6 ms·

Reading more about Disney's EPCOT is quite inspiring and almost felt ahead of its time. We Americans should experiment more and build towns and cities under a d

Reading more about Disney's EPCOT is quite inspiring and almost felt ahead of its time. We Americans should experiment more and build towns and cities under a different set of assumptions other than cars and gasoline. Why hasn't the past half century been filled with at least trying new things? What happened to laboratories of democracy? Although I admit I have a slight repulsion to the thought of a few billionaires being able to wield almost complete autonomy, and assuredly the tech billionaires have a vested interest to build these cities such that the inhabitants depend on their technology (e.g. what would happen if Google built a city, and look how convenient it is that the ISP is Google Fiber, with Google self-driving cars servicing the roads, etc.). In any case, I wish any effort to re-think how we build towns and cities the best of luck, because it feels like to me we've been grasping this (failing) strategy of car-addiction for far too long now, and it's draining our society financially, environmentally, and socially.

retailbuyout 9y ago
Well, if history does repeat itself, we’re due for company towns and only a decade out from rampant abuse.
- sliverstorm 9y ago
  They're back already in the oil fields.
Casseres 9y ago
That's the idea behind the Seasteading Institute - to experiment with news ways of governance.
- erikpukinskis 9y ago
  Except a) the federal government actually doesn’t really interfere much with governance at all, and b) floating on seawater makes almost everything 10x harder. Which means seasteading is pointless unless you are doing something the federal government really doesn’t like. 90% of problematic regulations are city rules, and another 9% are county level, which means most people can just move to a different city and be completely free to experiment with whatever governance they want, and another 9% will need to switch counties, but only 1% at most need to be on a boat. And frankly many of those are actually anti-social people who aren’t experimenting with governance, they’re incompatible with it.
  - remarkEon 9y ago
    >Except a) the federal government actually doesn’t really interfere much with governance at all You’re not serious are you.
    - thomasfoster96 9y ago
      > >Except a) the federal government actually doesn’t really interfere much with governance at all >You’re not serious are you. The OP was certainly underestimating the influence the US federal government (and federal governments around the world) have on their constituent states, but certainly in the USA, Canada, Australia, etc., subnational and local governments have considerable power which they consistently fail to use in an innovative way. Most subnational entities simply replicate the institutions of their national or sibling polities.
      - dageshi 9y ago
        How long do those subnational/local governments keep those powers if they use them in a too "innovative" way?
        thomasfoster96 9y ago
        Well in most federations, until there’s a constitutional change.
      - UncleEntity 9y ago
        > ...subnational and local governments have considerable power which they consistently fail to use in an innovative way. Yep, tell that to my old sheriff who had the feds all over his ass for messing with the illegal immigrants. And a federal indictment. And a presidential pardon. Ah, good 'ol Sheriff Joe...
    - erikpukinskis 9y ago
      I am. If there’s a form of governance you’d like to experiment with which you can’t legally do in, say, Montana, I would be very interested to hear about it. I would be happy to be proven wrong on this subject.
elsewhen 9y ago
google _is_ building a city: https://www.wired.com/story/google-sidewalk-labs-toronto-quayside/ https://www.wired.com/story/google-sidewalk-labs-toronto-qua...
- TulliusCicero 9y ago
  Isn't it more like they're building a new section of a city?
alphonsegaston 9y ago
Disney was never really interested in democracy. His admiration for fascism is pretty well-documented. He even escorted the Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl around Hollywood: https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2017/06/walt-the-quasi-nazi-the-fascist-history-of-disney.html https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2017/06/walt-the-quas... Epcot was to be organized around more or less the same principles as European fascism. Holding up his plans (or those of Gates) without questioning the fundamental morality of the vast inequality of wealth and power they represent is how America went so far off the rails in the first place.
- PakG1 9y ago
  It's not fair to hold up Gates as an example of how things are unequal. He's using his foundation more effectively than most people to research real solutions to hard societal problems. He's one of the rare instances of rich people who I'd trust to give my money to make the world a factually and legitimately better place, including the concept of a more equal place. In fact, Warren Buffett has promised to give all his money to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. So have other rich people. Gates also is a driving cheerleader of The Giving Pledge where rich people commit to giving their fortunes to charity.
- B1FF_PSUVM 9y ago
  > America went so far off the rails Huh? It was always an owners republic, like Rome before. For the 2.0 version they upped the advertising budget.
