51–60 of 63 posts
Great concept, but no mention of winter, or poor weather. Would be difficult to grocery shop or go far distances in snow or rain. Cities would have to be as compact as possible for public transport to reach everywhere, and that would be difficult to achieve in already existing cities with a lot of legacy infrastructure.
While I'm glad that this topic is getting addressed, that video was pretty difficult to watch. I know it would be unwise to spend extensive amounts of time on each topic in the video, but the way it was cut made it hard to think about the topic before moving on to the next part. Otherwise, this topic is likely what I want to focus my career in at some point, understanding how to improve the ways cities run, given how…
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Of course towers also open up a range of other issues like open space provision, sunlight, separation, street wall heights and setbacks, contributions to improving streets, parks, schools etc. To really be successful it needs an organised planninng approach for each centre
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> See, I'm a "white dude" yet I don't find this statement racist in the slightest. As a white dude, would you have thought it racist if that line had been modified to read: "For a Hip-Hop mogul wearing a half-pound of gold chains around his neck, and $400 basketball shoes on his feet, 'the future of cities' might mean zipping around in a flying car while a robot jerks you off and a drone delivers your bottles of Cris…
The only thing making me hesitant to give a simple yes/no answer is the implication of tieing my example to a "hip-hop mogul wearing a half-pount of gold chains around his neck and $400 basketball shoes on his feet" - are you trying to imply these people are systematically black? And if so, are you trying to imply that most rich black men dress like this? If you are (which I don't think you are), I think you can answ…
> For a rich white dude up in a 50th floor penthouse, “the future of cities” might mean zipping around in a flying car while a robot jerks you off and a drone delivers your pizza. The guy must think people of color are incapable of attaining that level of wealth. Unintentional racism, but racism all the same.
There is insufficient evidence to support that claim.
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I agree in spirit with you, but we should strive not to be reductive about the role of planning in cities. Slums are also unplanned.
I guess I wasn't clear. My point is that planning isn't perfect, and will never solve all problems. An example from my hometown of Ithaca NY: this tiny valley was never built with cars in mind, and because there is a lake to the north and steep hills in every other direction, there are only about 6 ways in and out of Ithaca. Usually this isn't a problem but certain times of day the traffic comes to a complete stop as…
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I guess I wasn't clear. My point is that planning isn't perfect, and will never solve all problems. An example from my hometown of Ithaca NY: this tiny valley was never built with cars in mind, and because there is a lake to the north and steep hills in every other direction, there are only about 6 ways in and out of Ithaca. Usually this isn't a problem but certain times of day the traffic comes to a complete stop as…
There might be a company to fix Ithaca's traffic, but it would be Boring.
/s Actually the solution could come from another EM company in the form of self-driving cars, as it would alleviate congestion just enough for it to stop being a problem anymore. The traffic issue really only focuses on certain chokepoints in and out of the city.
You know the deal: everybody stopped at a series of red lights. Light at the front goes green, first car moves, second car behind it has space to move, and so on. If all the cars were able to start and stop in unison based on the state of the traffic lights then the congestion problems in Ithaca would disappear overnight. We aren't big enough to need (or be able to afford) massive infrastructure projects, and as I alluded to earlier, it probably wouldn't be worth the unforeseen consequences. Not to mention the downtown retailers are still reeling from the Commons reconstruction, which put way too many of my favorite stores out of business.
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I work in Sydney Australia where we are over this hurdle. Key i think is making it a city wide conversation (where is the best place for new housing and how fast is the city growing. Its not just about the existing local residents but the wider community too), showing good examples where towers are part of a nice environment (not just 1960s public housing estates. Vancouver is a good city example who has adopted towe…
Throwing hotel, casino and residential towers on public land isn't about serving the wider community.
http://www.smh.com.au/comment/barangaroo-is-more-insult-than...
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I live in Toronto and this is pretty much how it goes. (The city works in spite of planning, not because of it, generally.) Planners come up with some grand region- or city-wide objectives, with lots of criteria and performance metrics, and then when it gets down to the gritty job of building new stuff, it's all "we don't like it, because it's not what currently exists!" No surprise that the really big development te…
I can say that as it is, the process of development is more like consumer marketing: schedule lots of meetings and interviews that sell people on the idea of accepting development rather than giving them a stake in its success. It encourages confrontational deadlock, a buildup of pressure followed by earthquakes of change, as the developers and government gradually start colluding to strongarm residents when they refuse to budge.
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Yay I'm not the only one! Preserving biodiversity is oft-unstated most important goal of environmentalism. It's our meta-darwinian imperative.
Why would we care about biodiversity? There are only two reasons that come to my mind, and both IMO should be addressed directly: - because it's cool and fun to have all those cute plants and animals around - because biodiversity reduces the chance of sudden ecological collapse that would leave us without food
- Biodiversity helps us understand life better by providing exceptions to dogmas
- Biodiversity is the crowning achievement of this earth and would take along time to recover. We can colonize other planets more easily than we can replicate our biodiversity on them.
While I'm glad that this topic is getting addressed, that video was pretty difficult to watch. I know it would be unwise to spend extensive amounts of time on each topic in the video, but the way it was cut made it hard to think about the topic before moving on to the next part. Otherwise, this topic is likely what I want to focus my career in at some point, understanding how to improve the ways cities run, given how…
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I thought the trick to getting an 82m tower built in Toronto was to propose a 182m tower...
I'm not a transit user, but I thought the YUS (North/South) subway lines were (soon to be?) past their saturation point during rush hours.