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Plans for a new city in the American desert

cnn.com

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Re: Plans for a new city in the American desert

#21

Post by lprubin »

Bayart wrote: post #11

I feel every attempt at community-by-design bears within it the seed of inhumane horror. Forget about the energy equation of building a city in a desert, what's the on-boarding process for prospective inhabitants ? Putting the price of accommodation sky-high to make sure everybody's in the right tax-bracket (or even earns enough to not pay taxes) ? Going through an interview process to only take in people with the "r…

One idea is an expansion of a law already on the books in many cities. When you create a new building / housing complex (which will be 100% in a new city), you require X% of units to be "affordable housing". I could see the city just increasing the required % and then giving tax credits to developers to offset the lost revenue to them. Given that this city would be built in stages, it will give them time to hone in on the desired percentage.

Re: Plans for a new city in the American desert

#24

Post by ginko »

Bayart wrote: post #11

I feel every attempt at community-by-design bears within it the seed of inhumane horror. Forget about the energy equation of building a city in a desert, what's the on-boarding process for prospective inhabitants ? Putting the price of accommodation sky-high to make sure everybody's in the right tax-bracket (or even earns enough to not pay taxes) ? Going through an interview process to only take in people with the "r…

What's more did any of these planned communities ever pan out? There were plenty projects started in the 20th century alone. Guess Walt Disney's Epcot is the most well known failure.

Re: Plans for a new city in the American desert

#29

Post by wolfretcrap »

mindvirus wrote: post #4

I love the ambition. One thing I've been really amazed about China has been the willingness to tackle big infrastructure projects - building cities like Shenzhen in a few decades and all of the infrastructure projects in the Pearl River Delta in general. I think we need more of that in the west. So I wish them luck - I hope real estate speculation doesn't ruin it. One thing I've noticed with US politics is that thing…

It's mind blowing how much land the US has. I live in India and here finding farmland is not easy to say least, while I see lot of cheap land available in the US all time with much more facilities than a small city in India would have.

I've always wondered why America has not built many more cities with all that available land.

Re: Plans for a new city in the American desert

#30

Post by camjohnson26 »

mindvirus wrote: post #4

I love the ambition. One thing I've been really amazed about China has been the willingness to tackle big infrastructure projects - building cities like Shenzhen in a few decades and all of the infrastructure projects in the Pearl River Delta in general. I think we need more of that in the west. So I wish them luck - I hope real estate speculation doesn't ruin it. One thing I've noticed with US politics is that thing…

I just finished reading The Devil in the White City, which is about the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago and intercuts the story with serial killer H. H. Holmes’ crimes. What struck me most was how the event’s success was far from guaranteed, and it took a mix of national/civic pride, hubris, ambition, and luck to pull it off. We tend to think of massive engineering projects as guaranteed successes and scaling to fill their need, but I think we underestimate how much influence individual people have in pulling these projects off. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Devil_in_the_White_City
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