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

The Rise of “Movie-Set Urbanism”

strongtowns.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 209 posts

Re: The Rise of “Movie-Set Urbanism”

#121

Post by alistairSH »

rayiner wrote: post #80
alistairSH wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you fellow Restonite? If so, "Hi!" RTC and the current major development is an interesting case... RTC predates the expansion of the subway system, so drive-to urbanism was, as you suggest, a reasonable option given other constraints. Now that the Metro is (almost) expanded past Reston to the airport, there is (was?) an opportunity to build a true human-scale urban environment (at least within the designated deve…

I don’t think Metro in Reston actually solves very much. The silver line gets you to the airport, Tyson’s, Arlington, and DC. But many if not most people who work in Reston are going to be working in and around Reston or Loudon county. What is the public transit situation for getting to a school from any of the new Reston developments? I think you’re also correct that the development around the train stations are dys…

Agree - the Metro by itself doesn't help, it just served as the trigger to allowing massive redevelopment (with zoning and density changes).

Re: The Rise of “Movie-Set Urbanism”

#123

Post by bluGill »

atombender wrote: post #116
lnanek2 wrote: post #98

He complains it is all parking, but there's solutions to that. Here in Santa Monica there's a whole row of public parking buildings a few blocks from all the popular downtown areas (beach, pier, 3rd street promenade, mall, etc.). So if you shell out the money, you can compress the parking into one block along the otherwise active walkable downtown area. In this case the developer must have just calculated it's cheape…

"Walkable" doesn't mean you can't walk (although it sometimes means that, too, of course). By most measurements, walkability refers to a pedestrian's ability to reach amenities such as grocery stores within a short time (e.g. 5 minutes). By that metric, almost all of Manhattan is extremely walkable. Manhattan does have many isolated "deserts" where you can find yourself surrounded by just residential buildings (parts…

If 99% of your trips cannot be reasonably made by walking you don't think to walk for that last 1% either

Re: The Rise of “Movie-Set Urbanism”

#124

Post by bluGill »

pkroll wrote: post #108
mattrp wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that Santana Row is particularly well done... but I think the author is reminiscing for something more like downtown Palo Alto. What he misses is a few things: a) Palo Alto can hold onto its old town feel because it’s literally the epicenter of Facebook, google, sand hill road and Stanford university. Some random town in Florida isn’t going to have all that. B) in places like Florida, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Hous…

In Chicago, is the link between crime and lack of access to decent produce one way, or the other? Nobody wants to put grocery stores (or most stores) in high-crime areas.

Hard to say. Most people who I've seen speculate tend to conclude that both are dependent variables and the cause is something else. (generally something along the lines of poor people making bad choices - whatever bad choice means to the group speculating)

Re: The Rise of “Movie-Set Urbanism”

#125

Post by Animats »

The trouble with "mixed-use development" is that an apartment building does not generate enough business for its ground floor shops. Which is why many of them are vacant. Or turned into low-value places like nail salons.

Re: The Rise of “Movie-Set Urbanism”

#126

Post by bluGill »

leviathant wrote: post #92
kop316 wrote: post #42

I wish the author would hit the non-walkability a bit harder. To get from one section to another, cross a street. To get from one side to another, you have to cross several streets. There is one area that did the same thing where I live (The Greene Town Center). I cannot simply think of why I would want to live there, and I was their target demographic! I really can't walk around inside of The Greene without having t…

I first encountered this kind of shopping center in the suburbs of Philadelphia. Main Street at Exton struck me as incredibly strange - it's a strip mall dressed up to look like an urban downtown, right down to parallel parking spots on the street. Once you do park, it is actually fairly walkable. A couple of years later, after having moved to Philadelphia, there was something I wanted to grab at a store in Main Stre…

Racism is the wrong cause. The mall probably doesn't own the land between the mall and sidewalk, so it is someone else's problem. The city who most likely owns and controls the land doesn't report to the transit system and doesn't care about it - local voters might vote for transit but they are voting from the idea of getting "other people" (note a race thing) out of their car for either environmental or traffic reasons.

The mall developer didn't ask for them because the idea of useful transit doesn't even occur to them. Most places they build a mall can't have any useful connection to transit so they don't even think about how thing might be better with it.

Re: The Rise of “Movie-Set Urbanism”

#127

Post by WorldMaker »

mc32 wrote: post #3

I’m not sure this is totally a rip from Hollywood or a kind of modern Potemkin city. I see this in old districts too. Facade in the front parking in the back. Strip malls are the inverse. With strip malls it looks ugly but you can tell at a glance if there is parking. The older form you don’t know till you drive around the back on a typically one-way street. The modern take is like the Emeryville Bay Street shopping…

> I’m not sure this is totally a rip from Hollywood or a kind of modern Potemkin city.

