22 ms·

I can't say much about mathematics of taxes described in the article, but I always thought that Soviet Union got a lot of it's city planning very much right. Ev

by vvpan 10y ago

I can't say much about mathematics of taxes described in the article, but I always thought that Soviet Union got a lot of it's city planning very much right. Even a small town is built as a relatively tight formation of high-rises, yet leaving plenty of public space and greenery in the middle. The quality of life in the town that I grew up in is super high, because everything one might need: school, hospital, store, swimming pool, park, woods is an easy _walk_ away. The traffic through the town was even disallowed, which opened up a giant traffic-free area for us to play around as kids and elderly to use for socializing and to run their errands. For ease of visualizing here's an aerial photo of said town in early 00s: http://i.imgur.com/sj9t3Jy.jpg http://i.imgur.com/sj9t3Jy.jpg

Something1234 10y ago
Is it still the same way now?
- patmcguire 10y ago
  They've got fewer people, so probably. Outside of the boomtowns and the capital, almost certainly.
- vvpan 10y ago
  It has grown, and more sprawly type of development has been accumulating around it, sadly. This is Moscow region and the population has been growing very fast. Parking space has become an issue as well.
  - lucaspiller 10y ago
    Here in Vilnius parking is an issue two. As I understand (I'm originally from the UK), in an apartment building of maybe 30 units there would be maybe 2 cars during Soviet times, where as now its more like 30 :D The buildings here aren't that big (I went to Kiev a couple of years ago and was surprised how much taller they are) so there is usually just about enough space between the buildings to fit all the cars in. New buildings almost exclusively have underground parking, which is nice to recover the green space.
- arcticfox 10y ago
  If anybody's curious in looking further, the place appears to be Troitsk, Moscow.
indexhtml 10y ago
I grew up in the same town and strongly share your sentiments! I noticed Americans tend to be incredulous when I speak positively about it. Perhaps this is due to the obvious similarity to public housing layouts here and their negative associations, but also from a lack of appreciation (due to lack of first-hand experience of) the benefits that you mentioned above.
- tasuki 10y ago
  What's the town's name?
  - vvpan 10y ago
    Troitsk: https://goo.gl/maps/ZZPWKeFuYCR2 https://goo.gl/maps/ZZPWKeFuYCR2
- vvpan 10y ago
  The very same town?
  - indexhtml 10y ago
    Sorry new HN and didnt see your response but yep lived in Troitsk until the early 90s.
elgenie 10y ago
Sprawl is pretty easy to avoid when car ownership rates are as low as they were in the Soviet Union.
intrasight 10y ago
Town's have totally different economics. My town is fiscally solvent, takes are of it's infrastructure, and doesn't much raise taxes. And we are very spread out, with an average lot size of 2 acres. Small roads are the responsibility of the town. Bigger roads (there aren't many) are the responsibility of the county. I'll claim that the layout of the town doesn't matter nearly as much as the fiscal discipline of the town government. As you scale from town to city, it is too easy for this discipline to break down. Whereas in my town, the town manager has to put up a pretty strong argument to justify hiring another employee or buying a piece of expensive equipment, in a medium to large city I, as a taxpayer, don't have any visibility let alone say, in any such expenditure. Fiscal discipline comes mainly from individuals not wanting to spend their hard-earned money - unless going so is necessary to keep things in their current working order. Once these spending decisions are made by nameless bureaucrats, that personal discipline is lost.
- xenadu02 10y ago
  That's not quite correct... fiscal discipline isn't going to make most suburb-heavy cities in America solvent. You can't cut your way to profitability in the long term, you can only stave off bankruptcy in the short term. The article is saying that mostly-suburb cities are not sustainable. They cost more to build and maintain over the long term than the majority of cities can recoup in taxes. That has little to do with employees, they are mostly talking about straight-line capital costs to dig up the streets and install new sewer lines. Even worse is that many cities grew in a relatively small post-war boom so a lot of that infrastructure will need replacing at the same time. Towns don't typically provide all of water, sewer, storm sewer, and other such services... they might provide water. They can also just dig up everyone's yard to replace what infrastructure they do have because things are more spread out (lost of "wasted" land between the house and road) and far fewer people are disrupted (that also means projects can be done at a slower pace). They also have a much sparser police and fire department, far fewer parks, etc.
  - intrasight 10y ago
