population is about 25% smaller than it was when my father was a kid.
But the same church, same town hall, same library, etc, that it's had
almost since it was founded. Five hours down the road (well, Interstate)
you've got Sioux Falls, which has, according to my mother, exploded in the
last twenty years, to the point where she hardly knows the place. The big
cities just seem to be getting bigger quickly - Denver, Colorado Springs,
Oklahoma City, Dallas, Houston, etc.

Most of the western cities started out as communities of ranchers, farmers,
traders. When the railroads came through the trade through the city
increased, the population increased, the total amount of land being farmed
or used as pasture increased. This current boom is due to technology, more
than anything else. Tons of companies have something they want to sell, and
it doesn't much matter where they build it as far as distribution goes - so
they go looking for cheap land, low taxes, etc, and find it in the western
cities, which then explode until they start running into each other.

So, if the town gets hit by the technology bug, it grows. Otherwise, it
stays its own small, quiet little self, getting slowly smaller and quieter
as the years go by, but not changing much. Sort of got off topic a bit, but
there you go, about par for the course.

Jill


"Nearly half of online users say the Internet has become something of a
necessity in their lives. However, a full 95% of that half admit that 'they
actually have no lives,' calling into question the validity of the survey. "
-Jim Rosenberg

http://www.redrival.com/jmenning
Message no. 5
From: Mark A Shieh SHODAN+@***.EDU
Subject: Marseille and city planning (was Re: French Foreign Legion)
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 2000 15:55:24 -0400 (EDT)
GuayII@***.com writes:
> In a message dated Wed, 26 Apr 2000 9:32:31 PM Eastern Daylight
> Time, Achille\
> Autran <aautran@*************.fr> writes:
>
> Hey you westerners ! Does the shape of
> > the cities you live in changes noticeably or drastically over a few
> > decades ?

A few decades ago, Pittsburgh was a huge steel town.
Nowadays, there really isn't any steel here, and the city's been
shrinking, as we lose almost all of our college grads. We recently
made the news as being a place to be for robotics, but that's not
really big (yet).

Mark

Further Reading

If you enjoyed reading about Marseille and city planning (was Re: French Foreign Legion), you may also be interested in:

Disclaimer

These messages were posted a long time ago on a mailing list far, far away. The copyright to their contents probably lies with the original authors of the individual messages, but since they were published in an electronic forum that anyone could subscribe to, and the logs were available to subscribers and most likely non-subscribers as well, it's felt that re-publishing them here is a kind of public service.

Thwap!