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Plans for a new city in the American desert

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Re: Plans for a new city in the American desert

#41

Post by simonh »

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…

The thing is we don't have the best part of a billion people living in a desolate backward, almost jobless countryside that needed to be funnelled into economically productive occupations over the last 30 years, as China has. Most of our populations are already urbanised. The majority of the people who would live in this city already live in cities.

We do have urban housing shortages and all sorts of demographic problems, I'm not saying a project like this is by necessity flawed, but the motivating dynamics for us are very different from what has been happening in China and SE Asia.

Re: Plans for a new city in the American desert

#43

Post by sokoloff »

jeffbee wrote: post #14

That initial stage isn't very promising. 50000 people on 1500 acres is only about 30 dwellings per acre, not very impressive. You can achieve that density with traditional row houses.

That’s inhabitants per acre. Dwellings is probably just under half of that figure.

Re: Plans for a new city in the American desert

#45

Post by dradtke »

wolfretcrap wrote: post #29
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.

Probably because America has only about a quarter of the population that India has? Also, the ideal of the American homestead or even suburban home is one that doesn't place a high value on sharing space or being close to your neighbors.

Re: Plans for a new city in the American desert

#46

Post by nicoburns »

adventured wrote: post #38

You can't have the cleaniless of Tokyo in a US city unless you're willing to harshly punish people - Singapore style - for transgressions. That won't stand up legally in terms of civil rights. You have to entirely remake the culture to get that outcome, and that's not going to happen. Urban US culture is largely mediocre. The last thing the US needs is another Las Vegas, building another major US city in the desert i…

Yeah, when you start thinking about what you could do for infrastructure in existing cities for $400B then you start realising what a bad idea this project is.

Re: Plans for a new city in the American desert

#47

Post by lprubin »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #35

I'm very curious, have there ever been any "cities from the ground up" projects that don't turn out to be total shit that end up just reflecting the urban planning fallacies of the day? (Looking at you, Brasilia) I mean, all of the cities that are most "livable" in my mind are old cities that were designed before the car and thus have enough density and public transportation to make things both close and also the kin…

Wikipedia has a really interesting world list of "Planned Cities" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_community)

It also has a decent rundown of modern American ones (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_community#Modern_plann...).

You'll have to use your own judgement on a case by case basis if they were successful or not and if they meet your personal definition of master planned.

But I found the lists a very interesting read.

Re: Plans for a new city in the American desert

#48

Post by zozbot234 »

lprubin wrote: post #39
kiba wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this work as this is just rent controlled housing. Better to cut the unnecessary red tape and let developers build more housing. Also, I think penalizing vacant properties would also be a good idea.

I'm curious to hear why you think it doesn't work. I'm not necessarily disagreeing, just would like to know more.

The point is that no matter how much housing you reserve to be "affordable housing", it will still be scarce and thus unaffordable to most. And this kind of well-intentioned red tape often ends up shrinking the supply of housing as a whole, which only makes it even less affordable.

Re: Plans for a new city in the American desert

#49

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

I am not really educated about how things are going now, but, when I was attending school, they used Brasilia[0], as an example of a "great idea that never made it." I have also read about the giant Chinese "ghost cities."

I think that having a reason to be there, is 99% of the incentive to build a city.

There's a reason that almost every city is on a body of water.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bras%C3%ADlia

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