17 ms·

I've often wondered why somone moderately wealthy doesn't just start a super dense town, e.g. everything within 100 acres, and be within 10 miles of a major cit

by tabeth 9y ago

I've often wondered why somone moderately wealthy doesn't just start a super dense town, e.g. everything within 100 acres, and be within 10 miles of a major city. Create tons of these at a 50K people/sqmi density and implement some sort of hub spoke transportation with the major city being the hub and it could work!

oftenwrong 9y ago
Something like this maybe? http://www.andrewalexanderprice.com/blog20151203.php http://www.andrewalexanderprice.com/blog20151203.php Also, Amsterdam is creating a new neighbourhood like that: https://nltimes.nl/2017/11/23/amsterdam-set-build-massive-new-harbor-district-70k-new-homes https://nltimes.nl/2017/11/23/amsterdam-set-build-massive-ne... >The goal for Haven-Stad is to have everything within walking or cycling distance. "As a resident you can bring your children to school on foot or by bicycle and you can work around the corner", the city said.
crispyambulance 9y ago
That concept has already been implemented. Urban planners who practice it call it "new urbanism". It has been a mixed bag, but is better than the "malls-connected-by-highways" approach of many suburban development s.
- jimmaswell 9y ago
  Too much density decreases the quality of life. Overcrowdedness, very long waiting times at every establishment or government office, increased ease of pickpockets etc. to "disappear into the crowd", higher prices. You already see all this in many existing cities; you want that, but worse? I'll take malls connected by highways over that any day. Malls are nice and cars are a better experience than transit/walking in every facet besides the fact of not being able to web browse on a phone while doing it.
  - davidw 9y ago
    Malls and freeways aren't really financially tenable, long term. https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2015/1/7/americas-suburban-experiment https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2015/1/7/americas-suburb...
  - kuschku 9y ago
    More density allows more establishments and offices to exist, and of more different kinds. In a city with 10x the people, you can have 10x more shops, restaurants, etc, and you’ll as result also get 10x more variation.
    - oftenwrong 9y ago
      ...and a [shop, street, park, restaurant, school, etc] will have 10x as many people that are living within walking distance. This point is made well in this article: http://newworldeconomics.com/how-to-make-a-pile-of-dough-with-the-traditional-city-5-the-new-new-suburbanism/ http://newworldeconomics.com/how-to-make-a-pile-of-dough-wit... >Our basic goal, in all this, is to deliver roughly triple the density as this “New Urbanist” model, while still preserving what looks very much like a “traditional Small Town America single family house,” including a nice backyard and lush, tree-lined streets. This is what gets us from 8,000 people per square mile, for a typical Los Angeles suburb (with 5000sf plots), to maybe 10,000 for the New Urbanist example and more like 25,000-30,000 for our example. We have already seen how our basic house plot shrinks from 4000sf to 2000sf, which doubles the density right there. We even have some smaller house plots of 1,250sf and 625sf. Then, we have a huge amount of land now being consumed by vastly excessive roadways and associated Green Space, that we can replace with Really Narrow Streets, thus freeing up more land for houses. For example, if the house plot/total land area ratio rises from 50% to 75%, that is a 50% increase in density right there. The combination of half the lot size plus a 50% increase in density due to reduction in land used for streets/Green Space/parking lots gives us our triple density bogey. Triple the density means that every store or restaurant now has 30,000 people who are within an easy walk of 15 minutes or so, which means that they can have a viable business without a parking lot. It means that every school now has three times as many students that are within an easy walk. No more chauffering your kids to school. No more school buses. At 30,000 people per square mile, and if 15% of the people are school age (6-17), that means 4500 kids are within walking distance of the school. It means that the four-year high school would have about 1500 students, all within a half-mile walk of the school. It means that, if a train station is introduced later, three times as many people will be able to walk there as well. In short, everything becomes a lot more “walkable.” By making it walkable, we thus eliminate the need for cars unless travelling outside the immediate neighborhood, which eliminates auto traffic and also makes the neighborhood much more peaceful, quiet, and suitable for kids, families, and seniors.
  - crispyambulance 9y ago
    > Too much density decreases the quality of life. Too much of anything decreases quality of life. Everyone has their own taste, but generally speaking, if every journey out of your home has to begin and end with a parking space because you live in a pedestrian-hostile environment, that will certainly damage quality of life and the social fabric of that place as a "town".
