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We are a culture obsessed by the how, not the why. A picture of people walking or biking to work does not fit our idea of the "future" as well as one where we r

We are a culture obsessed by the how, not the why. A picture of people walking or biking to work does not fit our idea of the "future" as well as one where we ride around in slick glass pods. We have grown custom to doing even the simplest things orders of magnitude less efficient than they need to be. We are also a culture obsessed by image and impression. Look at the image at the top of this article. Images of futurist cities like this drive me nuts, am I looking at a pimped up motherboard or a city where people actually live? What if a sustainable and livable city doesn't look very exciting on picture? Cities are complex adaptive social systems that we are nowhere near fully understanding. Formulating a vision of a city with its base in a technological ideal ("smart") just shows how disconnected you are from reality and how setup you will be for complete failure.

panic 9y ago
> We are also a culture obsessed by image and impression. Look at the image at the top of this article. Images of futurist cities like this drive me nuts, am I looking at a pimped up motherboard or a city where people actually live? What if a sustainable and livable city doesn't look very exciting on picture? Jane Jacobs addresses this topic at length in Chapter 19 of The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Here are the first few paragraphs (the whole book is a worthwhile read if you have the chance): - When we deal with cities we are dealing with life at its most complex and intense. Because this is so, there is a basic esthetic limitation on what can be done with cities. A city cannot be a work of art. We need art, in the arrangements of cities as well as in the other realms of life, to help explain life to us, to show us meaning, to illuminate the relationship between the life that each of us embodies and the life outside us. We need art most, perhaps, to reassure us of our own humanity. However, although art and life are interwoven, they are not the same things. Confusion between them is, in part, why efforts at city design are so disappointing. It is important, in arriving at better design strategies and tactics, to clear up this confusion. Art has its own peculiar forms of order, and they are rigorous. Artists, whatever their medium, make selections from the abounding materials of life, and organize these selections into works that are under the control of the artist. To be sure, the artist has a sense that the demands of the work (i.e., of the selections of material he has made) control him. The rather miraculous result of this process—if the selectivity, the organization and the control are consistent within themselves—can be art. But the essence of this process is disciplined, highly discriminatory selectivity from life. In relation to the inclusiveness and the literally endless intricacy of life, art is arbitrary, symbolic and abstracted. That is its value and the source of its own kind of order and coherence. To approach a city, or even a city neighborhood, as if it were a larger architectural problem, capable of being given order by converting it into a disciplined work of art, is to make the mistake of attempting to substitute art for life. The results of such profound confusion between art and life are neither life nor art. They are taxidermy. In its place, taxidermy can be a useful and decent craft. However, it goes too far when the specimens put on display are exhibitions of dead, stuffed cities.
- ghaff 9y ago
  Jacobs is well worth reading. It's probably worth pointing out though that Jacobs would probably have generally opposed a lot of the Build Up! Build Up! exhortations one reads around here in service of cheaper housing in whatever tech magnet the writer favors. Given that she lived there, the West Village is probably a reasonable model for the sort of urban planning/not-planning that Jacobs favored. (I don't recall what she's specifically written in that vein.)
  - bogomipz 9y ago
    There were a lot of editorials done about her last year on what would have been here 100th birthday. A lot people mentioned that she would have been aghast at how traffic choked the streets of Manhattan have become with cars. The irony and significance in this is that she was very instrumental in the successful fight against Robert Moses's plan to put a 10 lane express way through Washington Square Park in lower Manhattan.
- bogomipz 9y ago
  >"Jane Jacobs addresses this topic at length in Chapter 19 of The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Here are the first few paragraphs (the whole book is a worthwhile read if you have the chance)" That's a seminal book in urban planning and policy. I was happy to see it mentioned in the discussion. There was also a good documentary of Jane Jacobes that was released last year(she would have 100) called "Citizen Jane: Battle for the City" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3699354/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3699354/
  - ghaff 9y ago
    Cool. I will have to check that out. Urban planning is complex. One can simultaneously be aghast at some of the worst excesses of Robert Moses' highway visions and mum on the impact of, say, Lincoln Center on the then-existing neighborhoods. And, as I alluded to in another comment, an organic/livable city doesn't necessarily equate to one that's as inexpensive to live in as potential inhabitants would like it to be.
