For the dutch, sure. But architecture begins with the local culture, landscape, environment, ecology, and climate as foundational axioms. The European model has never worked in North America because of vast differences in those conditions.
A Dutch city testing the future of urban life
121–130 of 159 posts
Re: A Dutch city testing the future of urban life
#122>> 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…
I do not think anybody is thinking of corn fields here. But replacing spruce, plaintaint and ornamental chestnut with cherry trees, walnuts and edible chestnut. Instead of having fireball, rhododendron or snowball hedges planting black berries, currants and maybe elderberries. And finally giving families a small allotment garden where they can grow some vegetable. Besides that, it's easily possible (as in: I have don…
> But replacing spruce, plaintaint and ornamental chestnut with cherry trees, walnuts and edible chestnut. Instead of having fireball, rhododendron or snowball hedges planting black berries, currants and maybe elderberries.
Sounds great to the uncritical hearer, but it's a recipe for a rodent and/or bird plague and lots of disease outbreaks. Unless someone is employed to deal with all of the rejected part of the crop. And that's not easy with tree and bush crops.
Re: A Dutch city testing the future of urban life
#123>> 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…
Urban agriculture doesn't have to be monoculture. It's better for the soil to have some diversity anyway. A healthy mix of plants requires more human labor to maintain than an industrial farm of the same area, but for people in cities getting contact time with plants is beneficial in itself.
Re: A Dutch city testing the future of urban life
#124>> 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…
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Re: A Dutch city testing the future of urban life
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe urban agriculture doesn’t work in theory, but in practice the Netherlands already has many regions where productive farms mingle with urban areas. For an example, have a look at a satellite view of the Westland region, directly southwest of The Hague.
I'd add to your comment by emphasising that Westland is a super intensive agricultural area with tons of dense greenhouses, trying to eke out as much production out of a small area as possible (and doing pretty well at it).
Doing so well in fact that they manage to export quite a bit of what they grow.
Re: A Dutch city testing the future of urban life
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
Food-miles sound good, but the reality of modern shipping is that it takes far less energy to move food than grow it. The carbon/energy cost of bringing a plant product from a hot country to a cold country is far less than the energy needed to grow that product in a cold country. That's why nobody grows bananas in new york. We could, but the cost/energy to do so is hugely more than the energy to ship bananas from pla…
In-built into this comment is the implicit entitlement of the globalist consumer: that we should have access to anything we want at any time of year. But that doesn't really need to be the case. Reducing food-miles by feeding people locally-first would drop food-miles drastically, possibly more than other proposals thus far. Minimizing total energy is indeed the name of the game. To do that, we have to recognize that…
> that we should have access to anything we want at any time of year. But that doesn't really need to be the case.
Interesting you should mention that, this was actually the dinner table subject a few days ago when I explained to my kids that what they think is 'normal' has only been the case for a couple of decades at best and that in the not so very distant past winter meant that you were not going to have a whole lot of fresh stuff. They found it quite incredible that you would not be able to buy apples or bananas year round.
Re: A Dutch city testing the future of urban life
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
How many pounds of people can fit in a bus? How many pounds of potatoes? People need vastly more room than produce.
Re: A Dutch city testing the future of urban life
#128>> 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…
The water in the photo at the top of the link is fresh (all of it, even the large lake in the background). They can probably find a way to not use treated water for irrigation.
The lakes are shallow, but they are pretty big.
Re: A Dutch city testing the future of urban life
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bikeable, yes. Walkable.. arguable. If you include public transport with walkable, sure. I haven't found other cities to be particularly less "walkable" than Dutch cities when you take away public transport and bikes. It really depends on what one considers "walkable" if anything.
I think the question here that might lie at the core of the disagreement here might be: what advantages do you think a 'properly' walkable city has, that a city designed for both walking and cycling does not have? (i.e. if walking is not a goal in and of itself?)
Not exactly. Almere is not walkable but it is bikable. The main issue is whether or not bikability can supplant walkability in terms of providing everything an urban area needs to thrive.
For me, walking > biking > cars and you cannot create the same dynamic urban environment if an area is not walkable.
Re: A Dutch city testing the future of urban life
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well my original larger point is that the city we're all discussing here is not walkable at all. And you can't make up for that by saying, "Well I know it's a 1.5km walk through identical rowhomes to the nearest pub, but the fact that you can bike there instead makes it the future of urban living." Almere looks to be a commuter suburb to Amsterdam, where no culture, events, or urban life of any significance takes pla…
Almere is the Dutch equivalent of US suburbs I agree. Obviously America is bloody BIG compared to the Netherlands and the distance between Almere and Amsterdam is smaller so you can use a bicycle. But the concept is the same: a place where middle class people with families live and commute to the city for work and entertainment. Almere is a one off because Flevoland was created. We don't have the space for more Almer…
Flevoland sounds like an Efteling style Dutch theme park dedicated to Guy Fieri