    You are indeed supporting my assertion that towns have different economics. Mine is an old suburb (1920s) of a medium-sized city (Pittsburgh). And as I stated, our town is sustainable. We have "more" parks not "fewer parks". Parks require much less maintenance cost than does residential spaces(plus much is done by volunteers). I'll also assert again that how "spread out" things are doesn't matter. If anything, denser clusters will have lower maintenance costs (less digging). So how can we make cities have the same fiscal discipline of towns? We'd have to reverse the land-grab of the cities. Have them split into fiscal units the same size as my town (20K people). Have the managers have to come ask those residence to approve their budget. Same issue with schools. Why does the Pittsburgh city school district spend the same per pupil as the suburbs, but the such worse results? Lack of fiscal discipline.
gohrt 10y ago
Why did that town exist? Why did a small number of people live in that isolated area, instead of closer in to population centers?
- namlem 10y ago
  It's not isolated. In another comment someone from there mentioned that it's not far from Moscow.
- AstralStorm 10y ago
  Said town site is on a communication mainline - railroad. Guess what, US lacks those for what would mostly be called political lobbying reasons. Including light rail and underground rail. Rail is comparatively cheap to maintain compared to roads due to much higher passenger density and construction details. Even a tunnel is cheaper to maintain (not build) than a properly drained, pothole free and soft road.
gedy 10y ago
But isn't this what public housing projects in the US did, and are now considered massive failures?
- vvpan 10y ago
  Well, the theory, as I've heard an urban planner explain in a video, is that the problem with projects is that they are populated by people of exactly the same class. A mixed income/background area is less likely to turn into what projects did. I'm just quoting somebody else here, won't claim that it's a fact.
- taneq 10y ago
  The reason for the US public housing projects' failure is wealth inequality. When your population has a mix of well-off people and very poor people, and you provide super-cheap housing, the very poor people gravitate to it, among them those who are desperate, have nothing to lose, involved in drugs and crime, etc. Once this happens the crime rate goes up, the area feels unsafe to 'normal' people, and anyone who can do so gets the hell out of there. The area turns into a slum and is basically impossible to 'fix' without redeveloping it. I'd guess that in Russia, one of two things happens. Either Russia's wealth distribution is even enough under communism that the rot never sets in, or in practice they're just as much of a slum as the American ones and we're just seeing a romanticized view.
  - sssilver 10y ago
    It was the former.
  - kazagistar 10y ago
    I was born in one of those cities where most housing is in the form of the old communist panelaks. But there is a clear distinction between the nice neighborhoods (5-10 floor buildings, trees and parks filling the sizable spaces) and the shitty ones (20+ floors, densely packed, near interstates, spaced with dirt). The former are a nice place to raise a middle class family, and the latter are crime filled slums.
  - 10y ago
davidw 10y ago
Part of the problem in the US is too much planning, alongside too many subsidies for cars. Look at a zoning map of any city: there's an incredible level of detail about what's permitted where. The local zoning code here in Bend, until recently, had a section on how many parking spots per customer for barber shops. As if, in a competitive market, those businesses couldn't figure out for themselves the optimal amount of parking to pay for to keep their customers happy. Most of Europe is pretty walkable and it doesn't have that 'planned' look either.
- seanmcdirmid 10y ago
  Oh, it was definitely "planned" in the modern era. You can see similar problems to the states in many European suburbs (though not as bad because a lot more planning).
  - davidw 10y ago
    Sure, there's planning there, but not quite as much as the US. I own a flat in a suburb of Padova, Italy. It's in a building with 5 other flats. Next to it are two single family homes, as well as another apartment building with 8 flats. Some of the flats are owned, some are rented. In the US, things get separated out into giant apartment complexes where everyone rents, and single family home districts, where people lose their shit at the mere whiff of a duplex being built.
    - seanmcdirmid 10y ago
      Eh, Swiss laws on zoning would make an American's head spin. There is a huge emphasis on mixed use, but that is planned as well! There are plenty of condo buildings that are owner owned and also rented out! It's just that the USA has plenty of buildings designed for rentals, which is more about the American market than zoning (residential is residential).
      - davidw 10y ago
        Europe is pretty diverse, I guess :-) > It's just that the USA has plenty of buildings designed for rentals, which is more about the American market than zoning (residential is residential). How things are done in the US tends to favor larger developers who can come along and make a bunch of apartments in an area where that has been approved (which tends to be a fairly small portion of the city), rather than a more incremental development style where things slowly transition building by building. This is in large part because of zoning laws that make it difficult to get apartments in many places, so having the means to face the legal challenges is only something those with deeper pockets can handle, rather than a smaller developer who may only wish to develop a few buildings.
cylinder 10y ago
You should check out Stuyvesant Town in NYC. I really like its layout and the lack of cars. It's a good community. I've envisioned building an entire city as a chain of these self contained Stuyvesant Towns.