    - closeparen 9y ago
      The strength of the social fabric / level of community engagement in suburbs is way higher. Not even close.
      - tabeth 9y ago
        Any data to back that up? I'd be curious to know what the ideal density is.
      - oftenwrong 9y ago
        There is some debate on that point: https://books.google.com/books?id=Xk06al1sAmUC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA172#v=onepage&q&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=Xk06al1sAmUC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA... Passage begins on page 171 but I can't link to it via Google Books.
    - jimmaswell 9y ago
      What do you mean by the social fabric of the town? It doesn't sound like something I'd care much about. I just go to work and sometimes the grocery store, maybe a restaurant once in a while.
      - crispyambulance 9y ago
        > It doesn't sound like something I'd care much about. That's OK. It's a free country you can live where and how you want. But recognize that many, especially increasing numbers of millennials, feel differently and this is now reshaping the demographics of cities.
  - supplied_demand 9y ago
    >Malls are nice and cars are a better experience than transit/walking in every facet This isn't even remotely true. You are forgetting the time spent finding a parking spot, the opportunity cost of having a parking lot instead of more housing or commercial space, transit/walking also provides exercise, which matters in an epidemically obese society. This doesn't even get into the pollution aspect of driving or the costs of car ownership/maintenance. Cars become a depreciating asset as soon as you buy them, should we be encouraging that type of investment?
    - vkou 9y ago
      Not to mention how many people cars kill each year.
    - jimmaswell 9y ago
      >time spent finding a parking spot Not a lot of time at all in my experience, certainly less than waiting for public transit or an uber to arrive. >opportunity cost To me it's worth it. >exercise You walk inside the mall. And what about people with certain disabilities? Do they get left out of this walking-only city? >pollution Emissions are improving all the time, and electric cars are on the rise. >depreciating asset So? Along with almost everything? Buy a used car if you're so concerned about your "asset" depreciating. You get value from it when you use it.
      - supplied_demand 9y ago
        >Certainly less than waiting for public transit or an uber to arrive. I can track train, bus or Uber/Lyft arrival on my phone. >To me it's worth it. You made that clear. For the rest of society, higher rents, heat capture and poor rainwater drainage make parking lots a net negative. >You walk inside the mall. And what about people with certain disabilities? Do they get left out of this walking-only city? I see plenty of disabled people on public transit and using sidewalks in my city. I'm not sure what cities your experience comes from, but my experience is different. I also don't see many obese people on public transit, but I do when walking around suburban malls. >Emissions are improving all the time, and electric cars are on the rise. Transportation (cars and trucks) is the biggest contributor to CO2 emissions in the US as of the past two years. https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/1/11/16874696/greenhouse-gas-co2-target-2017-paris-trump https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/1/11/1687469... >Along with almost everything? Buy a used car if you're so concerned about your "asset" depreciating. Except education, real estate, stocks and other large purchases people make. I actually can't think of something other than cars that people routinely pay over $10k (in December, the average new car in US sold for $36,495) for and expect it to decline in value immediately. Used cars are as much a depreciating asset as new ones. Typically the more used a car is, the more you will pay for upkeep.
  - Dirlewanger 9y ago
    If density is so awful, why have malls been closing left and right for years? Why have so many people been flocking to more dense neighborhoods?
    - jimmaswell 9y ago
      I'd guess because of the economy. The high paying/skilled jobs are there so people were forced to move. Outside of this strange vocal minority that shows up here, very few people would actually prefer to live in an urban area instead of a small town or suburb or whatever given the choice.
      - gcampbell 9y ago
        Do you have stats to back that up? A lot of the recent polling I've seen implies the opposite, especially for younger generations.
