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Why Tech Moguls Are Obsessed with Building Utopian Cities

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Re: Why Tech Moguls Are Obsessed with Building Utopian Cities

#61

Post by hderms »

ashtonkem wrote: post #37
niklasd wrote: post #22

Hamburg build from 2008 on a new district, the HafenCity, a soulless place of concrete, expensive apartments, and chain stores. I recently thought about how great it would have been to try something radical new – like building everything with wood, fantastic public transport, and as little cars as possible. My conclusion was that the only way that realistically could have happend was with subsidies from a billionaire…

As a general matter, I think Utopianism is a bad idea, and I don’t think we should be sinking huge amounts of resources into giant leaps like this. I’d rather see incremental tweaks in the right direction first, as I think those are far more effective at bringing lasting change. Fundamentally, we’re really bad at predicting the future. Utopian projects involve making big bets on what the future might hold, which make…

Presumably, even if one thought that utopian projects were a good idea, experimenting with incremental improvements first would likely inform utopian projects better. Provided a utopian project has little outright chance of success, deferring them until we have more information about what solutions work (as well as what problems we'll need to solve in the future as these things change) seems wise.

There may be a break-even point where the efficacy of incremental improvements is too low, requiring us to make larger leaps to make progress, but we're clearly not there yet.

Re: Why Tech Moguls Are Obsessed with Building Utopian Cities

#62

Post by thatguy0900 »

ardy42 wrote: post #56
thatguy0900 wrote: post #3

What a strange thing to pin on tech. Company towns have existed forever, to the point of having laws made about how they can function. Walt Disney and ford also wanted to create a utopia city. I think this is more of a rich man's hobby than anything related to tech moguls at all. Hell, some even establish their own currency https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_scrip#Coal_company_s...

> What a strange thing to pin on tech. Company towns have existed forever, to the point of having laws made about how they can function. The idea of building a utopian city doesn't need to be a brand new thing for tech moguls to have a greater interest in creating them than other types of contemporary moguls. Also, I don't think a company town is really the same thing as a utopian city. In my mind a "company town" is…

They dont really seem too, though. Theres a lot of examples of rich people building towns even in these comments. Is there any evidence tech moguls do it any more frequently? As I said, company towns were so common large parts of them were outlawed. You can say alot of those were primarily predatory attempts to make money off workers, but no way a decent portion werent also a bored ceo trying to make a pet project dream town.

Re: Why Tech Moguls Are Obsessed with Building Utopian Cities

#63

Post by ajmurmann »

niklasd wrote: post #22

Hamburg build from 2008 on a new district, the HafenCity, a soulless place of concrete, expensive apartments, and chain stores. I recently thought about how great it would have been to try something radical new – like building everything with wood, fantastic public transport, and as little cars as possible. My conclusion was that the only way that realistically could have happend was with subsidies from a billionaire…

I think a large source of problems with cities actually comes from planning too much. Cities aren't larger houses. They are living things that need to be able to evolve. Most governments make the mistake of only interacting with that proves by introducing rules that stifle change or by planning the entire thing or large portions and getting it wrong or at least in more successful cases building something that cannot adapt when the world changes.

Making it easier to build new things but keeping the shake of control any one entity gets small would likely yield much better results. That's how parts of older cities that we now love were build in the first place. Individuals build their buildings on fairly small lots, we didn't have developers build entire neighborhoods.

I recommend the book Order Without Design and/or its corresponding podcast for great insights: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/order-without-design

Re: Why Tech Moguls Are Obsessed with Building Utopian Cities

#64

Post by lotsofpulp »

aww_dang wrote: post #60
lotsofpulp wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Accommodating cars is the most important variable in all places I see. Once you design for accommodating cars, everything is so spread out that it precludes a non-car oriented life. So while you can make commercial streets pedestrian, you can’t change the fundamental fact that everything is too far from everything else to have the necessary foot traffic to sustain businesses. Not to mention the political challenges t…

Maybe people like their cars and choose to live in places that accommodate them? Personally, I am something of a bicycle extremist and have always found a way to navigate urban/suburban areas. It is something that comes with practice. Eventually you learn how to navigate these areas you felt were impassable. With practice you develop instincts for approaching new areas. I know it will be a bit unpopular at HN, but I…

This doesn’t address the root issue of things being too far from each other. What about all the old, young, and otherwise less mobile people getting around? How does shopping happen when everyone has a 100ft+ setback and you need to carry your groceries and whatnot that much further, for each individual property.

The proof of my statement is that you can see a marked difference in the lifestyle of urban Tokyo and London and other places where the layout was made pre automobile. You can make all the bike lanes you want, but as long as you’re still placing 4+ lane roads all over the place, it’s not going to bring you the type of day to day life you can experience in dense areas.

>Maybe people like their cars and choose to live in places that accommodate them?

I don’t think people like their cars, so much as the knock on effects of a car oriented lifestyle. Obviously, people like detached single family houses with garages and front and back yards. Who wouldn’t. The ideal would be having this in the middle of an urban core. Obviously that’s not realistic.

