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New Cities

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Re: New Cities

#581

Post by greggman »

nostrademons wrote: post #138
zephjc wrote: post #25

Look to how Tokyo does things. A few takeaways: - mixed use zoning: reduce requirement for long trips by mixing many compatible types of commercial with residential, and remove single housing type developments. Also, allow many smaller apartment complexes mixed with single family houses, instead of segregating housing types. - street design: No more hierarchical/dendritic street layouts. That is, no more dead-end str…

> No more hierarchical/dendritic street layouts. It's worth playing some Cities:Skylines (which has a fairly accurate traffic simulator, particularly with the Traffic++ mod) to understand how the road hierarchy came into being. Or, for that matter, trying to drive through a grid-based city like Manhattan or SF. You get very large traffic jams. The problem is intersections, and particularly intersections where traffic…

Tokyo has many intersections with over/underpasses. The 2-4 lanes in the middle go over or under the intersection. The outer lanes connect to the intersection.

That said Tokyo has plenty of traffic.

Re: New Cities

#582

Post by rtpg »

Practicality wrote: post #477

Well, if we're going pie-in-the-sky, my perfect city: 1. Scales traffic by distance from downtown, IE: a. Autobahn type speeds outside of city limits (90+mph) b. Expressway speeds connecting major sections of the city with dedicated public transport (45-80mph) c. Bicycle/small car speeds connecting (15-30mph) local districts d. Walking to specific destinations within an area 2. Automated solutions for each speed (exa…

Sounds like banning cars in the city center would get most of what you want

Re: New Cities

#583

Post by greggman »

kctess5 wrote: post #579
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.

It's possible it's strict laws but I doubt it. It seems cultural. People in the west actually enjoy destroying things and being dicks for fun. Prank calls, ordering pizzas for strangers is practically a rite of passage. Nearly every teen movie has some segment about doing something bad and getting away with it (bad = destruction of someone else's property). Tagging is also seen as a rite of passage. Kicking in bathroom doors. Flushing with your shoes. Clogging toilets with paper is all seen as something that's supposed to be fun to do. Buying dresses, wearing them and taking them back is yet another rite of passage. No one considers that someone has to pay for that stuff. That by doing any of those things you're make the place you live a worse place.

> the ends do not justify the means. There's no free lunch.

What are you referring to? Source? References?

Re: New Cities

#584

Post by greggman »

xkcd-sucks wrote: post #576
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."

Compared to which countries?

Re: New Cities

#585

Post by HillaryBriss »

bagels wrote: post #22

This has been tried before. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_City,_California

Interesting.

I believe I've seen it off in the distance from Highway 395. Always wondered what it was.

Geographically, it's the third largest city in the state. At 200 square miles, it's four times as big as San Francisco. I bet most people in California don't even know it exists.

Here's a different attempt at building a community in the California desert, from decades earlier:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Llano_del_Rio

Re: New Cities

#586

Post by gorkemyurt »

elihu wrote: post #546
gorkemyurt wrote: post #487

Location suggestions anyone? my 3 priorities would be; - close to Silicon Valley and California High Speed Rail - no one should really be living there (no status quo) - has to be close to a body of water (better climate) I think I found the perfect location! Link to Google Maps: http://tinyurl.com/gnzquv3 The exact point where the couple is drinking wine in the picture can be the Dolares park of the new city :)

Your spot looks really good, but according to Google it's a "Wildlife area", so politically it's not likely to be easy to get approval to turn into a city. For me, proximity to Silicon Valley is not a priority. My suggestion is to use land in NW Oregon in the coast range. Most of it is very rugged, but there's some sort-of-flat land in the general vicinity of Saddle Mountain that's currently used to grow lumber. It's…

Another good option! I've always wondered why NW Pacific US coast is very underutilized. How is the climate like there? Pretty much the same as Portland?

I agree with you that there needs to be a University to create a tech hub, but I think that's the easiest to take care of if YC and big tech companies are behind this plan.. You can easily convince big name universities to start satellite campuses or even better you can start your own! UCSF Medical Center at Mission Bay is a perfect example that you can build a world class research center if you pump enough money to it.

Re: New Cities

#587

Post by JoshTriplett »

malyk wrote: post #501
JoshTriplett wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you can take a bus into your city center faster at rush hour. That's exactly what public transit is really good at: getting people to a common destination at a common time. Now, how fast can you get from an arbitrary point in the city to an arbitrary point in the city at an arbitrary time of day?

I just spent a couple of weeks and paris/barcelona and I'd say you could probably do it faster by subway/walking than by car especially when you figure in the cost/annoyance of finding and paying for parking. There's a huge "but" there though. We rode the metro over 30 times in those two cities and never waited for a train for more than 3 minutes. Both cities have trains coming every 4 minutes at all hours of the day…

Europe definitely has better public transit. And parking is a problem in an urban area (though that issue goes away with a taxi or self-driving car).