      - ef4 9y ago
        > Outside of this strange vocal minority that shows up here, very few people would actually prefer to live in an urban area If that was really true it would create a huge arbitrage opportunity for people to make billions of dollars by building their businesses out in cheaper areas. > The high paying/skilled jobs are there Yes, but the question is why? If most people don't want to be in cities as you say, that would also include business owners, who could save a ton of money by moving their businesses into cheaper areas and paying lower rents and wages. But that's not happening, on net. We're seeing the reverse. Businesses that fled to the suburbs 60 years ago are steadily moving back into cities. https://www.economist.com/news/business/21706285-lots-prominent-american-companies-are-moving-downtown-leaving-city https://www.economist.com/news/business/21706285-lots-promin... http://fortune.com/2011/07/14/companies-head-back-downtown/ http://fortune.com/2011/07/14/companies-head-back-downtown/ https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/02/business/economy/why-corporate-america-is-leaving-the-suburbs-for-the-city.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/02/business/economy/why-corp... Many of these are sober, fortune 500 companies that wouldn't be moving if they didn't see a clear economic reason to do it. It's not some "strange vocal minority" position. We are returning to the long-term average for civilization since the first cities began 6000 years ago: cities are the centers of economic activity and power. America went through a weird inversion for two generations where that wasn't true. We're now reverting to the mean.
  - matwood 9y ago
    > cars are a better experience than transit/walking in every facet I'm not sure how you came to this conclusion. There are plusses and minuses to both. IMO, the big plus with a car is freedom, but then there are many negatives like parking, traffic, and speed to destination. If I ever move again, it will be to a location where I do not have to own a car. I hate everything about driving, and realized it's a huge source of general stress for me personally.
    - jimmaswell 9y ago
      Parking, traffic, and speed to destination depend on where you live and your specific situation, but for a lot of people, speed to destination is always faster in a car, including parking. My commute is only 5 minutes by car and it would take a lot longer on transit. Subjectively, I prefer being in my own space with personal temperature controls and music, and a bit of traffic would be worth it. Compared to transit, where it's often crowded, you have to look out for your stop coming up, the seats aren't generally as good, the ambient temperature is liable to be uncomfortable, etc. I've also found that I just like driving lately.
      - matwood 9y ago
        > depend on where you live and your specific situation So it's not better in every facet. It's better for your exact current situation. Most people do not have a 5 minute drive to work [1]. On the whole, I think if we took the best car situation and the best city/public transportation situation (some EU city like London for example), the car situation does not scale and lags behind the car situation. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/02/22/the-american-commute-is-worse-today-than-its-ever-been/?utm_term=.5b41ff6f7572 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/02/22/the-a...
      - trgn 9y ago
        Driving isn't bad. Depending on the trip I prefer a car trip with traffic jams over a transit trip without. I really do love driving and cars, but just the stuff they show you in the commercials. The long cross-state family trip, the leisurely drive in the country, hauling a dishwasher, ... But car culture in the aggregate has absolutely killed american cities. My city tore down its downtown to accommodate highways and parking lots. It's ghastly. Nobody wants to live in a place like that, nobody wants to visit a place like that. Traffic should be calmed in the city, so it's slow, predictable, quiet and safe. We'd get our towns back. Instead of building cities so they're convenient for cars, we should build them so they're convenient for pedestrians. We can still use the car for all the other fun stuff.
  - stale2002 9y ago
    If quality of life is so bad, then why are prices high? If it sucks to live somewhere, you would expect it to be CHEAPER than living in the surrounding area. But thats not what we see. What we see is that prices in urban areas are pretty much universally higher than living in the surrounding, less dense area? Do you know what that means? That means that the market has spoken, and it proves that people want to live in these areas, as proven by the fact that they are willing to pay a lot more money to do so. When it is just as cheap to live in the city as it is to live in low density areas, THEN we can talk about relative demand and the benefits of low density.
    - jimmaswell 9y ago
      You're oversimplifying the economics, elevating one aspect of it above all other considerations. Cost of living doesn't prove that people "want" to live in these areas. What about taxes? Different strictness of regulations? Parking fees? Some may want to, but how many are a captive audience due to their field of work? How many simply have family ties? How many can't afford to take the steps to move out because they're living paycheck to paycheck?
      - stale2002 9y ago
        I am sure that is true for some people, but is it true for MOST people? If anything, the examples you give mean that it is even more important to increase density. This is because, for all of those reasons you mentioned, there are people who need to live in certain areas, but they can't, because they are priced out of the area! The suburbs take up the majority of the world. If people want to live in low density areas, they can't live literally anywhere. The problem is that the demand for high density is unfulfilled. Cities take a very small amount of space, when compared to the rest of the living space. Thusly, there is nothing to lose. Don't want to live in a city? Then don't! You have 99% of the rest of the land to choose from.
