Earlier quoted context omitted.
> energy equation of building a city in a desert Solar and nuclear work great in deserts. I'd be more concerned about water.
How do you cool a nuclear reactor without water?
Sewage
Plans for a new city in the American desert
121–130 of 268 posts
Re: Plans for a new city in the American desert
#122Earlier 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.
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.
One alternative is to pay workers enough to afford housing. It’s surprising how rarely people mention that idea. It’s very likely thee d of “worker+housing shortage” which is just a very roundabout way to say “massive inflation.”
Re: Plans for a new city in the American desert
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
Framed like that it’s hard to imagine choosing one or the other and the answer might be intractable. A more interesting question might be: What would it take to align policies around housing for everyone with policies around increasing the prices of homes such that the two things are strongly positively correlated?
Housing cannot simultaneously remain affordable and “be a good investment” (meaning increase at a rate faster than general inflation).
One might also question should land even be sold. Something like 20 or 30 year lease with re-evaluation of value at end might make more sense. Ofc, this would potentially lead to losing homes, but on other hand would allow redevelopment for increased density regularly.
Re: Plans for a new city in the American desert
#124I'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.
Daybreak [1] is just a big suburb. It's a far cry from a self-sufficient city built from the ground up.
Re: Plans for a new city in the American desert
#125Why 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 t…
What is viability of storing thermal energy for cooking? Out-side very few specific scenarios like sous-vide proteins, the temperatures generally used are too high for efficient energy transfer.
Re: Plans for a new city in the American desert
#126When I see Billionaires trying to "improve society" I spend my time trying to figure out the angle so that they not only don't spend any of their own money, but become far richer even if they fail spectacularly.
Re: Plans for a new city in the American desert
#127This 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…
Basically all water storage in NYC is rooftop storage. The water system needs to maintain a pressure gradient, and converting cheap electricity to potential energy is much more economical than running twice the number of pumps to meet instantaneous demand.
Re: Plans for a new city in the American desert
#128This is somewhat off topic from the article, but why did the web designers for this site choose such an awful font for the title?
Re: Plans for a new city in the American desert
#129If they're considering the Appalachians it's not so much they want to build a city in the desert, as a city anywhere they can get cheap land and government to leave them alone.
Re: Plans for a new city in the American desert
#130I 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…
> energy equation of building a city in a desert Solar and nuclear work great in deserts. I'd be more concerned about water.
Water is the biggest challenge. All the city's waste water will need to be recycled. That's doable, but to compensate for evaporation they might also need to pipe in water from coastal desalination plants if they cannot harvest enough rain. That's a lot harder.