sologoub 10y ago
Well, they got walkability mostly right, but living in those panel boxes was still not great. I'd never want to go back to that... Personally, I find the 5-8 story setups of cities like Paris, Barcelona or Rome much more appealing - enough density to make all the good things like walkability and local cafes happen, but no blocked out sun (Like in NYC) or need to climb to 20th floor when the elevator gives out for the nth time.
- cameldrv 10y ago
  Having lived in Berlin, which is mostly 5-6 story buildings, I think there's a real sweet spot at this height, perhaps a bit higher if people want larger apartments. This puts enough people in a small area that having good transit, including subways, makes economic sense, and all of the daily essentials are within a block or two. Going higher means you need bigger spacing between buildings in order for the lower floors to get any sunlight, especially in the winter. Bigger spacing between buildings creates a sense of disconnectednes between buildings. At 5-6 stories, you do need fairly wide streets. If you do them like Berlin, you allocate a lot of that width to sidewalks, which are then wide enough for the retail to spill out onto the streets with outdoor displays and sidewalk seating for cafes and bars. It also gives you plenty of room on the sidewalk for other infrastructure like subway stops with adequate width stairwells, bus stops, bike sharing stations, etc. It's also fairly easy to work on underground infrastructure without huge disruption because it runs near the street but under the sidewalk, so normally working on it just means closing off part of the sidewalk. The streets aren't so wide though that they create this cut-off feeling, everything feels continuous.
  - porker 10y ago
    How was the soundproofing in these 5-6 story buildings? I've lived in flats in the UK and had endless problems, from people vacuuming at 6am on wooden floors above my bedroom to sleepless nights from parties, to hearing TV and conversations. I like the idea of 5-6 story buildings and know we need higher density housing, but past experiences make we want to live in a 2-story (semi-)detached house with enough garden to keep the neighbours at a distance.
csydas 10y ago
I live in Russia at the moment and probably the most startling thing is how well planned many of the cities and towns are and how very clearly these cities were not made for cars. While it's a hassle for vehicle traffic because the roads were never designed to handle everyone owning a car, the benefit is that no matter where you live there is a shop nearby for essentials (groceries, clothing stores, repairs, cafe's, etc), transit is readily availble even in the smallest of towns and fairly affordable. I spent time in Pereslavl-Zalessky about 140 km north of moscow and was surprised that even a relatively small town had faster and more regular public transit than most of the cities I've lived in in the US. Granted it all comes with a slight adjustment to get used to some of the holdovers of life in the USSR, but when I lived in Seattle, it used to be if I missed the bus I had to wait ~30+ minutes for the next one home, and I needed to plan whether I'd take a side trip to get groceries or not, adding an additional mile or two to my walk home. Here it's nice to just be able to walk a few hundred meters at most to the nearest store for groceries.
- yason 10y ago
  Any city planned and developed before cars is generally considered very friendly, walkable, and desirable. Europe is full of such cities and they're loved for it. If only planners, politicians and citizens would realise what they have given up just to make it convenient to drive.
  - jdsemrau 10y ago
    Just came back from Tokyo and realized how much I miss riding my bicycle in Singapore. The city is just not made for bicycles. It would increase the quality of living by a wide margin since Singapore is so small.
    - jessaustin 10y ago
      It has been a long time since I was in Singapore, but looking back it isn't obvious why it would be bad for cycling. Obviously one wouldn't use the elevated expressways, but there are lots of other streets of varying sizes with varying amounts of traffic (like Tokyo). Is there a law against taking the lane? Perhaps there just isn't a culture of cycling, so one would be the only one on the road? Just curious...
guard-of-terra 10y ago
Soviet union planned cities are mostly awful. They mandate helluva lot of open space between high-rises which doesn't get any care. It also creates corridors for fierce cold winds to blow. Most of buildings don't have space for commerce making area either as dead as suburbia or blistered with shackles selling stuff. Transit stops are far between and you have to get there thru ice and hail. Roads are few and congested while still getting in your way. http://pora-valit.livejournal.com/4740340.html http://pora-valit.livejournal.com/4740340.html it mostly looks like this It was fine up until the 50-s and then worse and worse with each year (even now)
- krzyk 10y ago
  A lot of open space is great because the wind can blow. When you block the wind you get poor air quality. In Cracow, Poland we have that trouble, there are buildings that block natural wind and the polluted air sits and makes people sick (PM2.5 and PM10 are > 300% their safe levels, see https://map.airly.eu/ https://map.airly.eu/)
