Addison Del Mastro
@ad-mastro.bsky.social
Writing with a focus on urbanism, culture, and popular history. I write The Deleted Scenes, a daily, mostly-urbanism newsletter on Substack. a.delmastro2@gmail.com.
Only 15 years into its life, this building was decommissioned as a school, and it was over time used as a single-family house, a duplex, and a commercial building (and with the additions, possibly more than one of those things at once).
A Store Of History
What Do You Think You're Looking At? #276
thedeletedscenes.com
What I mean when I talk about "sacramentalism" and physical media/consumer goods is that our brains are wired to receive intangible things in a visible way.
Dematerialization And Sacramentalism
What happens when we need a thing we've outgrown?
thedeletedscenes.com
Thinking about the phenomenon of technology/wealth making it possible for us to opt out of things which used to be default, and which provided us things we needed but are nonetheless hard to consciously choose.
Dematerialization And Sacramentalism
What happens when we need a thing we've outgrown?
thedeletedscenes.com
Once technology allows for dematerialization, it becomes a choice to resist it, to insist on the “sacramental” physicality of the consumer economy, in a way that it wasn’t previously. To keep these things, we now need a kind of activism or “return.”
Dematerialization And Sacramentalism
What happens when we need a thing we've outgrown?
thedeletedscenes.com
"I think you could see the digital-only future the way Catholics and the 'higher' Protestants think of American megachurch evangelicalism: an idea stripped of its signifiers, historical form, and continuity with the past." On physical media as sacramental:
Dematerialization And Sacramentalism
What happens when we need a thing we've outgrown?
thedeletedscenes.com
A man fears what he wants to fear and disregards the rest
The Opposite of Safetyism Is Blasé Faire
Risk is inherent in life, but it's not something to celebrate
thedeletedscenes.com
"There are games around the edge, but the rest of the sales floor is full of all sorts of various and sundry junk, most of it displayed in a manner upon which a monkey throwing things out of an airplane might possibly improve." On "dematerialization":
Dematerialization And Sacramentalism
What happens when we need a thing we've outgrown?
thedeletedscenes.com
Thinking about this phenomenon where things that were normal/default/resulting from technological limits were good for us, and how we struggle to get back their benefits once they become optional www.thedeletedscenes.com/p/dematerial...
"Dematerialization" may follow naturally from technological improvements. But it also takes away things which were supplied so unselfconsciously by the limits on our technology, that we only become aware of their necessity once they become optional.
Dematerialization And Sacramentalism
What happens when we need a thing we've outgrown?
thedeletedscenes.com
Thoughts on the deeper meaning of the end of PlayStation discs, and how technology has made things we need as humans optional www.thedeletedscenes.com/p/dematerial...
Maybe less extreme but kids = suburbs is very much the default in Canada too. A lot of it comes down to housing. The “ideal” family home is detached with a yard. Even people open to apartments/condos often just can’t afford enough bedrooms for kids in central neighbourhoods of our bigger cities.
Laura G Mitchell@lauragmitchell.com · 4d agoThere is SUCH a strong cultural push for parents to raise kids in the suburbs in the US. It’s part of why I post boring photos/stories of our days, to show what raising kids in a city is really like. I genuinely think a lot of Americans don’t even entertain the idea & don’t know what’s possible.
Good point. Here's an example of what it's like to raise three young kids in a high-density area: We walked about three blocks to a bagel shop for breakfast. The toddler got tired and I carried her for a block. No car seats involved.
Laura G Mitchell@lauragmitchell.com · 4d agoThere is SUCH a strong cultural push for parents to raise kids in the suburbs in the US. It’s part of why I post boring photos/stories of our days, to show what raising kids in a city is really like. I genuinely think a lot of Americans don’t even entertain the idea & don’t know what’s possible.
As soon as you are going to be a parent your life gets *a lot* busier. And you don’t have time for pedantic debates or theoretical plans that may happen in a decade. You look at the reality that exists around you today and make decisions based on that. Parents have to be realistic and pragmatic
100%. I wrote once that suburbanites think urbanism is steak and potatoes without the steak. They don't have an image for it as being an entirely different dish.
Laura G Mitchell@lauragmitchell.com · 4d agoAnd bc folks don’t have a model for raising kids in a city, they apply the model they know to try to poke holes at things. Like: “Try getting your kids 3 towns over for hockey practice with a bike!” But… we’re not going 3 towns over bc we live in a city that has everything we need incl sports.
There's another timeline where urbanism is a Republican good fiscal policy thing, of maximizing profits and property tax revenue from urban cores and minimizing cost of providing municipal service per person, and opposed to Democratic NIMBYism. We're far from it though.
