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

A Dutch city testing the future of urban life

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 159 posts

Re: A Dutch city testing the future of urban life

#51

Post by beebeepka »

beembeem wrote: post #49
nostrebored wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But this is fundamentally flaws analysis. Lack of economies of scale mean you have to analyze the production of food bottoms-up. What's the cost of getting the resources needed to each of these individual farms and to support the life of people there? The thing people don't realize is that industrial farming is actually extremely carbon-emission efficient. Even your food coming from a container ship from halfway arou…

Composting and rain water harvesting give you much of what you need. Not much is needed from far away.

No post body was provided.

Re: A Dutch city testing the future of urban life

#52

Post by eecc »

nostrebored wrote: post #48
martincmartin wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not cutting the climate-change impact of food. It's cutting the climate-change impact of food miles. As you say, overall it's making things worse, e.g. increasing the climate-change impact of every other delivery but food.

But this is fundamentally flaws analysis. Lack of economies of scale mean you have to analyze the production of food bottoms-up. What's the cost of getting the resources needed to each of these individual farms and to support the life of people there? The thing people don't realize is that industrial farming is actually extremely carbon-emission efficient. Even your food coming from a container ship from halfway arou…

Uh, what? Please substantiate, I don’t buy such statements at face value

Re: A Dutch city testing the future of urban life

#53

Post by Mo3 »

brailsafe wrote: post #50
Mo3 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I lived there for a year. I think you forget that everyone owns a bicycle, everyone rides their bicycle everywhere, and almost every single street has a separated bicycle lane. There are more bicycle lanes than in any other country on earth (22,000 miles in a country ten times smaller than California ) [1], there's even bicycle highways and intersections. Public transport is exceptionally good as well. Everything is…

As someone who's lived in cities inspired by Garden City, this looks very British (by their own admission) and extremely suburban. So I gotta agree with the parent's observation. The only difference being small streets which inherently slow traffic, and probably better bike and public transit infrastructure, but everywhere has good public transit if it's tiny now. The garden city movement was a giant compromise betwe…

I was not a particular fan of Almere (please refer to jacquesm’s post on details), however, it being a Dutch city, various general benefits of Dutch city design and engineering also apply there - these are what I am really trying to point at.

Almere itself is rather boring and devoid of life. It’s simply artificial land reclaimed from the sea with no history or story to it.

Re: A Dutch city testing the future of urban life

#54

Post by belligeront »

martincmartin wrote: post #43
sandworm101 wrote: post #36

>> Around 60% of Oosterwold is set aside to support "urban agriculture", cutting the climate-change impact of food miles I don't see how this helps. An urban farm is not nearly as efficient as a true industrial farm. They don't have the economies of scale. They are limited as to chemical use (both pesticides and fertilizer) and have to deal with noise complaints. Urban farms are also, nearly universally, fed by potab…

It's not cutting the climate-change impact of food. It's cutting the climate-change impact of food miles. As you say, overall it's making things worse, e.g. increasing the climate-change impact of every other delivery but food.

It's people that have the highest impact milage. We can pack food tightly into a truck and they don't mind waiting when the packing takes some time.

We can't easily pack humans more densely into trucks, so reducing their miles traveled has a much bigger effect (and if the distances are shorter they can also walk/bike/bus instead of single occupancy vehicle).

Re: A Dutch city testing the future of urban life

#55

Post by yvoschaap »

DonHopkins wrote: post #31
jacquesm wrote: post #8

To give a Dutch perspective: Lots of Dutch people would not be found dead in Almere (founded in '76), for a long time it was basically a satellite city of Amsterdam where people went to sleep. Then in the mid 90's it started to change: companies realized that the daily traffic jam to Amsterdam in the morning and to Almere in the evening was a major obstacle, so why not relocate the company to Almere? And this caused…

I found an area of Almere that has a cluster of really weird unique architecture from around 1987 along De Realiteit: Google Street View: https://www.google.com/maps/@52.3921571,5.2180409,3a,90y,176... (look up and down De Realiteit to see many freaky houses) Polderblik: http://polderblik.nl/ Campus (1987) -- Vertical Red Shipping Containers: https://www.architectuurgidsalmere.nl/almere/campus Cargo (1987) -- Yellow…

Arestreet in streetview 2009 https://www.google.com/maps/place/Aresstraat+21,+1363+VJ+Alm... walk one step forward, and you time machine into 2021!