  - guard-of-terra 10y ago
    Most of Russian cities are built on a plain (or even better - major river) and they don't have any problems with venting out polluted air. Regular pre-Brezhnev street gaps are more than enough for that. However, most of Russian cities have half of year of virtually winter, with temperature near or below zero celsius. This pretty much makes such apartment blocks torturous/unlivable due to chilling winds if you don't have a car. And if you do, keep in mind that they're not built for that, so lack of parking and congestion are your new friends.
general_ai 10y ago
If your quality of life is determined solely by walkability, then sure, you'd consider it "high". In the USSR things were walkable out of necessity: not everyone had cars. And besides, if you're building a block of high rises (stuffed with tiny 650sqft apartments, for the proletariat) and estimate there will be 1K kids, you might as well build a school, a drug store and a grocery store in the middle. Swimming pool within a walking distance was a rather extravagant luxury, not everyone had that. Shit, I hadn't even seen a real swimming pool until I started college. Woods, sure, that's kinda nice. My point being, you make it sound like every town in the USSR was like that whereas in reality what you're describing sounds like a "unicorn" situation that was rarely encountered in reality. Walkability was about the only thing Soviet urban planning had going for it. Ironically, these days I live in US suburbia within walking distance of a pool, elementary/middle/high school, and a convenience store. And woods too: we pretty regularly see deer in our back yard.
spraak 10y ago
I don't know a better solution in terms of space efficiency, but living in a high rise is so depressing. I prefer to live way out in the woods, but the benefits of what you describe sound great
thatfrenchguy 10y ago
It's the same in most of the eastern bloc, I've always been super surprised at how good the public transit is in Czech cities, and that's because of the high-rises.
woliveirajr 10y ago
OTOH, Brasilia [1], the Federal Capital of Brazil, was 100% planned and included just spaces for cars. Not parking, just roads. Everything is very far apart, and the living part of it (houses, buildings) should consist in mega-blocks that would provide those basic needs: markets, pharmacies, groceries... Didn't work. You need a car for everything. The roads are flooded with cars. The city expanded and a great part of the habitants live very far from the place they work, so it takes a long time to go home. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bras%C3%ADlia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bras%C3%ADlia
tpm 10y ago
Not it didn't, speaking as someone who lives in such a planned part of a city. There are several problems: - the areas for living, for offices, and for industry are disjointed and far from each other, necessitating a lot of travel each day. This was partly understandable for workers in polluting industries, but now it's just a pain. - the 'green' spaces are too big (yes, really), which further increases distances and makes it too expensive for the city to take care of them properly. Furthermore the absence of enclosed communal space (what is sometimes inside the 'city blocks') means that the inhabitants don't feel the green space 'belongs to them'. So they don't feel incentives to care for that space, and they don't. (as an aside, the absence of city blocks is sometimes explained as it should make easier for tank armies to control the area in the event of an uprising or war) - the supporting infrastructure was to be built later than the flats, sometimes much later, sometimes never. That's a problem of the execution, though. I'm not saying it's all bad, but it could be much better.
- drzaiusapelord 10y ago
  >Furthermore the absence of enclosed communal space (what is sometimes inside the 'city blocks') means that the inhabitants don't feel the green space 'belongs to them'. Yeah this. I never liked the "one huge park for everyone in the city" approach. I think the Chicago-style "many parks" approach is superior. In my neighborhood I have four parks within walking distance, seven or eight if you include school playlots. >So they don't feel incentives to care for that space, and they don't. Trash gets picked up quickly in the parks. I do feel a sense of ownership with the closest parks and get pissed when I see trash and promptly pick it up. I think smaller localized spaces do a good job of fighting the 'tragedy of the commons' we see with larger spaces. When something belongs to 'everyone' it really belongs to no one. Sorry but that's just human nature and one of the many reasons communism failed. Not to mention, a lot of those Soviet towns are little more than endless ugly apartment blocks. The idea of a home with a unique design or a single family home with its own yard didn't fit in with the engineer led design of 'everyone lives in efficient boxes.' I find towns like that to be depressing and ugly. I'd rather trade some efficiency for beauty and livability. Top-down approaches get praised by geeks, but ultimately are simply worse than bottom-up approaches many American cities developed from. I'd much rather live in chaotic NYC, LA, or Chicago than 'ultraplanned' cities in Russia or China. Considering how many people we have dying to immigrate here, I suspect wanting those types of lifestyles reflects something in human nature.

