Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- 1 The World of Today
- 2 Making Things Better: The Importance of Flexibility
- 3 Are We There Yet?
- 4 Trading Places
- 5 Downtown: A Place to Work, a Place to Visit, a Place to Live
- 6 How Zoning Matters
- 7 Love the Density, Hate the Congestion
- 8 Homogeneity and Heterogeneity in Local Government
- 9 The World of Tomorrow
- Notes
- References
- Index
7 - Love the Density, Hate the Congestion
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- 1 The World of Today
- 2 Making Things Better: The Importance of Flexibility
- 3 Are We There Yet?
- 4 Trading Places
- 5 Downtown: A Place to Work, a Place to Visit, a Place to Live
- 6 How Zoning Matters
- 7 Love the Density, Hate the Congestion
- 8 Homogeneity and Heterogeneity in Local Government
- 9 The World of Tomorrow
- Notes
- References
- Index
Summary
Humphrey tells them about a trip he and Sandy and some others took to Disneyland. “We had been in the line for Mr. Toad's Wild Ride for about forty-five minutes when [Sandy] went nuts. You could see it happen – we were all standing there just waiting, you know, hanging out and moving with the line, and suddenly his eyes bug out past his nose and he gets that happy look he gets when he's got an idea…. So he says real slow, ‘You know, guys, this ride only lasts about two minutes. Two minutes at the most. And we'll have been in line for it an hour. That's a thirty-to-one ratio of wait to ride. And the ride is just a fast trackcar going through holograms in the dark. I wonder … do you think … could it be … that this is the worst ratio in Disneyland? … I wonder, I just wonder, … which one of us can rack up the worst ratio for the whole day?’ … So we call it Negative Disneyland and agree to add points for stupidest rides combined with the worst ratios.”
The four in back can't believe it. “You've got to be kidding.”
“No, no! It's the only way to go there! Because with Sandy's idea we weren't fighting the situation anymore, you know? We were running around finding the longest lines we could, stepping through our paces like we were on the ride itself, and timing everything on our watches, and every time we turned another corner in the line we'd see Sandy standing there up ahead of us towering over the kids, eyes bugged out and grinning his grin, just digging these monster delays to get on Dumbo the Elephant, Storybook Canal, Casey Junior, the Submarine….”.[…]
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- Don't Call It SprawlMetropolitan Structure in the 21st Century, pp. 143 - 159Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006