I think the architecture has more to do that every individual plot allowed owners their own design & development.

Re: A Dutch city testing the future of urban life

#56

Post by jltsiren »

Mo3 wrote: post #33
imilk wrote: post #30

It's interesting - but it's hard for me to see this being the future of urban life when most of the city looks entirely suburban (not very walkable), separated from the main commercial area without bars/restaurants/shops in their own sub-neighborhoods. I would expect a key part of future urban life would include one of the most important parts of current urban life; walkability and a harmonious melding of commercial,…

I lived there for a year. I think you forget that everyone owns a bicycle, everyone rides their bicycle everywhere, and almost every single street has a separated bicycle lane. There are more bicycle lanes than in any other country on earth (22,000 miles in a country ten times smaller than California ) [1], there's even bicycle highways and intersections. Public transport is exceptionally good as well. Everything is…

Urban areas are not just walkable but walk-centric. They are built under the assumption that most people don't move faster than 4-5 km/h. Places that want to attract people must be close to each other in local centers, or people don't go to them.

Bicycles are more suburban than urban. Because they allow people to move flexibly at a relatively high speed, they encourage suburban structure, where things are spread out over a larger area. They are functionally similar to cars, but on a smaller scale.

Re: A Dutch city testing the future of urban life

#57

Post by jacquesm »

yvoschaap wrote: post #55
DonHopkins wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found an area of Almere that has a cluster of really weird unique architecture from around 1987 along De Realiteit: Google Street View: https://www.google.com/maps/@52.3921571,5.2180409,3a,90y,176... (look up and down De Realiteit to see many freaky houses) Polderblik: http://polderblik.nl/ Campus (1987) -- Vertical Red Shipping Containers: https://www.architectuurgidsalmere.nl/almere/campus Cargo (1987) -- Yellow…

Arestreet in streetview 2009 https://www.google.com/maps/place/Aresstraat+21,+1363+VJ+Alm... walk one step forward, and you time machine into 2021! I think the architecture has more to do that every individual plot allowed owners their own design & development.

Very neat, thank you for posting that.

Almere still does quite a bit of that, for instance, it was the first municipality where they allowed 'tiny houses', though, truth be told what they are selling those for you might as well buy a normal house.

https://www.funda.nl/koop/almere/huis-88999896-alseidenstraa...

Re: A Dutch city testing the future of urban life

#58

Post by mellavora »

MomoXenosaga wrote: post #34
throwaway6734 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US has somewhat similar problem: flood insurance is heavily subsidized by the federal government so the market doesn't remotely factor in future flooding risks into housing prices. There have recently been plans to raise prices but since Florida is such an important state to Federal elections there's a massive political hurdle

Imagine every American east coast city flooding at the same time. That's what would happen in the Netherlands if the levies break. At least Florida can be abandoned in a worst case scenario and the US would continue to function.

Florida doesn't really have many evacuation routes. In a worst case scenario it isn't just the land which gets abandoned.

Re: A Dutch city testing the future of urban life

#59

Post by stouset »

belligeront wrote: post #54
martincmartin wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not cutting the climate-change impact of food. It's cutting the climate-change impact of food miles. As you say, overall it's making things worse, e.g. increasing the climate-change impact of every other delivery but food.

It's people that have the highest impact milage. We can pack food tightly into a truck and they don't mind waiting when the packing takes some time. We can't easily pack humans more densely into trucks, so reducing their miles traveled has a much bigger effect (and if the distances are shorter they can also walk/bike/bus instead of single occupancy vehicle).

Regardless, the relative price of food is usually a reasonable proxy for the amount of energy that went into its production. If the food from the urban farm is more expensive than equivalent food from an industrial farm, it probably took more energy to produce (and consequently probably released more greenhouse gases during its production).

Re: A Dutch city testing the future of urban life

#60

Post by beaconstudios »

belligeront wrote: post #54
martincmartin wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not cutting the climate-change impact of food. It's cutting the climate-change impact of food miles. As you say, overall it's making things worse, e.g. increasing the climate-change impact of every other delivery but food.

It's people that have the highest impact milage. We can pack food tightly into a truck and they don't mind waiting when the packing takes some time. We can't easily pack humans more densely into trucks, so reducing their miles traveled has a much bigger effect (and if the distances are shorter they can also walk/bike/bus instead of single occupancy vehicle).

> We can't easily pack humans more densely into trucks

We basically can, with decent urban transit and rail services.

Post reply on HN