New Cities

During this period artists and musicians took advantage of the cheap rent and renewed New York's status as cultural center, rebooting the gentrification process. The same thing was going on in Portland 15 years ago, where a lot of musicians and writers I knew at the time had insanely low rent, and incredible communities of like-minded people with a lot of free time. There may be other factors that contribute to why some cities take off this way and others don't, but the depression/rejuvenation cycle seems to have a momentum of its own.

Generally, the largest difference is that we just zone 90% of what we zone as mixed use, and let the market decide what it’ll be.

The United States is less aware of this issue due to high rates of migration, and higher birthrates in certain subpopulations.

The nuclear family is a brand new social experiment of the 20th century, and one of the primary causes in the decline of the production of people. Without traditional support networks, women have to choose between 24/7 baby-care and not having children. Daycare is extremely expensive, and in fact not the ideal environment for a 3-month-old. The traditional notions of a trust-based larger family unit (siblings, grandparents, aunts) and community-unit are non-existent in the modern urban environment.

Even without the issue of children, most people struggle for connection and meaning in their lives more-so than before. They enjoy fewer intimate relationships, and spend less time with people they love or trust.

So if you are designing a new city, design it around fostering genuine communities, and is inclusive to all ages and educational backgrounds. My ideal city would be composed of mini-villages, each mini-village centered around communities of a few dozen families, sharing a courtyard "public" to the community+associates.

It would be an environment where I wouldn't have a bitcoin-based smart contract to 'enforce' something that my neighbor would do anyways.

In general, the city would aim to minimize total commute / on-the-road time for as many people as possible.

It would be a city where work is co-located with child-care for young mothers, who can take 30 minute breaks, walk-over, and breast-feed. This means completely different things for zoning. This would mean work would also not happen in a context completely isolated from rest of life: Perhaps the "work day" would last 10 hours, but with 3 hours of interruption for family, food-preparation, etc. This doesn't mean people would "work at home", or the "workplace would be full of kids", there are innovative ways to combine the two -- which was the natural state of things only a century ago.

Perhaps each person would make less money, but we'd need to spend less as well, giving each other the things one is now forced to buy in a city. It would be an environment where one could have 4-day workweek, perhaps taking two afternoons off, so men would be more present in their families.

I grew up in a suburb of Chicago. I could walk to two grocery stores, but each took 30 minutes each way. I also grew up across from both my grade and middle school, a horse ranch, a gym, and a massive park.

I loved my childhood because we could play full field soccer games, rugby, football (American), etc. However, if my parents wanted to get anything you had to drive.

Most people on HN don't appear to realize what it's like growing up or living outside of the west or east coasts of the U.S. or Europe. It's not that it was built for cars, it was built for farms and agriculture, nothing is wrong with that either.