There's certainly an interesting amount of cross-pollination from Hollywood. The ur-examples of districts built this way remain the idealistic Seaside, FL [1] and Celebration, FL [2], both of which have different bits both directly and indirectly of DNA/influence from Walt Disney's original super-idealist EPCOT city [3] ideas/ideals (not to be confused with the park that later inherited that name).

Seaside and Celebration are interesting too because they themselves have been used as movie sets influencing things the other direction. Most notably and effectively, Seaside, FL is the main set of the movie The Truman Show, lending a lot of the meta-weirdness to that movie "naturally" just in how Seaside, FL very much is.

(Fun anecdote: A neighborhood in my own city has some connections to the same developers/planners of Seaside, FL, some of the same meta-movie set feel, and it was a "requirement" by my parents when I went condo shopping to not even look at condos in that neighborhood because they knew I would never stop with Truman Show jokes/gags if I lived there.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seaside,_Florida

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celebration,_Florida

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPCOT_(concept)

Re: The Rise of “Movie-Set Urbanism”

#128

Post by bluGill »

danans wrote: post #100
lotsofpulp wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of those are benefits that come from high density living. But while they might say they like those benefits, most people will choose the benefits of low density living, such as more space (quarter acre lots with detached garages and front and back yards and 2,000+ sq ft interiors). Not to mention the benefit of being able to segregate children into different schools by socioeconomic status, by restricting differe…

> But while they might say they like those benefits, most people will choose the benefits of low density living, This is heavily dependent on one's conditioning. I grew up in a late mid-century low density suburb - nothing like the exurban sprawl you see today, but still very far from walkable. I instinctively moved from that to high density older neighborhoods as an adult. At least at the moment the trend tends to b…

People want it all: 100 acres in the middle of downtown, with great suburban schools nearby. Don't forget about various shopping, parks, lakes, or whatever else your preferred lifestyle wants. Depending on your situation in life you will choose from the different available compromises.

Note I said available compromises. Legal zoning rules often prohibit some of the choices. In most suburbs you cannot buy a house within walking distance of shopping - so if great schools are important you may be forced to do without great shopping.

Re: The Rise of “Movie-Set Urbanism”

#129

Post by bluGill »

Animats wrote: post #125

The trouble with "mixed-use development" is that an apartment building does not generate enough business for its ground floor shops. Which is why many of them are vacant. Or turned into low-value places like nail salons.

Very true. I estimate you need 15-20 floors above ground floor shopping to fill all the spaces. This based on observations that in Paris (4-5 stories) there is a block of ground floor shopping and then 3-5 without. Since I'm not an expert on Paris (never been there only seen picture and read reports) take that with some salt...

Also most apartment developers don't know how to rent commercial spaces. So some ground floor spaces are vacant because it was only put in to allow the apartments above and so it isn't actually possible to get a commercial lease. (commercial leases allow a lot of remodeling and have other terms different from the standard residential lease, so anyone looking that a commercial lease will refuse the space)

Re: The Rise of “Movie-Set Urbanism”

#130

Post by bluGill »

Nasrudith wrote: post #9

Reminds me of Facadism as part of the larger pattern of cargo culting trends in development to try to gain the benefits of the "new way" without deeper changes resulting in nothing really different. On the parking issue and related housing shortages I wonder how viable an attempted rail primary based housing development project to a major city would be in the US for NIMBY dodging. Apparently that is fairly common in…

The can only work if there are already lots of trains - or will be. Which is to say it can only work if you can use the train to get other places you want to go. If you ensure the train goes to some sort of existing mall, a couple different modern grocery stores, a nice park, and a large job center: you have a chance.

Grocery stores are very important to this. Everybody needs access to them. They are also a low margin business that seeks out locations with low rent - the railroad probably needs to have a special deal on commercial rent if you put in a grocery store to ensure this is met. A proper business plan should consider what other things get a special rent rates as a loss leader to get people on the train.

Note that in no case is zero cars the goal! Everybody will get their stuff delivered on a truck, and the trash goes out the same way. Likewise there is always a need for plumbers, both as residents and day workers. Some couples will find the train doesn't work for one of the pair. So you make sure it is possible to drive - you just ensure the train is so convenient and cheap that most people don't.

Post reply on HN