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New Cities

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Re: New Cities

#431

Post by dasil003 »

I don't want to be too negative since it's an admirable goal, but I can't help but feel like Gall's Law applies here. I suspect it's not really possible to design a great city.

Consider Brasília for instance, it was designed from the top down, and it certainly some interesting properties. Being able to walk in a mostly straight line from arbitrary point A to point B is something I enjoyed about living there. And the traffic flow control is pretty interesting and worked pretty well for a long time. However today the congestion is bad, and the design of the major landmarks is pedestrian hostile.

Obviously we can improve on all the shortcomings of a city designed 60 years ago, but in designing a city today I suspect we would just create an entirely new rash of problems that were difficult to solve. Also consider that Brasília had a raison d'etre that can't be matched without political buy-in at the highest level. Again, I don't mean to entirely dismiss the idea, but I suspect that solving problems of existing cities will probably lead to better long-term results than trying to go off to a literal green field.

Re: New Cities

#432

Post by cableshaft »

freehunter wrote: post #314
JoshTriplett wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a lovely picture, and it makes a great point. If 200 people want to get to the same place, it's far more efficient to pack them into the same vehicle going to that place. Now what happens when those 177 cars are going to 100 different places?

That's why buses have more than one stop on their route.

And that's why it can take 40 minutes to travel 4 miles.

Re: New Cities

#433

Post by mc32 »

First, let's not go the Brasilia route and construct without human scale in mind. Second, learn from the Chinese megacity projects.

My unproven and likely bad idea would be to promote medium sized cities of medium density which are interconnected but have enough wilderness/farmland to feel separate (in many countries the city and country have abrupt demarcations).

Within each satellite you'd have self sustaining public transit to connect all areas within and a great majority of the built up area is within half mile as the crow flies from a metro station. Encourage mixed use, with the exception of heavy industry which should be segregated. Build with a pedestrian first, assisted mobility second and automobiles last --not that cars would be penalized, just make it easy for walking and transit to be people's first consideration. Build high speed links between the satellites (rail and car).

Don't build these things in flood zones or desert areas which require more costs.

Re: New Cities

#434

Post by aestetix »

dang wrote: post #399
aestetix wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face-to-face conversation. Avoid gratuitous negativity." I would absolutely say these things face to face, because I believe them to be true. I'm happy to go into detail on the first comment, and the second is hyperbolic metaphor. You've seen "Wall Street"? I don't think it's so far off from the truth here. Also, the "downvoted" comment was less a cliche, but more an…

You broke the rules badly and it would be better to simply take responsibility for that. > I would absolutely say these things face to face There's no reading of the HN guidelines by which the claim 'no really, I would be that rude to someone's face' makes it ok to post what you posted. I often hear this from people who think they've found a loophole in the civility rule. But obviously there's no such loophole. 'Don'…

Keep in mind I'm not speaking of everyone when I say this, but I do have a subset of the population in mind.

Regarding the detatched engineer, here is just one example, although there are many: http://uptownalmanac.com/2013/08/tech-founder-complains-abou...

In terms of the empathy and lack of spirit to the community, a cursory search through HN archives for the word "deserve" can summon a mountain of comments by people demanding to know why someone who grew up in neighborhoods like the Mission and has been priced out deserves to live there.

There are also examples like Google executive Jack Halprin kicking people out of their homes: http://valleywag.gawker.com/protestors-target-home-of-google...

Correct me if I'm wrong, but that last link seems like something Robert Moses would have done (and did, many times).

Regarding the Gordon Gecko comment: there seems to be a growing sentiment that greed is good, and making profit at the expense of all else is paramount. I'm speaking of the attitude that lead Mark Pincus to threaten his employees with firing at the expense of their own stock options: http://www.cnet.com/news/zynga-to-employees-give-back-our-st...

Or the fact that Zuckerberg seems to think giving a controlled version of what the rest of the world calls the Internet to developing countries, maintaining control of what they see, while parading around as if he's the savior of the little guy.

On the note about "anonymity": it seems Facebook did not learn anything from the Google nymwars, a topic I could give you hours worth of evidence on. In terms of "real humans", I have no doubt that the people I am criticizing are human and not gods, but I wonder if they remember that. They certainly don't act as if all the people they are displacing are.

I'm not about "slamming the Man" or righteousness, whatever that is. But I do believe the social balance has shifted too far in one direction, and needs brutal, honest, discussion about why that is and whether it can be returned.

