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Why Tech Moguls Are Obsessed with Building Utopian Cities

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Re: Why Tech Moguls Are Obsessed with Building Utopian Cities

#71

Post by aww_dang »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #64
aww_dang wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe people like their cars and choose to live in places that accommodate them? Personally, I am something of a bicycle extremist and have always found a way to navigate urban/suburban areas. It is something that comes with practice. Eventually you learn how to navigate these areas you felt were impassable. With practice you develop instincts for approaching new areas. I know it will be a bit unpopular at HN, but I…

This doesn’t address the root issue of things being too far from each other. What about all the old, young, and otherwise less mobile people getting around? How does shopping happen when everyone has a 100ft+ setback and you need to carry your groceries and whatnot that much further, for each individual property. The proof of my statement is that you can see a marked difference in the lifestyle of urban Tokyo and Lon…

You make some reasonable points. I appreciate the catch-22.

For me the absolute urban center is just too dense regardless of transportation options. It is nice to have a proximity to it, but even for a bicycle-centric life I prefer more open spaces.

The solution IMHO is to cultivate a pedestrian culture, where individuals create a demand, rather than imposing it on them as a city planner. If it comes to it parking lots can easily be redeveloped.

There's also the option of public transit, but that brings a proximity to the "undesirables" you mentioned.

Above all strip malls, big box stores, modern bridges, overpasses and underpasses are all eyesores for me.

Re: Why Tech Moguls Are Obsessed with Building Utopian Cities

#72

Post by Pick-A-Hill2019 »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #42
ashtonkem wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a general matter, I think Utopianism is a bad idea, and I don’t think we should be sinking huge amounts of resources into giant leaps like this. I’d rather see incremental tweaks in the right direction first, as I think those are far more effective at bringing lasting change. Fundamentally, we’re really bad at predicting the future. Utopian projects involve making big bets on what the future might hold, which make…

Accommodating cars is the most important variable in all places I see. Once you design for accommodating cars, everything is so spread out that it precludes a non-car oriented life. So while you can make commercial streets pedestrian, you can’t change the fundamental fact that everything is too far from everything else to have the necessary foot traffic to sustain businesses. Not to mention the political challenges t…

Then you should take a look at a place in the UK called Milton Keynes. High speed roads (70mph limit) with pedestrians and cyclists seperated by 'Redways'. It comes pretty close to being both car and pedestrian friendly

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Keynes#Grid_roads_and_g...

Re: Why Tech Moguls Are Obsessed with Building Utopian Cities

#73

Post by JamesLeonis »

helen___keller wrote: post #34

Planned communities, organized by the rich and powerful around the latest and greatest in technology or political change, are not novel in the slightest and certainly not unique to tech billionaires. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_community We've been doing this for about the history of humankind, and many of the world's capitals are planned cities. Sometimes it works well and sometimes it does not. For exampl…

Brasilia is a case study in the book Seeing Like a State by James C. Scott. It's a great book that digs into the whole thinking behind such grand plans and why they often fall apart.

EDIT: The quote at the start of chapter 4 (The High Modernist City) captures the Ideology of these blank-slate planners.

> Time is a fatal handicap to the baroque conception of the world: its mechanical order makes no allowances for growth, change, adaptation, and creative renewal. In short, a baroque plan was a block achievement. It must be laid out at a stroke, fixed and frozen forever, as if done overnight by Arabian nights genii. Such a plan demands an architectural despot, working for an absolute ruler, who will live long enough to complete their own conceptions. To alter this type of plan, to introduce fresh elements of another style, is to break its esthetic backbone.

— Lewis Mumford, The City in History

Re: Why Tech Moguls Are Obsessed with Building Utopian Cities

#74

Post by lotsofpulp »

aww_dang wrote: post #71
lotsofpulp wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn’t address the root issue of things being too far from each other. What about all the old, young, and otherwise less mobile people getting around? How does shopping happen when everyone has a 100ft+ setback and you need to carry your groceries and whatnot that much further, for each individual property. The proof of my statement is that you can see a marked difference in the lifestyle of urban Tokyo and Lon…

You make some reasonable points. I appreciate the catch-22. For me the absolute urban center is just too dense regardless of transportation options. It is nice to have a proximity to it, but even for a bicycle-centric life I prefer more open spaces. The solution IMHO is to cultivate a pedestrian culture, where individuals create a demand, rather than imposing it on them as a city planner. If it comes to it parking lo…

>Above all strip malls, big box stores, modern bridges, overpasses and underpasses are all eyesores for me.

They're an eyesore for everyone. But this is one of those situations where the local maxima for individuals results in a local minima as a society. Once you have a car, it makes no sense to not use it. And no one is going to beat big box stores on pricing. So I'm not going to spend 15% extra at my neighborhood store when I can save a ton of money by driving to Costco, with the car I already have.

