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New Cities

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: New Cities

#611

Post by rahimnathwani »

nine_k wrote: post #100
humanrebar wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Property in uninteresting cities is very cheap, because nobody wants to be there. Many more people live in 'uninteresting' cities than 'interesting' ones. They're cheap because of the relatively big supply, not necessarily because of the lack of demand.

This is interestingly not exactly so. Large cities have disproportionally higher share of population. Compare these areas with equal population in the US: http://www.businessinsider.com/half-of-the-united-states-liv... Worldwide, situation is funnier, 50% of population lives on 1% of the land: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3389041/Where...

Popular != Populous

More people have kostabis than have picassos. Does that make kostabi more popular?

Re: New Cities

#612

Post by akovaski »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #602
rando18423 wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hong Kong is fucking awesome to get around. Why not moving sidewalks like they have there with the Midlevels Escalators? I used that to walk from Midlevels to Central every day and loved it.

Hong Kong has a population density of 6,544 people/km^2. The United States has a population density of 35 people/km2.

NYC has a population density of 10,831 people/km^2.

San Francisco has a population density of 7,124 people/km^2.

I'm not sure what point you were trying to make, but I don't think anybody really wants to plan the rural areas of the US in the image of Hong Kong.

Re: New Cities

#613

Post by [deleted] »

mikerichards wrote: post #557
robotresearcher wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that will never happen in America. It happens a lot in New York City, and other dense urban areas in the US.

Where besides NYC? Nowhere. Americans like their cars. They like to drive. America is not the collectivist/statists that represent modern HN...which is pretty sick. Hackers are anti-establishment! Hackers are not conformists that defer to government minders!

[deleted]

Re: New Cities

#614

Post by brett40324 »

ativzzz wrote: post #531
brett40324 wrote: post #523

This research is a waste of resources unless most basic needs of citizens becomes free as in freedom and price. For that to happen, global retail franchises, as well as the major players in countless other service industries are going to have to be rejected by our newly realized cities. They should be rejected unless they are willing to donate extremely large proceeds and services to the city. If they comply, they st…

> This research is a waste of resources unless... Your vision of anti corporatism will be hard to realize in today's developed world, but this is the exact kind of use of resources that humanity needs. Would you rather YC reinvest their profits into making more money like most business do? Or invest their profits into answering questions about humanity and its potential future that are unanswered? Also, would you rea…

My so called vision is not based on notions of anti corporatism. It is a method to actually fund such a massive undertaking of a new city, without turning it into a huge shopping mall dystopia owned by the top 1%.

Im sure the research will confirm that its a bad idea to put walmart, mcdonalds, and starbucks on a spaceship. The research will also confirm that if xyz company wants a spot on this (spaceship city?) The price will be the same as in my vision.

To conclude, it is a waste of resources if they dont realize the need for distributed power, wealth, and health amongst the people. A huge waste. But its not wasteful if we colonize space one day..youre kidding me.

Re: New Cities

#615

Post by prawn »

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…

Something that also doesn't help with a lot of intersections is dense street parking (blocks line of sight for approaching traffic). It's problematic in cities and getting worse in suburbs. The street I grew up on, was generally empty of parked cars making it a great place to ride or skate in the 1980s. Now, that same street has loads of parked cars - people have second cars, use the street instead of their garage, or their adult children have cars.

Roundabouts would also drastically help many US cities currently relying on all-way stops.

Re: New Cities

#616

Post by speeder »

hueving wrote: post #539
justinator wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Cars are on a pedestal not only because of convenience and speed, but because they're the lowest common denominator. The lowest common denominator? I don't own a car, and I'm sure many other people in my city don't either, so no: it's not the lowest common denominator for us: walking is. Cars are themselves very expensive and require a massive amount of infrastructure to function. Look around a city and think of al…

>They've replaced everything else because their massively profitable to produce. That's the most ridiculous justification I've heard for anything. A thousand dollar piece of toilet paper is also massively profitable to produce, but nobody would buy it. People buy cars because they are useful. If you think most people don't enjoy the freedom they get from owning a car, you are living in a bubble. I work with people th…

I am from Brazil. Here around 1950 the government deliberately gave priority to roads over railroads and rivers as a way to attract car factories, hoping to get their taxes and create employment.