humanrebar 9y ago
Well, among other things, we want a future where people without two functioning legs, a healthy heart, and healthy legs can participate. Also pregnant women, families with small children, etc. Agreed, though, that simple timeless things, like meals with friends and family, are underrated in these futurist visions.
- wffurr 9y ago
  Protected bicycle infrastructure also works great for adaptive cycling, electric bikes, tricycles, and other forms of efficient, accessible transportation. I regular go by group rides from Spaulding Rehab Hospital, and the array of adaptive cycling equipment they have is stunning.
  - barney54 9y ago
    As an avid cyclist, I'm not sure I'd say that cycling is necessarily an "efficient" transportation option. I love to ride my bike to work. It makes my day much better. If I could, I would ride to work everyday. However, for me (and many others) it takes more time to ride than drive and dropping off if kids in the morning is really, really tough by bike. My point is that biking is great, but it isn't necessarily time efficient.
    - chiefofgxbxl 9y ago
      Isn't that because cities and towns have been built with cars in mind, though? Things are further apart exactly because cars allow "quick" transportation between those points. What's quick for a car isn't quick for a bike. One example is how we measure distances in terms of time by car: It's 15 minutes away (likely implying driving as the mode of transportation)
      - closeparen 9y ago
        Yes, which is why forcing a downgrade from cars to bicycles without corresponding changes in zoning to promote a more compact environment is a terrible idea.
bogomipz 9y ago
>"We are a culture obsessed by the how, not the why. A picture of people walking or biking to work does not fit our idea of the "future" as well as one where we ride around in slick glass pods. We have grown custom to doing even the simplest things orders of magnitude less efficient than they need to be." I disagree with this. Cities have been adding designated bike lanes for years now. And the growth in bike ridership in cities seems to have moved lock-step with this. Using NYC as an example: https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2015/04/the-steady-rise-of-bike-ridership-in-new-york/390717/ https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2015/04/the-steady-ri... So clearly a picture of people walking or biking has fit some city planner's idea of "future." The fact that bike lanes continue to be added seems to point to a recognition of their success and place in the future. I think it would be more accurate to say that "A picture of people walking or biking to work" might not fit Google's or SV's idea of "the future" because it doesn't involve collecting data and selling advertising. For example NYC's DOT put is putting in the biking lanes. Google(via Sidewalk Labs) converted payphone kiosks ostensibly to provide free internet access. Google provides this in exchange for collecting data and displaying advertising.
- enraged_camel 9y ago
  >>I disagree with this. Cities have been adding designated bike lanes for years now. Sure, but roads are added/expanded far faster than bike lanes, so the percentage of roads that have bike lanes has been going down over time.
  - StudentStuff 9y ago
    Source? Here in Seattle that is false, the city has actively "dieted" roadways while adding bike lanes. Year over year we aren't gaining tens of new lane miles for cars, while we are doing that for bikes. Portland is going through the same thing too, and I've seen similar trends in some SoCal cities (not enough experience to speak broadly about uptake down there).
    - patrickg_zill 9y ago
      That would explain the multiple times I encountered slowdowns in driving from California to Seattle recently. Most slowdowns were in Portland, before i got to the I5 bridge. Second was Seattle...
petra 9y ago
Can biking and walking to work scale to a large 1M city, assuming families hold 2 jobs and people don't want to be limited by distance ? As for sustainable, once you ban cars(as a thinking exercise) but build the best and most innovative public transportation, you could get something great and sustainable, where great can be as an extra 1/2-1 hours a day to spend with your kids.
- akvadrako 9y ago
  > Can biking and walking to work scale to a large 1M city Of course. Amsterdam is around 1M. In general, biking is one of the highest throughput forms of transport available.
  - criddell 9y ago
    Part of that is due to an agreeable climate. I ride my bicycle to work when I can (it's only 7 miles to my office) and when I can is often limited by temperature. Once it gets above 100 F or if winds are above about 15 mph, I'll drive.
    - akvadrako 9y ago
      It’s true it rarely gets over 100F, but the Netherlands is known for having a unwelcoming climate. It’s often rainy and very windy or at least a kind of cold that’s more chilling than southern canada. 7 miles is also very far - that’s more like a city of 5M
CommieBobDole 9y ago
>Images of futurist cities like this drive me nuts, am I looking at a pimped up motherboard or a city where people actually live? What if a sustainable and livable city doesn't look very exciting on picture? Just as a data point, the picture is an aerial shot containing a highway interchange and part of the Olympiapark in Munich, built for the '72 summer Olympics. Which is sort of interesting because it's both a futurist planned thing (the Olympiapark) and a city where people actually live (Munich).

