4 ms·

You just described London.

by msimpson 10y ago

6d6b73 10y ago
But I don't think huge metropolis are the way to go. It would be better to have many smaller cities.
- msimpson 10y ago
  To create and maintain smaller cities you would need to enforce controls on population growth and distribution. Controls which are abhorred by the civilized world.
  - 6d6b73 10y ago
    There are thousands of small cities all over the world and nobody has to enforce population growth.
    - msimpson 10y ago
      > There are thousands of small cities all over the world and nobody has to enforce population growth. Yet, there are many instances where population growth or decline has become an issue due to economic drivers, alone. Over the last 23 years Detroit has lost 34% of its population while Austin has gained 44%. You can't just assume people will distribute evenly into nice small groupings when they are granted freedom of movement and the right to pursue happiness. Like everything else, you build for scalability and do your best to maintain.
- ant6n 10y ago
  Many well-functioning huge metropoles are poly-central. A notable example is Berlin, which was merged from many cities in the 1920s, and was split by a national border 1948-1991. Each little town acts approximately as a little city with retail, offices and services at it's center, and residential around it. Many of the 'centers' have rapid transit a connection to the two or three main employment centers, and many big cities have peripheral lines as well. This means most of the services you'd use in your life are in your little town, hopefully reachable in walking distance, except your job. It may be located near another center, or in one of the CBDs (central business district). You'll have a walking or short bus connection to your local rail station, which in turn connects to the other centers, so most people will have reasonable connections to get to work. One way to get to this paradigm is to leverage rail lines and subways to encourage this sort of development, building towns around stations. Unfortunately the tendency is to build transit along highways, which is cheap, but ultimately toxic to the idea of building walkable/human-scale towns surrounding the stations (see e.g. REM light rail proposal in Montreal). Another tendency is to build large parking lots around stations instead of towns.

You just described London.

6d6b73 10y ago

But I don't think huge metropolis are the way to go. It would be better to have many smaller cities.

msimpson 10y ago
To create and maintain smaller cities you would need to enforce controls on population growth and distribution. Controls which are abhorred by the civilized world.
- 6d6b73 10y ago
  There are thousands of small cities all over the world and nobody has to enforce population growth.
  - msimpson 10y ago
    > There are thousands of small cities all over the world and nobody has to enforce population growth. Yet, there are many instances where population growth or decline has become an issue due to economic drivers, alone. Over the last 23 years Detroit has lost 34% of its population while Austin has gained 44%. You can't just assume people will distribute evenly into nice small groupings when they are granted freedom of movement and the right to pursue happiness. Like everything else, you build for scalability and do your best to maintain.
ant6n 10y ago
Many well-functioning huge metropoles are poly-central. A notable example is Berlin, which was merged from many cities in the 1920s, and was split by a national border 1948-1991. Each little town acts approximately as a little city with retail, offices and services at it's center, and residential around it. Many of the 'centers' have rapid transit a connection to the two or three main employment centers, and many big cities have peripheral lines as well. This means most of the services you'd use in your life are in your little town, hopefully reachable in walking distance, except your job. It may be located near another center, or in one of the CBDs (central business district). You'll have a walking or short bus connection to your local rail station, which in turn connects to the other centers, so most people will have reasonable connections to get to work. One way to get to this paradigm is to leverage rail lines and subways to encourage this sort of development, building towns around stations. Unfortunately the tendency is to build transit along highways, which is cheap, but ultimately toxic to the idea of building walkable/human-scale towns surrounding the stations (see e.g. REM light rail proposal in Montreal). Another tendency is to build large parking lots around stations instead of towns.