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.
Plans for a new city in the American desert
101–110 of 268 posts
Re: Plans for a new city in the American desert
#102Given how zoning and urban design tend to have been done in US cities -- that is, very badly -- I'm not opposed to this. It even sounds intriguing, but I have a hard time personally finding a city in a desert to be attractive, even if the urban design is great.
Deserts can be great for living in once you manage the heat through shading and wind management. Desert sand is very amenable to conversion into rich loamy soil through taking in lots of organic matter in surprisingly few years. Living in such a climate can be made attractive. The challenge is clean, potable water, which is really embodied energy. The evaporation of such water happens at a ferocious rate out in the o…
That's a rather odd way of framing it. For one thing, having higher density seems like a rather obvious environmental good, since it means less total natural area disrupted. If you refuse high density in some area, the people who would've lived there don't just disappear; they go live in some other area, probably lower density, in a way that hurts the environment even more.
And while there's obviously life in desert ecosystems, there's substantially less of it compared to most other ecosystems -- you could say the same thing you said of grasslands or forest or what have you, except it'd be much more true.
Re: Plans for a new city in the American desert
#103"The cleanliness of Tokyo, the diversity of New York and the social services of Stockholm: Billionaire Marc Lore has outlined his vision for a 5-million-person "new city in America" and appointed a world-famous architect to design it" "The mission of Telosa is to create a more equitable and sustainable future. That's our North Star." I admire their ambition, but they are underestimating people's preference for inequi…
What would it take for the middle class homeowners of America to prioritize housing for everyone rather than the price of their home?
'Local German officials, like local leaders everywhere, seek bigger budgets to provide more and better services to their constituents. What’s different about Germany is that the way to get bigger budgets is to increase local populations. And, as Professor Buettner says, “Ultimately, to get people, municipalities will need to support housing.”
The result is a system of incentives that is the opposite of “fiscal zoning”—the US practice of zoning land in ways that maximize local governments’ income and minimize their costs. In places with high sales taxes, such as Washington State, leaders zone more land for shopping centers. In places where residential property taxes are capped, such as California, they zone less land for homes and more for offices. In affluent suburbs, they often zone land for houses on large lots, excluding low-income people.
Maximizing property values is such a central concern of local government in the United States that Dartmouth economist William Fischel developed the notion into an entire political theory. His “homevoter hypothesis” holds that local governments are almost single-mindedly focused on maximizing real estate values, because homeowners typically vote their home values in local elections. German jurisdictions gain financially by maximizing population, not house values, and because renters outnumber homeowners in the country, homevoters are not the dominant electoral force in local German elections. Renters are.'
https://www.sightline.org/2021/05/27/yes-other-countries-do-...
Re: Plans for a new city in the American desert
#104Re: Plans for a new city in the American desert
#105I 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
#106Re: Plans for a new city in the American desert
#107I'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
#108What are the big skeletal towers with a few plants hung on them supposed to do?
Re: Plans for a new city in the American desert
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 o…
The problem is "affordable housing" isnt actually affordable for many. I qualify for it in the city I live in, and despite working full time for significantly above minimum wage, the rent on a 1bd apartment through this program would be about 75% of my take-home income.