  - rsynnott 9y ago
    > Malls are nice and cars are a better experience than transit/walking in every facet besides the fact of not being able to web browse on a phone while doing it. This seems extremely subjective. I don't like malls very much, and won't set foot in one without good reason. I enjoy walking, and have no problem with public transport. I'd really have no interest in living somewhere where I couldn't either walk to work or take a short train/tram. Different people like different things.
  - com2kid 9y ago
    Malls typically lack quality local retailers. Local artists renting out a store front to sell their works, local gyms, martial arts studios, dance studios, that small store stuffed to the brim with cute little decor items, clothing stores for local fashion designers, and of course small restaurants. Malls have none of those. Maybe a couple local jewelers, and everything else is large nation wide (or regional) chains. Density of construction drives down rents. Large parking lots are huge lost opportunity costs. They don't give much tax revenue, and they don't contribute to the economy, there is nothing on them. When I lived in an urban core, I was able to get everything I needed within a 5 minute walk. That included an outdoor mall, integrated into the walkable city, that was a mix of local stores and nationwide retailers. In contrast, the malls I drive to have none of that.
    - jimmaswell 9y ago
      I've seen small local coffee shops and small restaurants do fine in malls. Especially "mini malls" which have a lot more variety on that front. Some of the parking lots by where I lived were used for flea markets on the weekends. Regardless, I think parking lots sprinkled with islands containing trees/greenery make the landscape look nicer than if that area were packed full of buildings.
    - lazerpants 9y ago
      Here's a really cool story about a mall that has almost all local retailers. https://www.texasmonthly.com/the-culture/scenes-inside-houston-zombie-mall/ https://www.texasmonthly.com/the-culture/scenes-inside-houst...
  - luckydata 9y ago
    I don't know where you live, but you clearly never experienced a city the way it's being described by the others in this thread. I currently live in the US in a small town in the midwest after a long stint in California (socal first then bay area). Previously I lived for a few years in Madrid, an extremely dense city by western standards. I used to walk home from the office (roughly a mile and a half) when the weather was good, took metro and walked in bad weather. Bars and restaurants were all over the place, and it wasn't unusual I would walk by a store with something nice in the window and decide to go inside to see if I wanted to buy (young dude with a lot of disposable income, that was nice). Over time I got to create relationships with the owners of the stores I would visit more frequently, and it wasn't rare to meet coworkers randomly by getting a beer in a bar with a friend. We would join groups and my social circle would naturally change over time. Fast forward to now: I go from home to work, then back. I never meet anyone I haven't made plans to meet. I buy everything online. I haven't made a new friend in 3 years, and the variability of my social circle is also very limited. I'm bored all the time, and I eat too much and watch too much tv because I have no idea what to do with some of my free time. It sucks, and I wish I could go back to that lifestyle because it was a lot more fun than anything I experienced in the US.
    - lazerpants 9y ago
      To play devil's advocate, I have a lot of your current problems and live in NYC in a pretty dense area. Back when I lived in a far more suburban city I was able to play golf with friends, go hiking, and take road trips to see places and people. Restaurants were much more affordable and I rarely needed a reservation, stores weren't completely swarmed with people during the times I could visit them (which makes buying everything online easier). Everyone had a washer and dryer. People invited friends over for BBQs in their backyards. On weekends it was actually faster to go places than on weekdays, so I could visit people who lived in faraway parts of town and it was no big deal (in NYC I barely get to see my friends in Queens, it takes forever to get there). After dealing with so many people and broken down subways a lot of days I'm just tired and want to go home, so I end up just being home a lot. Now, there are a lot of reasons I like living in NYC and choose to do so, but there are serious trade offs to living in a very dense environment and there are some awesome things about living in a low density environment.
  - jessaustin 9y ago
    Have you been to a mall recently? One that isn't dying? Where is it?
    - jimmaswell 9y ago
      The Galleria at Crystal Run in Middletown, NY, the Poughkeepsie Gallerie in Poughkeepsie, NY, the Newburgh Mall in Newburgh, NY, and the Palisades Mall in West Nyack, NY are all some that I've been to either within the past months or few years and they were all doing fine.
      - jessaustin 9y ago
        It's been some time since I was in that general area, but my impression is that many people in those suburbs commute via train for their employment. Surely those malls, if they are indeed thriving, owe some of their success to the rest of the NYC metro area, which is noted for being the most transit-oriented location in USA? Malls in the transit-free hinterlands you seemed to prefer, are not thriving.
        jimmaswell 9y ago
        >Surely those malls, if they are indeed thriving, owe some of their success to the rest of the NYC metro area I suppose, but I'm not sure this proves your point. If anything, it shows that these commuters are choosing to go to the mall up there instead of window shopping in the city. I never said I prefer "transit-free hinterlands"? That general area is actually the specific example I had in mind all along.