by vvpan 10y ago

Something1234 10y ago

Is it still the same way now?

patmcguire 10y ago
They've got fewer people, so probably. Outside of the boomtowns and the capital, almost certainly.
vvpan 10y ago
It has grown, and more sprawly type of development has been accumulating around it, sadly. This is Moscow region and the population has been growing very fast. Parking space has become an issue as well.
- lucaspiller 10y ago
  Here in Vilnius parking is an issue two. As I understand (I'm originally from the UK), in an apartment building of maybe 30 units there would be maybe 2 cars during Soviet times, where as now its more like 30 :D The buildings here aren't that big (I went to Kiev a couple of years ago and was surprised how much taller they are) so there is usually just about enough space between the buildings to fit all the cars in. New buildings almost exclusively have underground parking, which is nice to recover the green space.
arcticfox 10y ago
If anybody's curious in looking further, the place appears to be Troitsk, Moscow.

indexhtml 10y ago

I grew up in the same town and strongly share your sentiments! I noticed Americans tend to be incredulous when I speak positively about it. Perhaps this is due to the obvious similarity to public housing layouts here and their negative associations, but also from a lack of appreciation (due to lack of first-hand experience of) the benefits that you mentioned above.

tasuki 10y ago
What's the town's name?
- vvpan 10y ago
  Troitsk: https://goo.gl/maps/ZZPWKeFuYCR2 https://goo.gl/maps/ZZPWKeFuYCR2
vvpan 10y ago
The very same town?
- indexhtml 10y ago
  Sorry new HN and didnt see your response but yep lived in Troitsk until the early 90s.

elgenie 10y ago

Sprawl is pretty easy to avoid when car ownership rates are as low as they were in the Soviet Union.

intrasight 10y ago

Town's have totally different economics. My town is fiscally solvent, takes are of it's infrastructure, and doesn't much raise taxes. And we are very spread out, with an average lot size of 2 acres. Small roads are the responsibility of the town. Bigger roads (there aren't many) are the responsibility of the county. I'll claim that the layout of the town doesn't matter nearly as much as the fiscal discipline of the town government. As you scale from town to city, it is too easy for this discipline to break down. Whereas in my town, the town manager has to put up a pretty strong argument to justify hiring another employee or buying a piece of expensive equipment, in a medium to large city I, as a taxpayer, don't have any visibility let alone say, in any such expenditure. Fiscal discipline comes mainly from individuals not wanting to spend their hard-earned money - unless going so is necessary to keep things in their current working order. Once these spending decisions are made by nameless bureaucrats, that personal discipline is lost.

xenadu02 10y ago
That's not quite correct... fiscal discipline isn't going to make most suburb-heavy cities in America solvent. You can't cut your way to profitability in the long term, you can only stave off bankruptcy in the short term. The article is saying that mostly-suburb cities are not sustainable. They cost more to build and maintain over the long term than the majority of cities can recoup in taxes. That has little to do with employees, they are mostly talking about straight-line capital costs to dig up the streets and install new sewer lines. Even worse is that many cities grew in a relatively small post-war boom so a lot of that infrastructure will need replacing at the same time. Towns don't typically provide all of water, sewer, storm sewer, and other such services... they might provide water. They can also just dig up everyone's yard to replace what infrastructure they do have because things are more spread out (lost of "wasted" land between the house and road) and far fewer people are disrupted (that also means projects can be done at a slower pace). They also have a much sparser police and fire department, far fewer parks, etc.
- intrasight 10y ago
  You are indeed supporting my assertion that towns have different economics. Mine is an old suburb (1920s) of a medium-sized city (Pittsburgh). And as I stated, our town is sustainable. We have "more" parks not "fewer parks". Parks require much less maintenance cost than does residential spaces(plus much is done by volunteers). I'll also assert again that how "spread out" things are doesn't matter. If anything, denser clusters will have lower maintenance costs (less digging). So how can we make cities have the same fiscal discipline of towns? We'd have to reverse the land-grab of the cities. Have them split into fiscal units the same size as my town (20K people). Have the managers have to come ask those residence to approve their budget. Same issue with schools. Why does the Pittsburgh city school district spend the same per pupil as the suburbs, but the such worse results? Lack of fiscal discipline.

