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New Cities

blog.ycombinator.com

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571–580 of 710 posts

Re: New Cities

#571

Post by GrinningFool »

davidw wrote: post #255
st3v3r wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, markets are a great way of finding what makes the most money for those who build the stores. That may be "the best" solution that is also aligned with the interests of the people who live there, but it might not be.

Central planning has been a colossal failure both in terms of the economy at large, and in terms of urban planning. If someone can make money by building a store, that's great, what's wrong with it? Zoning should be about keeping truly noxious activities away from residential areas, not about keeping a corner store away from where people could possibly walk to it.

The rules don't come about because someone wants to stop a corner store from being built in their neighborhood. They want to stop the Walmart or the Lowe's or the strip mall. In addition to added traffic, you're now encouraging people from outside the neighborhood to come in, with the attendant risks.

The net often gets cast too widely though - so that the corners stores can't be built either.

I live in a quiet mostly rural neighborhood. I wouldn't object to a corner store replacing the nearest house. I would object to the house and all of its land getting cleared to drop a home depot in.

Unfortunately, zoning regulations prohibit both - as if there were no difference between them.

Re: New Cities

#572

Post by greggman »

I have a feeling these ideas won't be popular but ...

On top of wanting an exciting city with affordable housing and good public transportation. I want to live in a city where I feel safe. Safe from physical harm, safe from theft, safe from bad police, safe from being spied on, safe to participate in "quirky" things.

Tokyo is partly that city. I can go to strange fetish clubs, burlesque, punk rock, cosplay, etc and no one bats an eye. But I'm unlikely to get stabbed, unlikely to be pick pocketed, if I drop my wallet I'm likely to get it back with all my money. If I go to a cafe/coffee-shop I can leave my wallet/computer on a table for 10-15 minutes and expect to to be there when I get back.

Why does it feel like every other city outside Japan except maybe Singapore I can't do that?

I'm in Berlin right now and I love the variety of things going on but I hate that a high percentage of people destroy the commons. Street Art Yay! Tagging Boo! Broken glass everywhere where people threw their beer bottles. Pick pockets all over. People trying to steal your bags right out from under you.

In LA/SF/NYC and Berlin almost all public restrooms for men are some level of destroyed.

How do you get people to care about the commons and stop destroying things just to be dicks?

Please figure out how to design that kind of city.

Re: New Cities

#573

Post by SeoxyS »

sama wrote: post #78
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…

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.

I think simply banning private car ownership in cities might be a good idea. It'd change the entire incentive system to focus more on building strong public transportation. We'd still have taxis / Uber / on-demand self-driving cars for when that's the most convenient option, of course.

Re: New Cities

#574

Post by rtpg »

devinhelton wrote: post #58

The list of high-level questions is missing the most important question: how do you bootstrap the economy? There are plenty of awesome locations in the United States that have cheap land with great geography, but that have no jobs. The reason people flock to cities with such insane real estate prices is because that is where the jobs are. This is where Y Combinator could play an interesting role though. Could you ima…

You build housing and commercial stores at time. Have one major transit line into some major city.

The stores, you get department stores and the like. Lower rent than downtown but relatively easy access. Maybe one parking silo for people who come via car. Make it nice.

The housing will slowly fill because of the transit line, rent could be much cheaper than downtown.

Office developers will at one point just put the offices in the nice area.

This is the strategy used by rail companies in the greater Tokyo area since the beginning of time and it works great. Giant shopping centers with good mass transit connections will get a lot of people on weekends (even if it's at the end of a line). Walkable housing nearby. Etc

Re: New Cities

#575

Post by freehunter »

collyw wrote: post #389
freehunter wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and no one wants to go back to the pre-GPS days.

I got the map out the last time I was in the car. Far quicker than waiting for my phone to get a GPS lock.

I don't even want to know what kind of phone you have if unfolding a map, tracing and memorizing your route, and folding it back up is quicker than a GPS lock. On any phone I've had since 2009, GPS lock has been instant.

Re: New Cities

#576

Post by xkcd-sucks »

greggman wrote: post #572

I have a feeling these ideas won't be popular but ... On top of wanting an exciting city with affordable housing and good public transportation. I want to live in a city where I feel safe. Safe from physical harm, safe from theft, safe from bad police, safe from being spied on, safe to participate in "quirky" things. Tokyo is partly that city. I can go to strange fetish clubs, burlesque, punk rock, cosplay, etc and n…

On the other hand, Japan and Singapore are not good places to be if you want to be "safe from bad police."

Re: New Cities

#577

Post by panic »

How should we measure the effectiveness of a city (what are its KPIs)?

Why is measuring a city using "KPIs" a goal of this study? The effectiveness of an entire city cannot be captured by a few numbers. Chasing metrics can easily leave you blind to reality.

Re: New Cities

#578

Post by megablast »

BurningFrog wrote: post #325
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 were built in much more unregulated ways, without planning commissions, neighborhood meetings, zoning and other bureaucracy. Just people filling their own needs on their own property.

And they were built in the golden age before cars, which have ruined everything.

Re: New Cities

#579

Post by kctess5 »

greggman wrote: post #572

I have a feeling these ideas won't be popular but ... On top of wanting an exciting city with affordable housing and good public transportation. I want to live in a city where I feel safe. Safe from physical harm, safe from theft, safe from bad police, safe from being spied on, safe to participate in "quirky" things. Tokyo is partly that city. I can go to strange fetish clubs, burlesque, punk rock, cosplay, etc and n…

I understand that Tokyo is like that in large part because of very strict laws against actions like what you describe. Turns out very strict punishment is a good deterrence, but some might argue that the ends do not justify the means. There's no free lunch.

Re: New Cities

#580

Post by rtpg »

Nav_Panel wrote: post #261
rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #26

There is an example of a player of SimCity creating the optimal city which consisted of a reusable grid of components ensuring everyone had access to work and services within a reasonable distance from their homes [1]. There were a lot of assumptions that went into it - including perpetual access to water and a completely flat layout - but it at least seemed to validate the belief I have had that a city at heart simp…

I agree with your point but I have one nitpick. > unlike the American expectation that city centers feature enormous skyscrapers that pack people like sardines Most skyscrapers in Manhattan at least are either for commercial use or feature large apartments/luxury condos (designed to solicit foreign investment). Average urban joe working a nebulous media job does not live in a skyscraper, although they may work in one…

Mass transit making distances more manageable without a car, mixed zoning means that there aren't as many areas that are just offices, and areas that are just apartments

If all offices are spread around the city , then there's nothing special about the apartment next to the office. Of course the area could just generally be nicer...

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