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New Cities

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: New Cities

#281

Post by superuser2 »

ismail wrote: post #265
superuser2 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. With a car, in a place designed for cars, I can go from ideation to grocery store or department and back inside of half an hour. In a place "designed for people" where neither homes nor stores have parking, such an errand consumes an entire afternoon. (Walk to bus stop, wait for bus, take bus to train, wait for train, ride train, walk, etc. Though I suppose it's easier if you can afford to live a short walk f…

The assumption here is without cars cities would be laid out exactly the same. What if there were by laws that every high rise above x floors has y retail space on the ground floor. In this case most of your daily needs would be serviced by a trip down. Once a week/month you may go to a larger store.

In San Francisco and Chicago, I experienced no shortage of tiny, expensive corner stores, restaurants, boutiques, etc. That's the kind of stuff that seems to go into the ground floors of residential towers. The hassle was accessing (the local equivalents of) Target, Kroger, Best Buy, etc.

Re: New Cities

#282

Post by thaumasiotes »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #240
thaumasiotes wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true. But they don't. Safeway has a long-running delivery program, but they sure aren't pushing it very hard. The system in Shanghai, where you might expect delivery to be popular, is that supermarkets operate their own buses which stop near your home. It solves the "the store is far away" problem, but it does nothing for the "I need more food than I can personally carry" problem.

That's called a cart, see above.

No, you can't take a grocery cart on a bus.

Re: New Cities

#283

Post by cardigan »

Largely automated delivery infrastructure - pipes between places, or entry hatches in roofs to inside offices/homes (drone delivery) and hatches within buildings to some storage area within the building are required the way other infrastructure is required, so things can move between people within the city very quickly. Maybe this is also used for garbage management city wide.

Re: New Cities

#284

Post by rdiddly »

ars wrote: post #68
davidw wrote: post #17

I think "old cities" are pretty good too: the kind where they were built for people, rather than cars, and where you could build things without a dense thicket of regulations almost entirely unrelated to safety. Another thing that seems to work well is limiting the amount of up-front large scale projects and growing incrementally. No one can plan for everything ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_pro…

> built for people, rather than cars I wish people would stop with this drivel. There are PEOPLE in the cars. The cities are built for people. A car is a human amplifier - it takes human transportation and carrying ability and amplifies it. A lot of people find this amplification very very useful (parents with children, elderly, people who buy in bulk, etc, etc). Taking it away would be like removing computers becaus…

If computers killed 35,000 Americans a year, your analogy would be valid.

Re: New Cities

#285

Post by jbattle »

superuser2 wrote: post #253
ginko wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone living in a place "designed for people", my trip to the grocery stores means putting on my shoes, walking down the stairs and across the street. The next department store is about 200m down the street.

Is this Manhattan? Because in Chicago I think that describes about 10 blocks (a few hundred staggeringly wealthy people in the most lavish of luxury condo towers). The rest of us have some tiny, price-gouging convenience stores nearby but have to go ~20 blocks for a real supermarket, 4-5 miles to downtown for a Target or Macy's. Taking the train is less of a hassle than parking in the Loop, but it's still a hassle.

I lived in three different apartments in uptown and edgewater and was able to walk to a supermarket within a half-mile. Two of the locations were also close to other general shopping choices. All three were close enough to the El to get us whereever else we wanted to go. Downtown Evanston is similar or maybe even better. I get your point that this model is not common in the US - but I believe that's the entire point of this article - how can cities be designed to be more livable?

Re: New Cities

#286

Post by robertelder »

Something that I've always wondered in relation to city design is why it isn't standard for high-rise buildings to be 50% office space and 50% living space. It's one of those things where I assume there must be a good reason why it isn't done, but I've never been able to find one. It seems like such a huge waste of human resources to force people to commute for hours each day, spending money, wasting gas, lost productivity etc.

Zoning regulations that separated hazardous or noisy manufacturing from housing make sense, but for office work, I can't see why there is a need to keep it separate.

Re: New Cities

#287

Post by tmaly »

Something else I have thought about on this subject. Look at some of these post apocalyptic movies where you have scattered people living in these former cities of glory.

Which cities do the best? Those will access to natural resources and access to water both fresh and salt. We are always going to need fresh water to drink, and boats have been the best low tech mode of travel for thousands of years.

Re: New Cities

#288

Post by baybal2 »

maxerickson wrote: post #187
baybal2 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Green arrow is an additional traffic light signal that lets right turn on red. It is usually computer controlled in big Russian cities

Being able to turn right on a red is the default in the US. (many intersections are posted as no right turn on red though)

The problem is this slows the traffic in urban areas. A simple radar controlled signal solves this

Re: New Cities

#289

Post by thaumasiotes »

hammock wrote: post #237
thaumasiotes wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It would take me about an hour to walk to the nearest grocery store (not counting corner stores, because all they sell is junk food). There's a bigger issue here. Suppose the grocery store was 10 minutes away. You'd still need to drive there, because how are you going to get the food back to your house? I have lived carless and had to make many independent trips per week to buy food. Being able to do it all at once…

Spoken like someone who has never lived in a city. If the store is a 10min walk away, you go a few times a week. And/or you use one of those old lady carts.

Seriously, read my comment. I've lived exactly like that. It's awful.

Re: New Cities

#290

Post by bryanlarsen »

MajorLOL wrote: post #221
chris_7 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have a narrow street, less people drive, and thus there is no issue getting an ambulance through. I see ambulances stuck in traffic on Manhattan avenues all the time (we should put grade-separated bus lanes on all of them, IMO, partially so that ambulances can always get through).

>If you have a narrow street, less people drive, and thus there is no issue getting an ambulance through. Huh? If you limit supply, demand goes down? Your logic would say that the solution to Los Angles traffic problems is to close half the lanes and wait for people to sell off their cars?

Yes. To decrease demand, you limit supply so that the price goes up. This can work dramatically if you increase price high enough that alternatives are cheaper.

In the case of transportation, price is measured in time and convenience as well as dollars.

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