gohrt 10y ago

Why did that town exist? Why did a small number of people live in that isolated area, instead of closer in to population centers?

namlem 10y ago
It's not isolated. In another comment someone from there mentioned that it's not far from Moscow.
AstralStorm 10y ago
Said town site is on a communication mainline - railroad. Guess what, US lacks those for what would mostly be called political lobbying reasons. Including light rail and underground rail. Rail is comparatively cheap to maintain compared to roads due to much higher passenger density and construction details. Even a tunnel is cheaper to maintain (not build) than a properly drained, pothole free and soft road.

gedy 10y ago

But isn't this what public housing projects in the US did, and are now considered massive failures?

vvpan 10y ago
Well, the theory, as I've heard an urban planner explain in a video, is that the problem with projects is that they are populated by people of exactly the same class. A mixed income/background area is less likely to turn into what projects did. I'm just quoting somebody else here, won't claim that it's a fact.
taneq 10y ago
The reason for the US public housing projects' failure is wealth inequality. When your population has a mix of well-off people and very poor people, and you provide super-cheap housing, the very poor people gravitate to it, among them those who are desperate, have nothing to lose, involved in drugs and crime, etc. Once this happens the crime rate goes up, the area feels unsafe to 'normal' people, and anyone who can do so gets the hell out of there. The area turns into a slum and is basically impossible to 'fix' without redeveloping it. I'd guess that in Russia, one of two things happens. Either Russia's wealth distribution is even enough under communism that the rot never sets in, or in practice they're just as much of a slum as the American ones and we're just seeing a romanticized view.
- sssilver 10y ago
  It was the former.
- kazagistar 10y ago
  I was born in one of those cities where most housing is in the form of the old communist panelaks. But there is a clear distinction between the nice neighborhoods (5-10 floor buildings, trees and parks filling the sizable spaces) and the shitty ones (20+ floors, densely packed, near interstates, spaced with dirt). The former are a nice place to raise a middle class family, and the latter are crime filled slums.
- 10y ago

davidw 10y ago

Part of the problem in the US is too much planning, alongside too many subsidies for cars. Look at a zoning map of any city: there's an incredible level of detail about what's permitted where. The local zoning code here in Bend, until recently, had a section on how many parking spots per customer for barber shops. As if, in a competitive market, those businesses couldn't figure out for themselves the optimal amount of parking to pay for to keep their customers happy. Most of Europe is pretty walkable and it doesn't have that 'planned' look either.

seanmcdirmid 10y ago
Oh, it was definitely "planned" in the modern era. You can see similar problems to the states in many European suburbs (though not as bad because a lot more planning).
- davidw 10y ago
  Sure, there's planning there, but not quite as much as the US. I own a flat in a suburb of Padova, Italy. It's in a building with 5 other flats. Next to it are two single family homes, as well as another apartment building with 8 flats. Some of the flats are owned, some are rented. In the US, things get separated out into giant apartment complexes where everyone rents, and single family home districts, where people lose their shit at the mere whiff of a duplex being built.
  - seanmcdirmid 10y ago
    Eh, Swiss laws on zoning would make an American's head spin. There is a huge emphasis on mixed use, but that is planned as well! There are plenty of condo buildings that are owner owned and also rented out! It's just that the USA has plenty of buildings designed for rentals, which is more about the American market than zoning (residential is residential).
    - davidw 10y ago
      Europe is pretty diverse, I guess :-) > It's just that the USA has plenty of buildings designed for rentals, which is more about the American market than zoning (residential is residential). How things are done in the US tends to favor larger developers who can come along and make a bunch of apartments in an area where that has been approved (which tends to be a fairly small portion of the city), rather than a more incremental development style where things slowly transition building by building. This is in large part because of zoning laws that make it difficult to get apartments in many places, so having the means to face the legal challenges is only something those with deeper pockets can handle, rather than a smaller developer who may only wish to develop a few buildings.

cylinder 10y ago

You should check out Stuyvesant Town in NYC. I really like its layout and the lack of cars. It's a good community. I've envisioned building an entire city as a chain of these self contained Stuyvesant Towns.

