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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

#221

Post by neilparikh »

lprubin wrote: post #21
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…

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…

Note that this strategy is a bit regressive. The law usually only applies to multi unit housing, and exempts single family housing. But those who live in single family housing are usually are richer than those in multi unit housing, so this essentially makes housing more expensive and difficult to build for the lower income people.

Re: Plans for a new city in the American desert

#222

Post by danielheath »

jimmaswell wrote: post #217
QuarterReptile wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jaywalking is a bizarre example. The criminalization of normal human movement through automotive lobbies and a derogatory slur is hardly a thing we should aspire to. A more worthwhile thing to discuss is the prevalence of people ducking their heads or rushing across streets when cars approach, with a level of embarrassment that would better accompany being caught defecating in the street (well, maybe not in SF.) Our…

There's nothing unreasonable in the concept that people should stay out of high traffic roads where it's not safe.

Their disagreement is presumably with the assumption that "high traffic roads where it's not safe" are a net good that should have been created.

Re: Plans for a new city in the American desert

#223

Post by jessaustin »

mastax wrote: post #5

Looks like that ridiculous city the Saudi Crown Prince is building. The difference is he has money to burn. Good luck finding investors for this.

Real estate developers who can't find enough investors typically come up with some scam like TIF in order to extract funds from local governments with corrupt politicians. This project targets some area were the local government wouldn't have any capital to extract, so this wouldn't be an option. Maybe this billionaire can arrange for some federal-level corruption, like "opportunity zones".

Re: Plans for a new city in the American desert

#226

Post by asiachick »

dragonwriter wrote: post #150
myrandomcomment wrote: post #147

The cleanliness of Tokyo is 100% because of cultural issues, not because the government did anything special. Durning the major 2011 earthquake everything shutdown and you had to walk home. When you went into the “Konbini” (7/11, FamilyMart, Lawsons) in Tokyo there was always a bottle of water left. Why? Because culturally no Japanese would ever buy the last bottle.

> The cleanliness of Tokyo is 100% because of cultural issues, not because the government did anything special Social disapproval over time, including that expressed through government policy, has effect on culture. So, while it may not result particularly from the government doing something immediate to cause the cleanliness, I would be hesitant to assert it is independent of government action merely because it is c…

I'm pretty confident government disapproval has little to no affect in western culture or at least in modern American culture. In fact i'd argue disrespecting authority is part of the west's culture. Break the rules, be my "partner in crime", etc... Those are much less part of Japanese culture.

Re: Plans for a new city in the American desert

#227

Post by greggman3 »

hinoki wrote: post #156
myrandomcomment wrote: post #147

The cleanliness of Tokyo is 100% because of cultural issues, not because the government did anything special. Durning the major 2011 earthquake everything shutdown and you had to walk home. When you went into the “Konbini” (7/11, FamilyMart, Lawsons) in Tokyo there was always a bottle of water left. Why? Because culturally no Japanese would ever buy the last bottle.

This has limits. During coronavirus, people have absolutely no problem buying the last package of masks.

or food

https://photos.app.goo.gl/nBcrVedkokBM2d1F8

Re: Plans for a new city in the American desert

#228

Post by sakopov »

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…

The idea is ambitious but incredibly dystopian because it completely excludes conflicts arising from our innate differences. It's literally a real-world imitation of the Brave New World plot.

Re: Plans for a new city in the American desert

#229

Post by gumby »

myrandomcomment wrote: post #147

The cleanliness of Tokyo is 100% because of cultural issues, not because the government did anything special. Durning the major 2011 earthquake everything shutdown and you had to walk home. When you went into the “Konbini” (7/11, FamilyMart, Lawsons) in Tokyo there was always a bottle of water left. Why? Because culturally no Japanese would ever buy the last bottle.

I have never considered Tokyo especially clean, except right after a typhoon (first time I saw this I was astonished, amd it reminded me of how grimy the city is)

Re: Plans for a new city in the American desert

#230

Post by nostrademons »

jdavis703 wrote: post #112
kiba wrote: post #37

Earlier 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.

If there are more houses built than people who want to live in the city, housing will be affordable for everybody, because an unhoused worker will just buy the vacant unit next door for less if a developer tries to gouge them.

The reason new construction never works like this is because developers only build housing when there's already a severe shortage of housing in the metro area. They respond to price signals, and the price only starts going up when you have multiple bidders bidding for the same home. And why wouldn't they? If they built housing in places that already had an abundance of housing, they're making an economically foolish choice and will go bankrupt. When you observe that developers never build affordable housing, you're observing the effect of selection bias: in a region where there are enough houses for everyone and hence they're affordable to the average worker, developers aren't going to build even more new houses.

You can observe this throughout the Rust Belt: there are more homes than people, so prices are very affordable, but developers would need to be insane to build even more houses (outside of specific neighborhoods or suburbs that are locally hot). Also when you get a macroeconomic crash in the middle of a housing boom: the houses get completed, they sell for dimes on the dollar, but nobody has jobs anymore so they can't afford to buy them,

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