Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

New Cities

blog.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 710 posts

Re: New Cities

#271

Post by hx87 »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #218
davidw wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have lived carless and had to make many independent trips per week to buy food. We mostly walked or biked to the local grocery store in Italy. It led to more fresh food, as you buy stuff in smaller quantities and eat it right away. A large backpack is fine for moving stuff. It worked for our family of 4.

So... You can't eat when you're hungry, because you don't keep food at home. A huge portion of your week is suddenly devoted to shuttling back and forth between home and the grocery store. And you think that's not a massive inconvenience?

If I'm hungry, I grab more food when I drop by the grocery store. Unless my hunger pangs are randomly distributed in time and unrelated to my eating schedule, how is that a massive inconvenience?

Re: New Cities

#273

Post by hx87 »

simonswords82 wrote: post #175
sama wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cars have a place in cities but maybe they should be in tunnels underground or something. I view money locked up in real estate as money in a very suboptimal place. We pay too much 'rent' in general; it'd be far better to try to make housing/office space cheap and have people invest the extra money in productive assets.

Cars underground is a great idea but you'd need to find a way to make GPS work, especially since GPS is necessary for autonomous cars which are obviously a thing of the future.

GPS repeaters have existed for at least a decade.

Re: New Cities

#274

Post by ginko »

superuser2 wrote: post #253
ginko wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone living in a place "designed for people", my trip to the grocery stores means putting on my shoes, walking down the stairs and across the street. The next department store is about 200m down the street.

Is this Manhattan? Because in Chicago I think that describes about 10 blocks (a few hundred staggeringly wealthy people in the most lavish of luxury condo towers). The rest of us have some tiny, price-gouging convenience stores nearby but have to go ~20 blocks for a real supermarket, 4-5 miles to downtown for a Target or Macy's. Taking the train is less of a hassle than parking in the Loop, but it's still a hassle.

It's Trondheim.

Re: New Cities

#275

Post by Turing_Machine »

16bytes wrote: post #98
ars wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> built for people, rather than cars I wish people would stop with this drivel. There are PEOPLE in the cars. The cities are built for people. A car is a human amplifier - it takes human transportation and carrying ability and amplifies it. A lot of people find this amplification very very useful (parents with children, elderly, people who buy in bulk, etc, etc). Taking it away would be like removing computers becaus…

Individually owned cars--and the infrastructure needed to support them--are a very inefficient mode of transportation, even in the use-cases that you mention. Plenty of people with children and elderly live in New York city which has among the lowest levels of car ownership in the nation. Every other method of high-density transportation is also a "human amplifier" and vastly more efficient. "Built for people" means…

Having centralized mess halls serving bland, but nutritious meals (rather than individual kitchens and nice restaurants) and hot-bunk dorms with people sharing beds in shifts (rather than individual bedrooms) would also be "more efficient".

Efficiency isn't the end-all of life.

Re: New Cities

#276

Post by tmaly »

8note wrote: post #150
tmaly wrote: post #72

For me cities with great public transportation are key. New York still has a lot of cars, but the subway system is quite extensive. Portland, OR has one of the best bus systems I have seen. I wish they had more light rails than they do. When I was last there they were just completing the second one. Paris has a great subway system that is very clean, and their roads are very walk able. Montreal and Toronto have great…

bikes in summer, cross country skis in winter

what do you do with the young kids in the winter?

Re: New Cities

#277

Post by underwater »

davidw wrote: post #238
sauceweak wrote: post #202

Since the parent felt the need to use an affiliate link, here's a direct link to The Rent Is Too Damn High - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0078XGJXO/ An amazon affiliate link to a 2.5 star book doesn't really establish confidence in someone's recommended reading list.

I earn the equivalent of a few beers a month from affiliate links, but hey, if you feel that it's better to give that money to Jeff Bezos, that's your prerogative. I'm always happy to buy a beer or two (the entire proceeds of my ill-gotten gains!) at 10 Barrel or Crux or someplace for anyone who happens to visit Bend. Mostly though, since your account is new, we're ok with capitalism and making a bit of money here on…

Affiliate links feel spammy because it makes it hard to determine whether your recommendation is altruistic or financially motivated.

Re: New Cities

#278

Post by Jemmeh »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #52

It is a mistake to assume that because cities were the most efficient way to organize people in the past, they will continue to be so in the future. Given the trend towards remote work, socialization and shopping, there is a lot less of a need for density. Instead of asking "how can we make the city of the future" we should instead be asking "how can we create a habitats for humans that promote happiness, health, har…

All of these issues with cities can be addressed. In many cities they aren't being addressed currently...but they can be.

Natural/alive areas -- parks, and greenery on sidewalks.

Space and privacy-- better materials can be used to filter out more sound, which is the usual big complaint.

Community-- Intentionally building public spaces where people are likely to convene and meet, hold events, and even shop is good for both business and allowing people to get to know each other.

Re: New Cities

#279

Post by thaumasiotes »

st3v3r wrote: post #232
thaumasiotes wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So... You can't eat when you're hungry, because you don't keep food at home. A huge portion of your week is suddenly devoted to shuttling back and forth between home and the grocery store. And you think that's not a massive inconvenience?

That's not what was said at all. Nowhere do they say they don't keep food at home.

Eating what food you buy right away precludes storing food at home.

Re: New Cities

#280

Post by ocdtrekkie »

massysett wrote: post #104
kafkaesq wrote: post #50

The biggest gap in this discussion, thus far -- the elephant in the room, as it were: there's almost no room left on the planet for building "new" cities of any significant scale (meaning of course not just the meticulously designed city core; but the whole meta-city that will grow around it -- with suburbs, transportation links, etc). Sure, there might be a few -- a very small few -- bona-fide brown zones here and t…

New cities aren't going to happen, but it's not a space issue. There's plenty of space in the middle of Kansas.

The biggest issue is the investment money to build the infrastructure, housing, etc. And of course, crucially, business draw to live there.

I suppose if Silicon Valley types like YCombinator who invest the money, and Google (Larry Page regularly talks about Google building a city) who is a large industry were to go forth on one of these model city type projects, the initial draw would be those exact things. If Google wanted a model city to work, Google should ensure that Google is the first business to move a large portion of it's workforce there with major incentives for people to do so. People serving that initial seed workforce other services would follow.

A new city would be founded much the way they did in the old days: Company towns.

Post reply on HN