Something I'll never understand - if I want to make substantial enough changes to my house, it has to go through a neighbourhood consultation process, but someone on my block can buy a vehicle that significantly increases the chances one of my kids gets run over.
David Zipper@davidzipper.bsky.social · 5d agoWhich vehicles most endanger the drivers of other cars? Giant pickup trucks — and the Dodge Charger Source: www.iihs.org/news/detail/...
One of these was me. I still do the old AmCon right-inflected urbanism thing at my own newsletter now! www.thedeletedscenes.com
Elle@biknmusicmama.bsky.social · 4d agoI used to read The American Conservative because some of their younger writers had an urbanism streak w a conservative bent (all the stuff I believe: dense, walkable cities are GOOD FOR FAMILIES!) Then Trump was elected and the editors went full MAGA & dropped any semblance of critical thinking.
Could see advocacy groups be relatively low in parent membership as ya know, those parents are quite busy.
This is 💯 true. I have been the only/one of the only parent in the vast majority of advocacy spaces (esp ones that require more time - like nonprofit boards). But every parent I know cares about safe streets and their kids’ ability to get around safely & independently.
This is a really good and subtle point. For a lot of Americans "density" means exactly this: basically, overcrowded car dependence over comfier and more private car dependence. It's kind of obvious why you'd not want most of the costs of raw density without most of the benefits
Rene Astle 🇨🇦🌻@castle88.bsky.social · 4d agoI would add that we tend to cram multi-family buildings along busy roads, at least in North America, so even if there were 3-bed apartments, families face a decision to move out or have their kids growing up on busy roads.
For Sony, the media was incidental to the game: a mere delivery mechanism. This is an incorrect understanding of physical media, and Sony’s discontinuation of physical games really points to the end of home console gaming as we have always known it.
No Sony Of Mine
The end of PlayStation discs points to the end of home console gaming itself
thedeletedscenes.com
The perception that urbanism ignores kids is interesting. I kind of see it in transit world? But half of cycling BlueSky is Kidical Mass. @lauragmitchell.com and others. YIMBYs talk a lot about housing prices as a barrier to having kids. Single-stair helps family-sized apartments.
Addison Del Mastro@ad-mastro.bsky.social · 4d agoAmerican politics “un-bundles” these two issues in ways that can make it difficult to synthesize them, because of the distrust between left and right, and the mutual suspicion that each cause is a Trojan horse for a more radical cause.
There is SUCH a strong cultural push for parents to raise kids in the suburbs in the US. It’s part of why I post boring photos/stories of our days, to show what raising kids in a city is really like. I genuinely think a lot of Americans don’t even entertain the idea & don’t know what’s possible.
American politics “un-bundles” these two issues in ways that can make it difficult to synthesize them, because of the distrust between left and right, and the mutual suspicion that each cause is a Trojan horse for a more radical cause.
An Initial Attempt At An Urbanism-Pronatalism Dialogue
People who love cities and people who love kids need to talk (more)
thedeletedscenes.com
Genuine dialogue breaks the circular logic of the in-group/out-group—“We don’t believe that because those other people believe it and we’re not like them”—by helping people to discern that actually, they are much more like them than *either* side realizes.
An Initial Attempt At An Urbanism-Pronatalism Dialogue
People who love cities and people who love kids need to talk (more)
thedeletedscenes.com
My notes on this piece about the Amish approach to technology ended up too long to quote, but I think this is important www.thedeletedscenes.com/p/new-and-ol...
Many small towns and small cities are quintessentially urban, But are not viewed as “cities” or “urban” by people who like them or even sometimes by people who live in them. Many of these people understand themselves as not liking cities or urban places.
An Initial Attempt At An Urbanism-Pronatalism Dialogue
People who love cities and people who love kids need to talk (more)
thedeletedscenes.com
The Amish difference is choosing how to interact with technology, instead of passively allowing cost and abundance to determine those things. The mere affordability of a technology does not mean it should be adopted following the path of least resistance.
New and Old #275
How to do tech like the Amish, pizza history, A-frame history and future, and the future of optical discs
thedeletedscenes.com
if anything they don't seem to care enough about monolopies. Why did the urbanists have to study and figure out the US elevator market is captured and overpriced.
Sam@samd.bsky.social · 6d agoit’s remarkable how the antitrust bros took a valid kernel of truth (monopolies bad), overextrapolated it into a nonsensical theory of everything, and now just post dumb shit 24/7
The expense of the suburban lifestyle widely understood as pro-family is itself a negative pressure on birth rates, and family formation itself, in a way that may cancel out any corresponding effect from urban life.
An Initial Attempt At An Urbanism-Pronatalism Dialogue
People who love cities and people who love kids need to talk (more)
thedeletedscenes.com