  - ordu 9y ago
    Not a 2.0 version. The was "New Rome" or Constantinople, it was 2.0. What is Rome 3.0 is undecided[1], but I believe that in any case Rome 3.0 now is deep in the history. Deeper that Columbus and discovering of America. Though Mussolini renewed idea with fascist Italy as a Third Rome. So, I believe, that Rome 4.0 is the least version number applicable. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Rome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Rome
    - 9y ago
smackay 9y ago
There a long history of planned towns and cities, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_planned_cities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_planned_cities. The USA appears to be one of the most innovative but that is hardly surprising given the availability of land. In the UK, planned towns have a long and venerable history as a means of social improvement. If you look at smaller communities then there are good examples of corporate involvement, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Sunlight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Sunlight. There is always a dark side to this. Brora in Sutherland, Scotland was subject to a number of improvements for the betterment of the population by George Granville Leveson-Gower, the first Duke of Sutherland, http://www.scottish-highlands-explorer.com/brora.asp http://www.scottish-highlands-explorer.com/brora.asp which also included https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_of_Sutherland#Clearances https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_of_Sutherland#Clearances
- masklinn 9y ago
  > The USA appears to be one of the most innovative What's the benchmark there? Is there an organisation doing reviews of planned cities or are you just going by the number of them? The US have many planned cities/communities, but much of it seems to simply be suburbia set up at once by real estate developers à la Levittowns, it's not exactly Palmanova/Neuf-Brisach (star fort cities) or Louvain-la-Neuve (pedestrian city built on a concrete slab, all motorised traffic is underground).
- 0xcde4c3db 9y ago
  In addition to planned towns and cities, there are many planned developments that exist within larger cities, such as Battery Park City in New York and Stapleton in Denver.
bitL 9y ago
China in the past 20 years is basically doing real-world reinforcement learning with substantial fraction of exploration phase while US seems to be stuck in the exploitation phase.
- microcolonel 9y ago
  If nobody lives in the cities, can the experiments be considered valid?
  - dmoy 9y ago
    The whole ghost/empty city in China thing is not really accurate. After some period of time after construction they are occupied. For some reason Western media makes articles about the short interim period. It'd be akin to writing an article about how a new apartment building is a ghost building just because they hadn't started letting people move in yet.
    - imron 9y ago
      There's plenty of empty real-estate in China. Maybe not whole cities, but plenty of empty (or mostly empty) buildings that were built years ago.
      - dmoy 9y ago
        Oh yea definitely, lot of whole empty stack apartment complexes. Those are freaky to be near, especially the ones where you suspect the builder ran out of money or failed some kind of inspection and the stuff is only like 95% done and already decaying. Just not whole empty cities...
  - bitL 9y ago
    It's not just cities; it's also ways to do things. So one region is doing German-style operation, another one US-style, another one Italian-style etc. as close as they can reproduce it. The same for education. Then they evaluate what works where and why and adjust/spread the winner.
devinhelton 9y ago
Why hasn't the past half century been filled with at least trying new things? What happened to laboratories of democracy? Although I admit I have a slight repulsion to the thought of a few billionaires being able to wield almost complete autonomy... You've just answered your own question. In America, we believe it is illegitimate for any city or state government to not be a democracy. And democracy in practice means rule by a web of committees and bureaucracies. (Electing a strongman to cut through all of this is considered anti-democratic.) But building an innovative product, whether that be an iphone or a new kind of city, requires directly responsible individuals ( https://medium.com/@mmamet/directly-responsible-individuals-f5009f465da4 https://medium.com/@mmamet/directly-responsible-individuals-... ). It cannot be design by committee. It requires having a singular will with the power to overrule the squabbling factions that just want to protect their own interests. If you want innovation in the way cities are built and managed, you need cities to be able to have a Steve Jobs/Bill Gates-like CEO with powers far beyond that of any mayor, beyond the powers of any city government. But our current ideology of democracy does not allow for that.
- mercutio2 9y ago
  I think you’re reversing cause and effect. If a bunch of anarchists or communists had access to a few billion dollars in capital, I have no doubt they could build innovative environments. We live in a culture that concentrates capital in the hands of autocratic industrialists. They’re the ones with capital, but it doesn’t follow their management style is the only way to innovate.