But I think you're glossing over a fair bit with your description:

> When you can pop into a metro that is ~5 minutes from your flat, be on the train in less than 4 minutes, and be within ~5 minutes walk of wherever you want to be

...assuming that where you want to be is within 5 minutes of a metro station on the same line that's near your house and boarding at that particular 4-minute interval. Most trips between two arbitrary points involve at least one line change, which then involves another around of waiting; depending on the nature of the change, it may also involve a walk between stations. That adds up.

I'd like to have a public transit infrastructure that's comparable in latency to getting into a car sitting in your own driveway, going directly to your destination, and parking in the readily available free parking at that destination. I'd love to not have all the wasted space associated with driveways, garages, and other parking infrastructure. But I don't see a path to that even with European-level public transit.

You mentioned Barcelona, so I pulled up Google Maps, and picked a couple of random points roughly 20 minutes apart (by car) within the city, one of them a major landmark / tourist attraction and the other a residential area. Here's the map: https://goo.gl/maps/VCzEJEn3q3k . 24-35 minutes by car, depending on traffic. 67 minutes by public transit, including 20 minutes of walking, one line change, and 40 minutes of transit.

Here's a second example: https://goo.gl/maps/MWGqrSMsFGp . Directions between an event center and a shopping center, both in downtown and near major transit lines. Much better case for public transit: 29 minutes by transit, with no line change. By car: 12-18 minutes depending on traffic.

At least in the longer wait to travel via transit, if you're used to the trip, you get to read or listen to music, and just watch for your stop rather than the constant vigilance of driving. But that doesn't make up for roughly 2x travel time.

Re: New Cities

#588

Post by zw123456 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #96
zw123456 wrote: post #75

This is a fantastic idea, I would expect no less from YC. A couple of thoughts I have off the top of my head: 1. Design with hyper-loop in mind from day one. 2. Easy access right of way for utilities, most cities bury everything which is silly, there should be an easily accessed common right of way so that fiber, water sewer etc. can be easily accessed for upgrades or repair without having to dig up the streets. 3. C…

> Easy access right of way for utilities, most cities bury everything which is silly, there should be an easily accessed common right of way so that fiber, water sewer etc. can be easily accessed for upgrades or repair without having to dig up the streets. For cable/fiber/telephone/power, overhead was common, though burying is replacing it. But what's the alternative to burying for water and sewer? I suppose in princ…

Some municipalities have put in sidewalks that have removable slabs at each corner or more often.

Re: New Cities

#589

Post by stephengillie »

justinator wrote: post #475
Kalium wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you considered that with infrastructure in place, cars enable an immense amount of individual flexibility? To my mind, it seems somewhat plausible that cars rose to dominance because they enabled individual flexibility for the masses atop pre-existing and extensible infrastructure.

Flexibility? I don't own a car, and haven't for the last decade (and only had a car for maybe a year of my life). This year, I've been driven in a car about four times in > 170 days. So let me talk about flexibility. Think about how much a car costs to buy and own (purchasing, upkeep, insurance, gas, parking, storage) - then put a price on that in hours you work a year. I bet it's a lot! Maybe weeks out of every year…

Having grown up in rural US, where owning a car is a necessity of life - 15 miles to the nearest store on 45mph roads with no sidewalks - and now living within Seattle, it's not quite so bad. Taking 1 bus to another city costs as much as gas to drive there and back, so commuting feels more expensive on top of feeling less convenient.

If you don't live inside a major city, or if you live in a car-friendly area, parking and storing your vehicle is very cheap - often free. Parking and insurance combined may be less than $200/month.

When you have a family, or a business group, traveling by car has the added advantage that the rest of the group is unable to become separated from you along the way. Sorry to sound tautological or pedantic, but it's an often-overlooked point. It's almost like putting your family into a ZIP file - on arrival, everyone will still be in the car, nobody will get lost on the way or take the wrong turn. Like young classmates holding a rope on school outings.

Re: New Cities

#590

Post by HillaryBriss »

baron816 wrote: post #243

I have long had a vision for building a new city-state in a relatively unpopulated part of the world and just allowing millions of immigrants to move there (the tough part would obviously be getting the government that owns that territory to go along with it). Hopefully in 15-20 years, when energy (from solar?) is abundant and cheap, making stuff like water desalination and vertical farming cheap, a place like Wester…

What are some incentives that could be offered to the people who currently inhabit Australia?

How could they be persuaded to believe in such a plan and help carry it out?

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