panic 9y ago

> We are also a culture obsessed by image and impression. Look at the image at the top of this article. Images of futurist cities like this drive me nuts, am I looking at a pimped up motherboard or a city where people actually live? What if a sustainable and livable city doesn't look very exciting on picture? Jane Jacobs addresses this topic at length in Chapter 19 of The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Here are the first few paragraphs (the whole book is a worthwhile read if you have the chance): - When we deal with cities we are dealing with life at its most complex and intense. Because this is so, there is a basic esthetic limitation on what can be done with cities. A city cannot be a work of art. We need art, in the arrangements of cities as well as in the other realms of life, to help explain life to us, to show us meaning, to illuminate the relationship between the life that each of us embodies and the life outside us. We need art most, perhaps, to reassure us of our own humanity. However, although art and life are interwoven, they are not the same things. Confusion between them is, in part, why efforts at city design are so disappointing. It is important, in arriving at better design strategies and tactics, to clear up this confusion. Art has its own peculiar forms of order, and they are rigorous. Artists, whatever their medium, make selections from the abounding materials of life, and organize these selections into works that are under the control of the artist. To be sure, the artist has a sense that the demands of the work (i.e., of the selections of material he has made) control him. The rather miraculous result of this process—if the selectivity, the organization and the control are consistent within themselves—can be art. But the essence of this process is disciplined, highly discriminatory selectivity from life. In relation to the inclusiveness and the literally endless intricacy of life, art is arbitrary, symbolic and abstracted. That is its value and the source of its own kind of order and coherence. To approach a city, or even a city neighborhood, as if it were a larger architectural problem, capable of being given order by converting it into a disciplined work of art, is to make the mistake of attempting to substitute art for life. The results of such profound confusion between art and life are neither life nor art. They are taxidermy. In its place, taxidermy can be a useful and decent craft. However, it goes too far when the specimens put on display are exhibitions of dead, stuffed cities.

ghaff 9y ago
Jacobs is well worth reading. It's probably worth pointing out though that Jacobs would probably have generally opposed a lot of the Build Up! Build Up! exhortations one reads around here in service of cheaper housing in whatever tech magnet the writer favors. Given that she lived there, the West Village is probably a reasonable model for the sort of urban planning/not-planning that Jacobs favored. (I don't recall what she's specifically written in that vein.)
- bogomipz 9y ago
  There were a lot of editorials done about her last year on what would have been here 100th birthday. A lot people mentioned that she would have been aghast at how traffic choked the streets of Manhattan have become with cars. The irony and significance in this is that she was very instrumental in the successful fight against Robert Moses's plan to put a 10 lane express way through Washington Square Park in lower Manhattan.
bogomipz 9y ago
>"Jane Jacobs addresses this topic at length in Chapter 19 of The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Here are the first few paragraphs (the whole book is a worthwhile read if you have the chance)" That's a seminal book in urban planning and policy. I was happy to see it mentioned in the discussion. There was also a good documentary of Jane Jacobes that was released last year(she would have 100) called "Citizen Jane: Battle for the City" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3699354/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3699354/
- ghaff 9y ago
  Cool. I will have to check that out. Urban planning is complex. One can simultaneously be aghast at some of the worst excesses of Robert Moses' highway visions and mum on the impact of, say, Lincoln Center on the then-existing neighborhoods. And, as I alluded to in another comment, an organic/livable city doesn't necessarily equate to one that's as inexpensive to live in as potential inhabitants would like it to be.

humanrebar 9y ago

Well, among other things, we want a future where people without two functioning legs, a healthy heart, and healthy legs can participate. Also pregnant women, families with small children, etc. Agreed, though, that simple timeless things, like meals with friends and family, are underrated in these futurist visions.