retailbuyout 9y ago

Well, if history does repeat itself, we’re due for company towns and only a decade out from rampant abuse.

sliverstorm 9y ago
They're back already in the oil fields.

Casseres 9y ago

That's the idea behind the Seasteading Institute - to experiment with news ways of governance.

erikpukinskis 9y ago
Except a) the federal government actually doesn’t really interfere much with governance at all, and b) floating on seawater makes almost everything 10x harder. Which means seasteading is pointless unless you are doing something the federal government really doesn’t like. 90% of problematic regulations are city rules, and another 9% are county level, which means most people can just move to a different city and be completely free to experiment with whatever governance they want, and another 9% will need to switch counties, but only 1% at most need to be on a boat. And frankly many of those are actually anti-social people who aren’t experimenting with governance, they’re incompatible with it.
- remarkEon 9y ago
  >Except a) the federal government actually doesn’t really interfere much with governance at all You’re not serious are you.
  - thomasfoster96 9y ago
    > >Except a) the federal government actually doesn’t really interfere much with governance at all >You’re not serious are you. The OP was certainly underestimating the influence the US federal government (and federal governments around the world) have on their constituent states, but certainly in the USA, Canada, Australia, etc., subnational and local governments have considerable power which they consistently fail to use in an innovative way. Most subnational entities simply replicate the institutions of their national or sibling polities.
    - dageshi 9y ago
      How long do those subnational/local governments keep those powers if they use them in a too "innovative" way?
      - thomasfoster96 9y ago
        Well in most federations, until there’s a constitutional change.
    - UncleEntity 9y ago
      > ...subnational and local governments have considerable power which they consistently fail to use in an innovative way. Yep, tell that to my old sheriff who had the feds all over his ass for messing with the illegal immigrants. And a federal indictment. And a presidential pardon. Ah, good 'ol Sheriff Joe...
  - erikpukinskis 9y ago
    I am. If there’s a form of governance you’d like to experiment with which you can’t legally do in, say, Montana, I would be very interested to hear about it. I would be happy to be proven wrong on this subject.

elsewhen 9y ago

google _is_ building a city: https://www.wired.com/story/google-sidewalk-labs-toronto-quayside/ https://www.wired.com/story/google-sidewalk-labs-toronto-qua...

TulliusCicero 9y ago
Isn't it more like they're building a new section of a city?

alphonsegaston 9y ago

Disney was never really interested in democracy. His admiration for fascism is pretty well-documented. He even escorted the Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl around Hollywood: https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2017/06/walt-the-quasi-nazi-the-fascist-history-of-disney.html https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2017/06/walt-the-quas... Epcot was to be organized around more or less the same principles as European fascism. Holding up his plans (or those of Gates) without questioning the fundamental morality of the vast inequality of wealth and power they represent is how America went so far off the rails in the first place.

PakG1 9y ago
It's not fair to hold up Gates as an example of how things are unequal. He's using his foundation more effectively than most people to research real solutions to hard societal problems. He's one of the rare instances of rich people who I'd trust to give my money to make the world a factually and legitimately better place, including the concept of a more equal place. In fact, Warren Buffett has promised to give all his money to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. So have other rich people. Gates also is a driving cheerleader of The Giving Pledge where rich people commit to giving their fortunes to charity.
B1FF_PSUVM 9y ago
> America went so far off the rails Huh? It was always an owners republic, like Rome before. For the 2.0 version they upped the advertising budget.
- ordu 9y ago
  Not a 2.0 version. The was "New Rome" or Constantinople, it was 2.0. What is Rome 3.0 is undecided[1], but I believe that in any case Rome 3.0 now is deep in the history. Deeper that Columbus and discovering of America. Though Mussolini renewed idea with fascist Italy as a Third Rome. So, I believe, that Rome 4.0 is the least version number applicable. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Rome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Rome
  - 9y ago