And I find that anything more than 30min away walking is basically not in walking distance, and in a suburb with large intersections where you have to wait 45+ seconds for light changes and cross large intersections, it's very easy to justify just driving. Especially for the old or those with little kids.

I would like to think your solution would work, but I'm at the point of saying it's politically impossible (in a timeframe relevant to a voter's quality of life).

Re: Why Tech Moguls Are Obsessed with Building Utopian Cities

#76

Post by carapace »

Cities are one of the higher art forms, and oldest, the urge to make a great city goes back at least to the Potbelly Hill[1].

[1] Göbekli Tepe "Dated at around 9,500 BC, these megaliths are 5,500 years older than the first cities of Mesopotamia and 7,000 years older than Stonehenge." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe

Re: Why Tech Moguls Are Obsessed with Building Utopian Cities

#77

Post by thatguy0900 »

rjsw wrote: post #49
thatguy0900 wrote: post #3

What a strange thing to pin on tech. Company towns have existed forever, to the point of having laws made about how they can function. Walt Disney and ford also wanted to create a utopia city. I think this is more of a rich man's hobby than anything related to tech moguls at all. Hell, some even establish their own currency https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_scrip#Coal_company_s...

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

"It would not do you much good if you send it down your throats in the form of bottles of whisky, bags of sweets, or fat geese at Christmas. On the other hand, if you leave the money with me, I shall use it to provide for you everything that makes life pleasant – nice houses, comfortable homes, and healthy recreation." wow, what a quote. I feel like this really perfectly encapsulates the attitude behind projects like this.

Re: Why Tech Moguls Are Obsessed with Building Utopian Cities

#78

Post by Dracophoenix »

fennecfoxen wrote: post #55
thatguy0900 wrote: post #3

What a strange thing to pin on tech. Company towns have existed forever, to the point of having laws made about how they can function. Walt Disney and ford also wanted to create a utopia city. I think this is more of a rich man's hobby than anything related to tech moguls at all. Hell, some even establish their own currency https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_scrip#Coal_company_s...

Utopian designs are not just for tech moguls, they're for anyone powerful who wants to reshape society from the top down. But we don't have as many dictators these days, and tech is the hot sector where the money and influence is found.

You mean like every religious and mythological belief system since the dawn of civilization? I'd even argue every individual wants to and does (albeit in small steps) reshape society from the top of whatever rung they're on.

Re: Why Tech Moguls Are Obsessed with Building Utopian Cities

#79

Post by LargoLasskhyfv »

niklasd wrote: post #22

Hamburg build from 2008 on a new district, the HafenCity, a soulless place of concrete, expensive apartments, and chain stores. I recently thought about how great it would have been to try something radical new – like building everything with wood, fantastic public transport, and as little cars as possible. My conclusion was that the only way that realistically could have happend was with subsidies from a billionaire…

Wasn? Ham doch 'ne U-Bahn da!

Have you ever been there at night in the new station at the end of the line, when all the gazillions of bridge spiders are crawling out onto their nets, including the ones over the touchscreens of the ticket ATMs? They are everywhere!

Besides that, one could witness how they inject stinking glue into the sand, to make for sturdier foundations. I wonder how that is working out in the following decades, regarding outgassing into basements, garages and so on :-)

Since seeing that happen around 2:30AM it is 'Pattexdorf' for me.

See also 'Lackdosen-/Klebstoffschnüffeln'

Re: Why Tech Moguls Are Obsessed with Building Utopian Cities

#80

Post by LargoLasskhyfv »

vzidex wrote: post #44
niklasd wrote: post #22

Hamburg build from 2008 on a new district, the HafenCity, a soulless place of concrete, expensive apartments, and chain stores. I recently thought about how great it would have been to try something radical new – like building everything with wood, fantastic public transport, and as little cars as possible. My conclusion was that the only way that realistically could have happend was with subsidies from a billionaire…

> Hamburg build from 2008 on a new district, the HafenCity, a soulless place of concrete, expensive apartments, and chain stores. I find your description here fascinating, because it's exactly how I've described the CityPlace district [1] here in Toronto that was built over the last 20 years, with most development in the last 10. Makes me wonder how common this style of modern, sterile, "ideal" development is in big…

Hmm. Has even more parallels. What was Railway Lands in Toronto was the 'Freihafen' / 'Free Port Zone' in that part of Hamburg, also with extensive railways/switching yards.

Ours should have been almost fully developed by now, at least that is how I remember the countless presentations since about the year 2000. Alas, the economy had a little hiccup, so it is only half complete at most, rather one third.

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