sologoub 10y ago

Well, they got walkability mostly right, but living in those panel boxes was still not great. I'd never want to go back to that... Personally, I find the 5-8 story setups of cities like Paris, Barcelona or Rome much more appealing - enough density to make all the good things like walkability and local cafes happen, but no blocked out sun (Like in NYC) or need to climb to 20th floor when the elevator gives out for the nth time.

cameldrv 10y ago
Having lived in Berlin, which is mostly 5-6 story buildings, I think there's a real sweet spot at this height, perhaps a bit higher if people want larger apartments. This puts enough people in a small area that having good transit, including subways, makes economic sense, and all of the daily essentials are within a block or two. Going higher means you need bigger spacing between buildings in order for the lower floors to get any sunlight, especially in the winter. Bigger spacing between buildings creates a sense of disconnectednes between buildings. At 5-6 stories, you do need fairly wide streets. If you do them like Berlin, you allocate a lot of that width to sidewalks, which are then wide enough for the retail to spill out onto the streets with outdoor displays and sidewalk seating for cafes and bars. It also gives you plenty of room on the sidewalk for other infrastructure like subway stops with adequate width stairwells, bus stops, bike sharing stations, etc. It's also fairly easy to work on underground infrastructure without huge disruption because it runs near the street but under the sidewalk, so normally working on it just means closing off part of the sidewalk. The streets aren't so wide though that they create this cut-off feeling, everything feels continuous.
- porker 10y ago
  How was the soundproofing in these 5-6 story buildings? I've lived in flats in the UK and had endless problems, from people vacuuming at 6am on wooden floors above my bedroom to sleepless nights from parties, to hearing TV and conversations. I like the idea of 5-6 story buildings and know we need higher density housing, but past experiences make we want to live in a 2-story (semi-)detached house with enough garden to keep the neighbours at a distance.

csydas 10y ago

I live in Russia at the moment and probably the most startling thing is how well planned many of the cities and towns are and how very clearly these cities were not made for cars. While it's a hassle for vehicle traffic because the roads were never designed to handle everyone owning a car, the benefit is that no matter where you live there is a shop nearby for essentials (groceries, clothing stores, repairs, cafe's, etc), transit is readily availble even in the smallest of towns and fairly affordable. I spent time in Pereslavl-Zalessky about 140 km north of moscow and was surprised that even a relatively small town had faster and more regular public transit than most of the cities I've lived in in the US. Granted it all comes with a slight adjustment to get used to some of the holdovers of life in the USSR, but when I lived in Seattle, it used to be if I missed the bus I had to wait ~30+ minutes for the next one home, and I needed to plan whether I'd take a side trip to get groceries or not, adding an additional mile or two to my walk home. Here it's nice to just be able to walk a few hundred meters at most to the nearest store for groceries.

yason 10y ago
Any city planned and developed before cars is generally considered very friendly, walkable, and desirable. Europe is full of such cities and they're loved for it. If only planners, politicians and citizens would realise what they have given up just to make it convenient to drive.
- jdsemrau 10y ago
  Just came back from Tokyo and realized how much I miss riding my bicycle in Singapore. The city is just not made for bicycles. It would increase the quality of living by a wide margin since Singapore is so small.
  - jessaustin 10y ago
    It has been a long time since I was in Singapore, but looking back it isn't obvious why it would be bad for cycling. Obviously one wouldn't use the elevated expressways, but there are lots of other streets of varying sizes with varying amounts of traffic (like Tokyo). Is there a law against taking the lane? Perhaps there just isn't a culture of cycling, so one would be the only one on the road? Just curious...

guard-of-terra 10y ago

Soviet union planned cities are mostly awful. They mandate helluva lot of open space between high-rises which doesn't get any care. It also creates corridors for fierce cold winds to blow. Most of buildings don't have space for commerce making area either as dead as suburbia or blistered with shackles selling stuff. Transit stops are far between and you have to get there thru ice and hail. Roads are few and congested while still getting in your way. http://pora-valit.livejournal.com/4740340.html http://pora-valit.livejournal.com/4740340.html it mostly looks like this It was fine up until the 50-s and then worse and worse with each year (even now)

krzyk 10y ago
A lot of open space is great because the wind can blow. When you block the wind you get poor air quality. In Cracow, Poland we have that trouble, there are buildings that block natural wind and the polluted air sits and makes people sick (PM2.5 and PM10 are > 300% their safe levels, see https://map.airly.eu/ https://map.airly.eu/)
- guard-of-terra 10y ago
  Most of Russian cities are built on a plain (or even better - major river) and they don't have any problems with venting out polluted air. Regular pre-Brezhnev street gaps are more than enough for that. However, most of Russian cities have half of year of virtually winter, with temperature near or below zero celsius. This pretty much makes such apartment blocks torturous/unlivable due to chilling winds if you don't have a car. And if you do, keep in mind that they're not built for that, so lack of parking and congestion are your new friends.