smackay 9y ago

There a long history of planned towns and cities, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_planned_cities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_planned_cities. The USA appears to be one of the most innovative but that is hardly surprising given the availability of land. In the UK, planned towns have a long and venerable history as a means of social improvement. If you look at smaller communities then there are good examples of corporate involvement, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Sunlight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Sunlight. There is always a dark side to this. Brora in Sutherland, Scotland was subject to a number of improvements for the betterment of the population by George Granville Leveson-Gower, the first Duke of Sutherland, http://www.scottish-highlands-explorer.com/brora.asp http://www.scottish-highlands-explorer.com/brora.asp which also included https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_of_Sutherland#Clearances https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_of_Sutherland#Clearances

masklinn 9y ago
> The USA appears to be one of the most innovative What's the benchmark there? Is there an organisation doing reviews of planned cities or are you just going by the number of them? The US have many planned cities/communities, but much of it seems to simply be suburbia set up at once by real estate developers à la Levittowns, it's not exactly Palmanova/Neuf-Brisach (star fort cities) or Louvain-la-Neuve (pedestrian city built on a concrete slab, all motorised traffic is underground).
0xcde4c3db 9y ago
In addition to planned towns and cities, there are many planned developments that exist within larger cities, such as Battery Park City in New York and Stapleton in Denver.

bitL 9y ago

China in the past 20 years is basically doing real-world reinforcement learning with substantial fraction of exploration phase while US seems to be stuck in the exploitation phase.

microcolonel 9y ago
If nobody lives in the cities, can the experiments be considered valid?
- dmoy 9y ago
  The whole ghost/empty city in China thing is not really accurate. After some period of time after construction they are occupied. For some reason Western media makes articles about the short interim period. It'd be akin to writing an article about how a new apartment building is a ghost building just because they hadn't started letting people move in yet.
  - imron 9y ago
    There's plenty of empty real-estate in China. Maybe not whole cities, but plenty of empty (or mostly empty) buildings that were built years ago.
    - dmoy 9y ago
      Oh yea definitely, lot of whole empty stack apartment complexes. Those are freaky to be near, especially the ones where you suspect the builder ran out of money or failed some kind of inspection and the stuff is only like 95% done and already decaying. Just not whole empty cities...
- bitL 9y ago
  It's not just cities; it's also ways to do things. So one region is doing German-style operation, another one US-style, another one Italian-style etc. as close as they can reproduce it. The same for education. Then they evaluate what works where and why and adjust/spread the winner.

devinhelton 9y ago

Why hasn't the past half century been filled with at least trying new things? What happened to laboratories of democracy? Although I admit I have a slight repulsion to the thought of a few billionaires being able to wield almost complete autonomy... You've just answered your own question. In America, we believe it is illegitimate for any city or state government to not be a democracy. And democracy in practice means rule by a web of committees and bureaucracies. (Electing a strongman to cut through all of this is considered anti-democratic.) But building an innovative product, whether that be an iphone or a new kind of city, requires directly responsible individuals ( https://medium.com/@mmamet/directly-responsible-individuals-f5009f465da4 https://medium.com/@mmamet/directly-responsible-individuals-... ). It cannot be design by committee. It requires having a singular will with the power to overrule the squabbling factions that just want to protect their own interests. If you want innovation in the way cities are built and managed, you need cities to be able to have a Steve Jobs/Bill Gates-like CEO with powers far beyond that of any mayor, beyond the powers of any city government. But our current ideology of democracy does not allow for that.

mercutio2 9y ago
I think you’re reversing cause and effect. If a bunch of anarchists or communists had access to a few billion dollars in capital, I have no doubt they could build innovative environments. We live in a culture that concentrates capital in the hands of autocratic industrialists. They’re the ones with capital, but it doesn’t follow their management style is the only way to innovate.