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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

#111

Post by dougmwne »

ginko wrote: post #24
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.

Barcelona's Eixample comes to mind as a success with its 520 uniform housing blocks and 260,000 residents.

Re: Plans for a new city in the American desert

#112

Post by jdavis703 »

kiba wrote: post #37
lprubin wrote: post #21

Earlier 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…

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.

In practice I don’t think this works for an green field city. Filtering takes decades to occur. In the meantime new housing will always be more expensive than a low-income worker can afford. If the city wants service workers they’re going to have to subsidize their initial housing.

Re: Plans for a new city in the American desert

#113

Post by larsiusprime »

Animats wrote: post #108

Oh, no, he's been reading Henry George. Check out Fairhope, Alabama, which has George's single land tax system. "Everybody Works but the Vacant Lot". What are the big skeletal towers with a few plants hung on them supposed to do?

Fairhope has experienced quite a bit of mission drift from it's original plan.

A better example would be Houston in 1911: https://twitter.com/larsiusprime/status/1427107150053183505

Or if you want a really good and thorough modern empirical study on the effects of land value tax, this paper from Denmark from 2017: https://www.zbw.eu/econis-archiv/bitstream/11159/1082/1/arbe...

Re: Plans for a new city in the American desert

#115

Post by larsiusprime »

recursivedoubts wrote: post #65

Henry George is a forgotten hero of american history, swept under the rug by today's corporate conservative-v-liberal punch and judy show: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_George When he died 100,000 people showed up at his funeral: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_George#Death_and_funeral Can you imagine anyone showing up at an economists funeral today, except to heckle? It's unfortunate that this project mixe…

Yeah as a Georgist I find this super-city plan pretty confusing. I mean if you're going to build a super-city go ahead and implement LVT, but it feels a bit quixotic to me. You could take all that money and put it into training the next generation of assessors to fix problems of chronically under-assessing land and you'd do much more immediate good for the world and spur much more development.

Re: Plans for a new city in the American desert

#116

Post by Karrot_Kream »

bserge wrote: post #16

Why would anyone move there? You need work to attract workers. Why would any company move/start there? Middle of the desert smh. Why not build it underwater and get rid of all the pesky ethical/moral laws, allow any biotech research and free experimentation on humans?

Building human-comfortable areas in a desert is quite environmentally friendly, given a source of water (and I don't want to brush this one under the rug; it's actually fairly difficult).

Things about a desert that make energy use lower:

- Evaporative cooling can decrease cooling needs. Using a fan or an evaporative cooler is much more feasible in dry environments.

- Hot days and cool nights mean it's fairly simple to store thermal energy and use that for cooking, water heating, area heating, and/or clothes drying (if you want to actively heat your clothes) at night

- Lots of sun, so solar energy is highly viable. That means lighting can be done through solar energy.

- If the area is windy, fairly easy to ventilate homes just through outdoor wind and maybe an E/HRV if necessary

High humidity areas are really difficult to cool because after a certain Relative Humidity level in the air, fans just stop being effective due to evaporative cooling being insufficient. ACs were originally invented as a method of dehumidification. That said, growing crops in these environments can be a challenge (you can certainly grow aeroponically in greenhouses, but that's energy use, so the numbers need to be crunched) and using transport to fetch water and crops could make the whole project non-viable. There is potential for using solar to desalinate but the water itself needs to come from somewhere.

Re: Plans for a new city in the American desert

#117

Post by yongjik »

This doesn't sound like a serious business proposal. Just consider one example:

> The building features elevated water storage, aeroponic farms and an energy-producing photovoltaic roof that allow it to "share and distribute all it produces."

In other words, this building is going to be freaking expensive: (1) Upper floors of a skyscraper is probably the most expensive place you could store water in. (2) There's a reason why we're not buying cabbages and avocados from aeroponic farms now - they're much more expensive than traditional farming. (3) If you have a city in the middle of a desert, why would you put solar panels on top of a building, instead of right next to the city?

Also, there's no mention on what kind of industry and jobs the city could attract - which isn't surprising given the tone of the article.

Re: Plans for a new city in the American desert

#118

Post by hakfoo »

spankalee wrote: post #59

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 c…

Why not pick an old Rust Belt town, plane it smooth, and start over?

If you boost density substantially, you might only need a portion of the current land area (simplifying the acquisition and clearing process).

Maybe you can even use the existing population base to help bootstrap the economy. I could see making some sort of offer for people to sign over their land (with decrepit buildings and worn-out infrastructure) for highly subsidized or free units in the newly built city.

Re: Plans for a new city in the American desert

#119

Post by energybar »

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…

Reston, Virginia ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reston,_Virginia#Planning_and_...

Re: Plans for a new city in the American desert

#120

Post by eloff »

yongjik wrote: post #117

This doesn't sound like a serious business proposal. Just consider one example: > The building features elevated water storage, aeroponic farms and an energy-producing photovoltaic roof that allow it to "share and distribute all it produces." In other words, this building is going to be freaking expensive: (1) Upper floors of a skyscraper is probably the most expensive place you could store water in. (2) There's a re…

Every apartment building I've lived in over 20 stories puts their water reservoir on the roof. The reason is to let gravity distribute it when a tap is opened.
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