Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Plans for a new city in the American desert

cnn.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 268 posts

Re: Plans for a new city in the American desert

#51

Post by boomboomsubban »

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…

Dubai? Not really something to emulate though. Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taipei also kind of fit.

Re: Plans for a new city in the American desert

#52

Post by simonh »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #49

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

The Chinese ghost city stories were largely unfounded. There was a supposed 'ghost city' near my wife's hometown in China, but it's now a thriving city full of people. The thing is building and kickstarting something like that takes time. The facades and roads go up first, but it takes months to get all the homes made liveable and get the basic utilities up and running, then ramp up the population.

Re: Plans for a new city in the American desert

#53

Post by GDC7 »

"Build it and they will come" is fascinating but hasn't even worked for Dubai, and the Emirates have poured into Dubai way more than 400B since they decided that they'd open themselves up to the world.

Dubai development started in 1980s.

Still today Dubai is made up of Westeners who made money in their home country and they relocated there blinded by the lights and the promise of an "endless summer" (matter of fact it gets chilly in winter and I hope you like 120F on the regular during the summer).

A city spurs up, you can't just build it and hope that people will come, it's too big of a project.

Me thinks this is a PR move to get his name out there and use as a hook to get some fundraising for some more sensible project.

Re: Plans for a new city in the American desert

#54

Post by spoonjim »

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…

Daybreak in Utah is really good.

Re: Plans for a new city in the American desert

#55

Post by lprubin »

zozbot234 wrote: post #48
lprubin wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you compensate the developers' losses in revenue with tax breaks, how does it shrink the supply?

Re: Plans for a new city in the American desert

#56

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

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.

Most of that cheap land you are seeing available in the US is not close to what you'd consider farmland.

Consider the location of the 100th meridian as it somewhat bisects the continent. West of that line, you cannot really grow anything without irrigation. East of that line, and to some extent there's enough rainfall that stuff will grow on its own, albeit not optimally.

Most the cheap available land you will find in the US is west of the 100th meridian, and is dry largely inorganic dirt.

As for the cities, you may not be aware of this, but the southwest (and perhaps western) US is in year 21 of a drought that rivals the worst of the last 1200 years, and there is no sign that the situation is likely to improve in the next century or so.

Re: Plans for a new city in the American desert

#57

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

simonh wrote: post #52
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #49

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

The Chinese ghost city stories were largely unfounded. There was a supposed 'ghost city' near my wife's hometown in China, but it's now a thriving city full of people. The thing is building and kickstarting something like that takes time. The facades and roads go up first, but it takes months to get all the homes made liveable and get the basic utilities up and running, then ramp up the population.

Cool. Thanks for setting the record straight.

That makes perfect sense.

Re: Plans for a new city in the American desert

#58

Post by refurb »

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…

Singapore doesn’t harshly punish to maintain its level of cleanliness. There is plenty of littering. They just have a massive army of cheap foreign labor to constantly clean.

Re: Plans for a new city in the American desert

#59

Post by spankalee »

It's exciting to see a new ambitious project like this. America definitely needs new cities to help with housing abd environmental problems. I have a few concerns though:

Location: We need new cities in there north add climate change ramps up. Desert doesn't sound great. And new cities need to be built in low population states to balance out the Senate. Wyoming, Montana, the Dakotas, WV would be best. Otherwise the country continues to become more dysfunctional. Up north there's underutilized Amtrak lines too.

Local Transportation: autonomous cars are cool, but are still space inefficient compare to mass transit. A new city is an amazing opportunity to build mass transit more cheaply with cut-and-cover tunnels. You can also plan for commercial transportation with delivery tunnels and below ground docks. These are the kinds of things you can't easily add to an existing city and should be the focus.

Regional Transportation: Where's the airport and how does it connect to the city? Will there be a central train station? How do carless residents reach regional attractions like state/national parks and recreation areas?

Parks: It's nearly impossible to add large parks to a new city, but they immensely improve quality of life. A new city should be designed around large central parks and neighborhood parks. You also need to have a green belt surrounding the city to prevent sprawl.

Density: SF density isn't it. SF is mostly a suburb west of Van Ness. Shoot for Paris.

Industry: People need jobs. Where are the light industrial areas and how do they integrate with the city so they're not blighted pollution centers? Will they be transit connected so people don't need cars?

Re: Plans for a new city in the American desert

#60

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

smitty1e wrote: post #44

Hopefully the Southwest is ruled out. That region is wildly over-populated for the amount of water available.

There's still plenty of water in the SW for residential purposes. At least 70% of the water use is for commercial agriculture, an idea hatched in the early 20th century after two of the wettest decades in the last 1200 years. People living in this part of the world is not so much of an issue; growing lots of crops (especially high-water-use ones like alfalfa, rice, almonds) is.
Post reply on HN