    - Kephael 9y ago
      When I went to the Bellevue Square mall it was crowded beyond belief, it was like going back in time to before eCommerce.
    - DrScump 9y ago
      In a region with multiple malls within a 30-minute drive, the strong will survive (longer, at least) but the weak are dying. The most upscale in a region is probably doing fine. Near SV, for example, Stanford Shopping Center and Santana Row are fine for now. In contrast, Westgate and Vallco are mere shadows of what they once were.
  - so33 9y ago
    I feel like I have talked about cars and transit quite a bit, and everyone else has covered this down thread. But I'd like to address your other comments: > Overcrowdedness Again - when we are talking about increasing density we are not talking about forcing people to get rid of their car or making a sleepy suburb look like Manhattan. Townhouses, for instance, increase residential density a lot compared to the tract housing popular in American suburbs and, if well-built, have very little downside. > very long waiting times at every establishment or government office Maybe to line up at a nightclub or an exceptionally popular restaurant. But the beauty of increased density is choice - if a place is busy, just walk to a less busy one. >increased ease of pickpockets etc. to "disappear into the crowd" Notorious pickpocketing hotspots in Paris or Barcelona mainly prey on tourists who are confused and disoriented and jet lagged. Keeping aware of your belongings at all times will greatly lower your chance of being pickpocketed. Also, I'd argue that if a crime occurs in a less dense area, there might not be anyone else who was there to witness or report the crime.
andys627 9y ago
Yeah there are tons of 100-500 acre subdivision projects - surprising none of them are for this type of city. It would be like a new age streetcar suburb.
itaris 9y ago
Interesting, what would incentivize people to live there, as opposed to the city?
- tabeth 9y ago
  I'm still figuring that one out, hah. I think if the culture was strong enough and public transportation was "perfected" within the cofines of the 100acres people might gravitate their under normal market pressure. Otherwise I guess you could just make it cheap. For those reading -- what would incentivize you?
  - beat 9y ago
    Well, what incentivizes people to live anywhere? Wanting to live near people like themselves, and wanting to not live near people unlike themselves. Living where they can afford to live - most people would like to live somewhere like where they currently live, but nicer (which they can't afford). Tradition... live where you grew up, where your family has "always" lived. Etc. Something to think about here... Noodles and Company. You know what their ad budget is? Zero. They're entirely location-driven. They build only in areas that satisfy certain economic criteria. People who frequent those kinds of areas recognize them from style and previous experience. They know who they want their customers to be. So you don't start with "I want to build a certain way". Start with "I want to build a community of a certain type of people, with particular incomes and social values". For example, my spouse and I live in a hundred year old house in a quiet Minneapolis neighborhood. We could have two or three times the space (inside and out) if we were willing to live in the burbs. But we live in the city proper for shared values... access to the artistic communities we love. We live where we can count on most of our neighbors to share our political values. Where we can get the diverse food we like. Etc. And if we had more money, we'd just live in a more expensive version of the same area (heck, my wife's dream house is about four blocks from ours, an old mansion on the Mississippi).
  - yazan94 9y ago
    As a millennial, incentives for me would be a well paying job market for my career, diversity of food options, accessible outdoor activities, and an efficient metro system. Though one could get all that by living somewhere cheaper in the suburbs but sacrificing time to commute to work in this dense metropolis. Also, I do appreciate having a reasonable front/back yard. Maybe its an outdated feeling, but owning land that you can do almost anything with is empowering. I personally would not mind living in this hypothetical place while I am young, but I would definitely not want to stay there in the mid-long term.
wastedhours 9y ago
Seeing it at the larger end of the spectrum with Bill Gates [0], will be interesting to see whether all of the smart city tools people are developing will lead to the rise of really dense, human-centred cities.. [0] https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/14/16648290/bill-gates-smart-city-arizona https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/14/16648290/bill-gates-smar...
aqme28 9y ago
So like a mall, but bigger?