wffurr 9y ago
Protected bicycle infrastructure also works great for adaptive cycling, electric bikes, tricycles, and other forms of efficient, accessible transportation. I regular go by group rides from Spaulding Rehab Hospital, and the array of adaptive cycling equipment they have is stunning.
- barney54 9y ago
  As an avid cyclist, I'm not sure I'd say that cycling is necessarily an "efficient" transportation option. I love to ride my bike to work. It makes my day much better. If I could, I would ride to work everyday. However, for me (and many others) it takes more time to ride than drive and dropping off if kids in the morning is really, really tough by bike. My point is that biking is great, but it isn't necessarily time efficient.
  - chiefofgxbxl 9y ago
    Isn't that because cities and towns have been built with cars in mind, though? Things are further apart exactly because cars allow "quick" transportation between those points. What's quick for a car isn't quick for a bike. One example is how we measure distances in terms of time by car: It's 15 minutes away (likely implying driving as the mode of transportation)
    - closeparen 9y ago
      Yes, which is why forcing a downgrade from cars to bicycles without corresponding changes in zoning to promote a more compact environment is a terrible idea.

bogomipz 9y ago

>"We are a culture obsessed by the how, not the why. A picture of people walking or biking to work does not fit our idea of the "future" as well as one where we ride around in slick glass pods. We have grown custom to doing even the simplest things orders of magnitude less efficient than they need to be." I disagree with this. Cities have been adding designated bike lanes for years now. And the growth in bike ridership in cities seems to have moved lock-step with this. Using NYC as an example: https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2015/04/the-steady-rise-of-bike-ridership-in-new-york/390717/ https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2015/04/the-steady-ri... So clearly a picture of people walking or biking has fit some city planner's idea of "future." The fact that bike lanes continue to be added seems to point to a recognition of their success and place in the future. I think it would be more accurate to say that "A picture of people walking or biking to work" might not fit Google's or SV's idea of "the future" because it doesn't involve collecting data and selling advertising. For example NYC's DOT put is putting in the biking lanes. Google(via Sidewalk Labs) converted payphone kiosks ostensibly to provide free internet access. Google provides this in exchange for collecting data and displaying advertising.

enraged_camel 9y ago
>>I disagree with this. Cities have been adding designated bike lanes for years now. Sure, but roads are added/expanded far faster than bike lanes, so the percentage of roads that have bike lanes has been going down over time.
- StudentStuff 9y ago
  Source? Here in Seattle that is false, the city has actively "dieted" roadways while adding bike lanes. Year over year we aren't gaining tens of new lane miles for cars, while we are doing that for bikes. Portland is going through the same thing too, and I've seen similar trends in some SoCal cities (not enough experience to speak broadly about uptake down there).
  - patrickg_zill 9y ago
    That would explain the multiple times I encountered slowdowns in driving from California to Seattle recently. Most slowdowns were in Portland, before i got to the I5 bridge. Second was Seattle...

petra 9y ago

Can biking and walking to work scale to a large 1M city, assuming families hold 2 jobs and people don't want to be limited by distance ? As for sustainable, once you ban cars(as a thinking exercise) but build the best and most innovative public transportation, you could get something great and sustainable, where great can be as an extra 1/2-1 hours a day to spend with your kids.

akvadrako 9y ago
> Can biking and walking to work scale to a large 1M city Of course. Amsterdam is around 1M. In general, biking is one of the highest throughput forms of transport available.
- criddell 9y ago
  Part of that is due to an agreeable climate. I ride my bicycle to work when I can (it's only 7 miles to my office) and when I can is often limited by temperature. Once it gets above 100 F or if winds are above about 15 mph, I'll drive.
  - akvadrako 9y ago
    It’s true it rarely gets over 100F, but the Netherlands is known for having a unwelcoming climate. It’s often rainy and very windy or at least a kind of cold that’s more chilling than southern canada. 7 miles is also very far - that’s more like a city of 5M

CommieBobDole 9y ago

>Images of futurist cities like this drive me nuts, am I looking at a pimped up motherboard or a city where people actually live? What if a sustainable and livable city doesn't look very exciting on picture? Just as a data point, the picture is an aerial shot containing a highway interchange and part of the Olympiapark in Munich, built for the '72 summer Olympics. Which is sort of interesting because it's both a futurist planned thing (the Olympiapark) and a city where people actually live (Munich).