Currently in Brazil the laws about import cars are extremely draconian, and taxes are overall sky high, crappy local made cars are frequently 2 times the EU or US price of the same, but higher quality model.

People still get in terrible debts, paying sometimes interest that totals several times the principal, to buy cars anyway, not because they are useful, but because frequently they are the only choice. For example in Rio de Janeiro, because of the Olympics, the government deliberately canceled public transportation routes connecting poor areas to the touristic areas, forcing people of poor areas to use cars, specially because parts of the route are impossible to cross on foot (mountains with no hiking trails, with the passage being road tunnels)

Or that for the world cup, the government declined several train proposals in favour of making "light train over road" routes, where you just build gigantic roads on pillars and place buses on them.

Re: New Cities

#617

Post by jdavis703 »

galdosdi wrote: post #371
curryst wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Changing the way cars function inside the city is only part of what would need to change. Near me things just aren't laid out well for pedestrians. It would take me about an hour to walk to the nearest grocery store (not counting corner stores, because all they sell is junk food). Biking should be much shorter, though I can't say I've ever tried. We would need to stop the trend of having a small number of large store…

> The other thing worth mentioning is that bikes/pedestrians can go anywhere cars can, but the opposite is not true. Your statement is only true for low speed roads. At higher speeds, it is impossible or unsafe for anyone to use the road unless they are also going at an equally high speed. So in practice, cars do NOT function as a lowest common denominator, but actively drive out other means of transportation because…

There's nothing that stops setting the speed limit on a highway to 25 MPH and allowing non-motorized transit. In San Francisco they did that to a highway along the waterfront, and vehicular traffic still moves fine.

Re: New Cities

#618

Post by brett40324 »

niels_olson wrote: post #604
brett40324 wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with this approach. Whos gonna pay for 100,000 outlandish salaries? If they all only earned 10 usd an hour....You do the math.

I think you're missing the point. No one dreams of paying developers $10/hr to live in Detroit. The salaries are high legitimately. But the quality of life per $ in SF is questionable. I have a friend who manages 500 engineers and can afford a 3rd story walk up loft next to an elevated freeway.

Nope. I got the point just fine.

Re: New Cities

#619

Post by rsync »

rwhitman wrote: post #357
athenot wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cars in tunnels is a great idea, just like the subway: burry it so as to not impact life on the surface. Unfortunately, it is very expensive to operate that way. The easiest tunnels to build are the ones Paris did for their subway a century ago: dig up the soft limestone under the street, lay tracks, close it up. But you still need to deal with ventilation (especially for non-electric cars), fire suppressant, evacuat…

I've thought about this. My thought has been, bump the street level up one story to create a pedestrian / bicycle promenade and move building entrances to the second floor. Keep the existing street below intact, with parallel parking etc. Essentially build a boardwalk above a commercial street, so that traffic can flow below. (Though for ventilation purposes, it would be best if most cars at street level were electri…

"I've thought about this. My thought has been, bump the street level up one story to create a pedestrian / bicycle promenade and move building entrances to the second floor."

This (sort of) already exists in Minneapolis (and to a much smaller extent, St. Paul and Duluth) courtesy of the skyway system.[1]

It's very well done and has created a completely separate urban ecosystem overlaid on top of the existing, street level, downtown.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minneapolis_Skyway_System

Re: New Cities

#620

Post by eropple »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #182
curryst wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Changing the way cars function inside the city is only part of what would need to change. Near me things just aren't laid out well for pedestrians. It would take me about an hour to walk to the nearest grocery store (not counting corner stores, because all they sell is junk food). Biking should be much shorter, though I can't say I've ever tried. We would need to stop the trend of having a small number of large store…

> It would take me about an hour to walk to the nearest grocery store (not counting corner stores, because all they sell is junk food). There's a bigger issue here. Suppose the grocery store was 10 minutes away. You'd still need to drive there, because how are you going to get the food back to your house? I have lived carless and had to make many independent trips per week to buy food. Being able to do it all at once…

I can carry a full week of groceries home in one of these (from a grocery store a 15 minute walk away):

https://www.amazon.com/UTG-Environment-Molle-3-Day-Deploymen...

(Sometimes if I'll buy eggs I'll carry those in a separate bag. How difficult.)

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