general_ai 10y ago

If your quality of life is determined solely by walkability, then sure, you'd consider it "high". In the USSR things were walkable out of necessity: not everyone had cars. And besides, if you're building a block of high rises (stuffed with tiny 650sqft apartments, for the proletariat) and estimate there will be 1K kids, you might as well build a school, a drug store and a grocery store in the middle. Swimming pool within a walking distance was a rather extravagant luxury, not everyone had that. Shit, I hadn't even seen a real swimming pool until I started college. Woods, sure, that's kinda nice. My point being, you make it sound like every town in the USSR was like that whereas in reality what you're describing sounds like a "unicorn" situation that was rarely encountered in reality. Walkability was about the only thing Soviet urban planning had going for it. Ironically, these days I live in US suburbia within walking distance of a pool, elementary/middle/high school, and a convenience store. And woods too: we pretty regularly see deer in our back yard.

spraak 10y ago

I don't know a better solution in terms of space efficiency, but living in a high rise is so depressing. I prefer to live way out in the woods, but the benefits of what you describe sound great

thatfrenchguy 10y ago

It's the same in most of the eastern bloc, I've always been super surprised at how good the public transit is in Czech cities, and that's because of the high-rises.

woliveirajr 10y ago

OTOH, Brasilia [1], the Federal Capital of Brazil, was 100% planned and included just spaces for cars. Not parking, just roads. Everything is very far apart, and the living part of it (houses, buildings) should consist in mega-blocks that would provide those basic needs: markets, pharmacies, groceries... Didn't work. You need a car for everything. The roads are flooded with cars. The city expanded and a great part of the habitants live very far from the place they work, so it takes a long time to go home. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bras%C3%ADlia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bras%C3%ADlia

tpm 10y ago

Not it didn't, speaking as someone who lives in such a planned part of a city. There are several problems: - the areas for living, for offices, and for industry are disjointed and far from each other, necessitating a lot of travel each day. This was partly understandable for workers in polluting industries, but now it's just a pain. - the 'green' spaces are too big (yes, really), which further increases distances and makes it too expensive for the city to take care of them properly. Furthermore the absence of enclosed communal space (what is sometimes inside the 'city blocks') means that the inhabitants don't feel the green space 'belongs to them'. So they don't feel incentives to care for that space, and they don't. (as an aside, the absence of city blocks is sometimes explained as it should make easier for tank armies to control the area in the event of an uprising or war) - the supporting infrastructure was to be built later than the flats, sometimes much later, sometimes never. That's a problem of the execution, though. I'm not saying it's all bad, but it could be much better.

drzaiusapelord 10y ago
>Furthermore the absence of enclosed communal space (what is sometimes inside the 'city blocks') means that the inhabitants don't feel the green space 'belongs to them'. Yeah this. I never liked the "one huge park for everyone in the city" approach. I think the Chicago-style "many parks" approach is superior. In my neighborhood I have four parks within walking distance, seven or eight if you include school playlots. >So they don't feel incentives to care for that space, and they don't. Trash gets picked up quickly in the parks. I do feel a sense of ownership with the closest parks and get pissed when I see trash and promptly pick it up. I think smaller localized spaces do a good job of fighting the 'tragedy of the commons' we see with larger spaces. When something belongs to 'everyone' it really belongs to no one. Sorry but that's just human nature and one of the many reasons communism failed. Not to mention, a lot of those Soviet towns are little more than endless ugly apartment blocks. The idea of a home with a unique design or a single family home with its own yard didn't fit in with the engineer led design of 'everyone lives in efficient boxes.' I find towns like that to be depressing and ugly. I'd rather trade some efficiency for beauty and livability. Top-down approaches get praised by geeks, but ultimately are simply worse than bottom-up approaches many American cities developed from. I'd much rather live in chaotic NYC, LA, or Chicago than 'ultraplanned' cities in Russia or China. Considering how many people we have dying to immigrate here, I suspect wanting those types of lifestyles reflects something in human nature.