A substitute for direct democracy is structured "ideologic" parties which entertain a structured and open debate with ideologically close experts and advocates, as a way to have informed politicians. But only elected politicians can assume the responsibility of politically charged technical choices.

I'm also in favour of broader referenda on municipal issues, things like "do you want transit to be faster even if it will inconvenience driving and cut parking?", whenever a culture of local referendum exist, like in California or Switzerland. But the technical minutiae, leave them to experts.

My opinion about public participation is that transparency and ease-of-access to all project-related documentation + seeking inputs from individuals and organized interests in a transparent way is necessary in a democracy, but elected officials are the ones who should decide.

I don't care what they say. I live in Eastern Canada. Central Canada is flyover Canada, i.e. anything West of Toronto until the Rockies.

Oh I see! For me "Central Canada" is the Prairies :-)

I see. Makes sense. How is Eastern Canada in your view?

Is this just based on topography (mountains, deltas, wetlands etc.) or also settlement patterns, e.g. more or less urbanized and concentrated (Spain) vs more dispersed (Italy, Vietnam) population?

We might not like what it delivered, but it definitely delivered. Notably a nation-wide continuous network covering marginal depopulated areas that would never be covered if left to the states or market forces. See Canada's non-existent national network as a counter example.

Definitely. While the French social housing policy of the last three decades is a great example of a "politique volontariste", as you know very well!

The problem is that the structure of governance in the US is way too fragmented and partisan, IMO. But the Interstate Highways program is an example of a "politique volontariste"

That's part of it. The French call it "orchestration", with the national government setting the framework of the policy with a "loi cadre" (framework law) and actual implementation devolved to lower levels of government and coordination ensured through things like the State-Region Conference.

Alstom or any other manufacturer delivers what the customer ask for. And North American agencies suffers from "thuraphobia", or the fear of doors.

More seriously, they tend to ask for way too many seats which inevitably requires having fewer doors.

And you don't have to take traffic patterns and demand as a God-given fact but you can voluntarily shape it to induce behavioural changes and other policy goals like transit priority and urban life quality.

Where do I sign.

Most countries were more "dirigistes" in the postwar years (to use another French term), but it's true that the small Govt rethoric changed a lot government culture in the anglosphere

It's a coherent policy coordinated at different levels of governments to reach a certain end goal that is politically determined. Like the way France fostered the tramway Renaissance from the 1980s or the "politique de la ville" from the same era.

It's somehow very telling that the English language doesn't have an expression that fully translate the French expression "politique volontariste (de l'État)".

It reflects how much policy-making in the anglosphere, especially in urban planning matters, is reactive rather than proactive.

No, not really. Early urbanization was due to Italy being one of the center of European commerce and manufacturing until the late 16th century crisis and 17-18th century stagnation.
The lagging in the 19th c. industrialization was a matter of lack of financial basis (no accumulated capital) and coal

Italy, especially norther Italy, was by far the most urbanized corner of Europe together with the Flanders from the 11th to the 17th century. at between 20-30% urban according to some estimates. But, interestingly, Italy was a laggard in industrial era urbanization, taking off only in the 1880-90s

New provinces created in the 1990s-2000s to appease hyper-localism.

Actually, both provinces in Italy and departments in France are artificial creations of modern states' bureaucracies in the late 18th and 19th centuries. It is interesting that when they needed a "rule" to name these new subnational entities, they opted for rivers in France and cities in Italy

One of the anecdotal facts that I use to support my claim that Italy is a "Country of Cities" in a way France isn't is the fact that the modal name of the level of government that roughly corresponds to "counties" is:

ITA: Province of _Major City Name_
FR: River or topographical feature Name

It's hard to avoid a bit of Schadenfreude when populists fall victim of the populistic rhetoric they cultivated for their own political advantage.

Look, my joking description of Metrolinx is "a 1980s Soviet Ministry," but if the institutional, political and legal framework does not make future-proofing for HSR one of their mandated problem, you cannot blame them for not using their resources to think about it.

The problem is fragmented ownership and planning responsibility, and the lack of a place to coordinate this across different levels of government. I'm hardly a Metrolinx apologist, but it's not in their mandate to plan around something that has been, at best, a "floated" idea until a few years ago.

Well, when your planning system is just a bunch of agencies and private operators in a trenchcoat, you cannot expect it to produce rational outcomes.

I'm not sure that's entirely true. Schengen is from the early 1990s, the only point in modern history when Italian per capita GDP was almost the same of France and West Germany and slightly higher of that of the UK. Emigration to EU has been relatively low for most of the 1980s-2000s.

The Italian Constitution specifically mandates that MPs cannot be binded to a party or to their electoral mandate

It's supposed to reinforce the tree and foster growth. It's very common for fruit trees, to make them have more branches and grow wide rather than tall. And still very commonly done in plane trees.

Well, it's supposed to reinforce growth and strengthen the tree. It's done every several years, not every winter, and this picture was probably taken after that