If you do not believe this is the correct forum for such a discussion, I'm happy to re-engage with you elsewhere, the more public the better :)

Re: New Cities

#435

Post by davidw »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #342
davidw wrote: post #17

I think "old cities" are pretty good too: the kind where they were built for people, rather than cars, and where you could build things without a dense thicket of regulations almost entirely unrelated to safety. Another thing that seems to work well is limiting the amount of up-front large scale projects and growing incrementally. No one can plan for everything ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_pro…

Old cities suck. Their layout is literally derived from concentric walls to keep invaders out. I love the history and architecture, but from a usability perspective they're far from ideal.

Plenty of Roman cities were laid out in a grid. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_plan#Ancient_Roman_civili...

But in terms of the US, I'm talking more about stuff from around 100 years ago.

Re: New Cities

#436

Post by simonswords82 »

hx87 wrote: post #273
simonswords82 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Interesting, I didn't know that was a thing.

Re: New Cities

#437

Post by mixmastamyk »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #282
mixmastamyk wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's called a cart, see above.

No, you can't take a grocery cart on a bus.

Not true, in Los Angeles at least, outside of rush hour.

You moved the goal post also. In the thread above we are talking about a 10-minute walk.

Re: New Cities

#438

Post by sktrdie »

What's important in a generation where technology is everywhere, is to find the ingredient that actually makes humans intellectually satisfied, happy and productive. The economy and politics of this "system" is secondary to building it in such a way that it nurtures humans' actual well being.

I'd like to see out-of-the-box thinking when it comes to building a system for optimal well being. For instance, are we sure that our common model for a city, where people own housing, and are almost always surrounded by strangers apart from their small group of family/friends, is actually an ingredient for optimal quality of life?

Why not experiment with humans living in structures resembling tribes, which is really what our human intellect evolved into for thousands of years?

Again, in a world where we don't have to worry about issues that we had to worry about in the past (food, shelter, security) and instead we're looking for ways of being intellectually stimulated, I envision group sized sections where people actually live together. The model of european hostels really resonates with me, where strangers actually get to live with one another.

Of course current cities have hostels and have ways for us to live in structures resembling tribes, but the important bit is that we make it part of the culture so that newborns consider this way of living the normality - rather than the normality being to own a house just for you and your family.

Re: New Cities

#439

Post by naveen99 »

jseliger wrote: post #321
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.

Paul Romer has done a lot of interesting, adjacent work on charter cities; this Econtalk episode is a decent introduction to his work: http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2010/04/romer_on_charte.htm... . In the U.S., we've collectively done a lot, culturally and legally, to make real estate a principal savings vehicle for many if not most people, and this has had a lot of negative consequences. Zoning Rules!: The Econom…

To list a few of the advantages of home ownership:

1. tax write off on interest. But with interest rates low, that is not as usefull as it has been in the past.

2. A few states such as texas, have some additional asset protection on your primary residence in case of bankrupcy

3. homstead exemption on property tax (approximately first $100,000 property value), varies by county.

4. property tax freeze above age 65.

5. some capital gains exemptions for primary residence.

but a store of value is a store of value. Would you be ok with people buying treasury bonds as a store of value ? Or would you incentivise higher risk investments, how ?

Also, private schools, golf and tennis clubs also price out a lot of people. Not too different from zoning restrictions.

Re: New Cities

#440

Post by jandrese »

davidw wrote: post #426
jandrese wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody lives in those downtown areas anymore. It doesn't make sense to make a walking mall in an area where few people will live in walking distance. Obviously mass transit can help if it is reliable, cheap, and expansively deployed in the city, but that's not a typical case in the US. Otherwise you're going to have to accommodate cars, and lots of them. That means big fast busy roads that are unfriendly to pedestria…

> Nobody lives in those downtown areas anymore. People absolutely do live downtown. Indeed, one of the biggest trends in housing is people moving back in to downtowns. > It doesn't make sense to make a walking mall in an area where few people will live in walking distance. So why all the zoning regulations to forbid it? Markets generally won't build where it doesn't make sense. So let them do their job. > "big fast b…

People are moving back into a few select downtowns that are being rapidly gentrified. They are not a typical case.

As for the zoning question, it's probably the result of busybody town governments trying to control every aspect of the city lest some developer ruin their perfect vision of the city. I can guarantee that if you propose to build a big shopping complex in the middle of the city you will have people out to protest for all kinds of reasons. They will protest because it will raise their land values (and taxes) too much and force them to move. They will protest because it will bring in people and ruin their "quiet" neighborhood. They will protest because it will affect local water prices. This is how a lot of regulation gets started, because someone is trying to prevent something from happening to their backyard.

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