But the real benefits of cars come with pricing out people you may not want you and your family to deal with. You can separate into various socioeconomic classes, make it uneconomical for homeless and panhandlers to hang around since everything is so far apart. It’s definitely a valid solution to the situation in NYC/SF/SEA/PDX. I myself don’t see any other solution for a person than moving to a car oriented suburb.

Re: Why Tech Moguls Are Obsessed with Building Utopian Cities

#65

Post by ardy42 »

thatguy0900 wrote: post #62
ardy42 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What a strange thing to pin on tech. Company towns have existed forever, to the point of having laws made about how they can function. The idea of building a utopian city doesn't need to be a brand new thing for tech moguls to have a greater interest in creating them than other types of contemporary moguls. Also, I don't think a company town is really the same thing as a utopian city. In my mind a "company town" is…

They dont really seem too, though. Theres a lot of examples of rich people building towns even in these comments. Is there any evidence tech moguls do it any more frequently? As I said, company towns were so common large parts of them were outlawed. You can say alot of those were primarily predatory attempts to make money off workers, but no way a decent portion werent also a bored ceo trying to make a pet project dr…

> They dont really seem too, though. Theres a lot of examples of rich people building towns even in these comments. Is there any evidence tech moguls do it any more frequently?

The OP didn't really establish it (e.g. take an inventory of all Americans building utopian cities, and see if tech moguls are over-represented), but I wouldn't be surprised if it was true. The combination of experience with disruptive innovation, engineer's syndrome, and power would seem like a recipe for these kinds of cities, though a less productive one than near-absolute power over some polity.

Also, a lot of the towns mentioned in the comments pre-date tech moguls.

Re: Why Tech Moguls Are Obsessed with Building Utopian Cities

#66

Post by chadlavi »

atlasunshrugged wrote: post #52
chadlavi wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a vast oversimplification on my part, but I suspect what you observed was because the European cities are run by governments that are more inclined to serve the needs of citizens, and US cities are run by governments that are more inclined to serve business interests.

Generally I agree, although I think there's also some weird other effects going on - I don't think it's in any businesses interest that there are tons of homeless people or drug addicts in SF or pushing prosecutors not to get them off the streets for instance. But yes, as a longtime Nevada resident who saw the harm casinos did to local populations, I can definitely say that cities often do what makes the most tax rev…

The real estate situation in SF is a huge cause of homelessness. The Pharma industry is a huge driver of drug addiction. Those are both things that aren't necessarily within the purview of the city government (the real estate one is, I guess), but they're situations that could be ameliorated with government action.

Re: Why Tech Moguls Are Obsessed with Building Utopian Cities

#67

Post by thatguy0900 »

ardy42 wrote: post #65
thatguy0900 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They dont really seem too, though. Theres a lot of examples of rich people building towns even in these comments. Is there any evidence tech moguls do it any more frequently? As I said, company towns were so common large parts of them were outlawed. You can say alot of those were primarily predatory attempts to make money off workers, but no way a decent portion werent also a bored ceo trying to make a pet project dr…

> They dont really seem too, though. Theres a lot of examples of rich people building towns even in these comments. Is there any evidence tech moguls do it any more frequently? The OP didn't really establish it (e.g. take an inventory of all Americans building utopian cities, and see if tech moguls are over-represented), but I wouldn't be surprised if it was true. The combination of experience with disruptive innovat…

>Also, a lot of the towns mentioned in the comments pre-date tech moguls.

That's kind of what I'm saying. Rich people making their own dream cities is probably as old as rich people and cities. Ig I could see an explosion of home automation tech giving more people a reason to try, though

Re: Why Tech Moguls Are Obsessed with Building Utopian Cities

#68

Post by ardy42 »

thatguy0900 wrote: post #67
ardy42 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They dont really seem too, though. Theres a lot of examples of rich people building towns even in these comments. Is there any evidence tech moguls do it any more frequently? The OP didn't really establish it (e.g. take an inventory of all Americans building utopian cities, and see if tech moguls are over-represented), but I wouldn't be surprised if it was true. The combination of experience with disruptive innovat…

>Also, a lot of the towns mentioned in the comments pre-date tech moguls. That's kind of what I'm saying. Rich people making their own dream cities is probably as old as rich people and cities. Ig I could see an explosion of home automation tech giving more people a reason to try, though

> That's kind of what I'm saying. Rich people making their own dream cities is probably as old as rich people and cities. Ig I could see an explosion of home automation tech giving more people a reason to try, though

Not all rich people, though. It might be interesting to characterize the one's that have built a utopian city, and see if they conform to some common type. Maybe they share important characteristics with modern-day "tech moguls"?

Re: Why Tech Moguls Are Obsessed with Building Utopian Cities

#69

Post by cryptoquick »

thomasedwards wrote: post #51
vzidex wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hamburg build from 2008 on a new district, the HafenCity, a soulless place of concrete, expensive apartments, and chain stores. I find your description here fascinating, because it's exactly how I've described the CityPlace district [1] here in Toronto that was built over the last 20 years, with most development in the last 10. Makes me wonder how common this style of modern, sterile, "ideal" development is in big…

Really feel like they could have tried about 5% harder with the name. At least the brand doesn’t have to be soulless even if the place is.

Yeah, it sure shounds like a CityPlace
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