- bpicolo 9y ago
  Malls are high on retail and low on the day-to-day sorts of shops.
logfromblammo 9y ago
The PLSS grid favors doing this in chunks of exactly 40, 160, or 640 acres. That sort of thing has happened before, as a "planned community" or "company town". Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't. It really depends on the folks running the show, and their goals in doing it. I think the usual failure mode is when the interests of the residents and the corporate founders diverge. The founders then shut down and move out the major employer business, and the town fails because almost everything in it was predicated on that economic support pillar being there. It's like they built shopping malls with only one anchor store.
ars 9y ago
> a super dense town Sounds like a nightmare. Ugh, just thinking about it makes me shudder. Why would someone wealthy want to live that way?
- Retra 9y ago
  What does one's wealth have to do with how dense of an area in which one prefers to live?
- stale2002 9y ago
  Wealthy people do that all the time. It is called "Living in downtown New York". The high prices of living in the city prove that people actually prefer to live in high density places. Why else would they be willing to pay so much money to live there if they didn't like it?
  - tabeth 9y ago
    To be fair it's possible that they just want to maximize time, which is done by living as close as possible to where they work.
    - stale2002 9y ago
      .... Which is a benefit of high density cities, correct?
      - chc 9y ago
        This isn't particularly a benefit of high-density cities. I work in a fairly low-density city, but some of my coworkers still live close to work. My mom grew up in a small southern town in the '60s, and my impression is that many people there lived pretty close to work.
        so33 9y ago
        >My mom grew up in a small southern town in the '60s, and my impression is that many people there lived pretty close to work. In the 1960s there was approximately half the population in the United States that exists now. The problem is that living close to work and extreme low density doesn't scale. For a majority of people to live close to work, something has to give, whether it be density or perhaps companies allowing telework.
bhewes 9y ago
The Woodlands, TX is the closest thing in the US. 2,500 people/sqmi 100k town outside of Houston. Started in 1974. At least as far as large scale current corporate city developments.
- lakechfoma 9y ago
  I was there recently, I don't think it hits the mark. Way too corporate, too expensive, something about it is fake or trying too hard or something. It's also just a few islands of walkable spots interspersed with 4 lane divided roads. I felt like it was Exxon trying to impress business travelers, not something we can really replicate everywhere.
  - bhewes 9y ago
    I agree. Exxon came late to the game think more Chevron and Anadarko. And the city is straight out of the 1970's Texas developer thought process. And yeah it is a new money striver town. I know one person who built a 14k sqft house only to build later the largest house in the Woodlands at something like 30k sqft. Then the weird lake front new urbanism project. Where you can live in a high rise.
    - lakechfoma 9y ago
      Yeah I was running down that walk during construction, very odd area but I guess cool if you work at one of those corpos, dig whole foods, and don't mind a lack of local character. That walk would be beautiful to run on if it weren't Houston, I am not used to that humidity!
      - bhewes 9y ago
        I should have listed the urban development in Oklahoma City happening. It is just small 3k people urban district near downtown. https://www.wheelerdistrict.com https://www.wheelerdistrict.com But it is basically a town built by a rich family right next to the river and five minutes from downtown OKC and the rest of the metro.
dalbasal 9y ago
There have been efforts along these lines, but with big hairy projects that need to involve city planning, public transport, building and other big hairy parts... It's hard to get everything perfect. Anyway, things like this are happening to an extent. Israel is currently well in a building boom. A lot of the new development within the Tel Aviv and Jerusalem areas are like this, especially on the outskirts of suburburban towns. 100 buildings on a couple hundred acres, near train stations. 50-100 families per building. Some good, some bad. It's very land efficient, which is important considering population density. Its easier to plan, and produce housing stock fast. Being big corporate development, it can feel a little soulless. You get high density on the outskirts of suburban towns, which generally average 3 stories in the older centres. Still, all the walkable, shopable, cafeable streets are in the old centre, not the outskirts regardless of density. That gets to the last point.... there's a limit to how much these things can be designed. Architects sometimes seem to think (when they get excited) that peoples use of places is dictated by the design of those places. I think causation runs both ways. Grafton Street (Dublin street often used as an example of walkablility) is a packed, lively, window shopping and street performance centre because of its culture. Pedestrian only, and all its things other physical characteristics got way because of the culture, not just the other way around. Culture takes time, and is not always designable. This is a gotcha with a lot of big ideas in planning & architecture. Cities are how they are for reasons other than just buildings, often causation runs the reverse way...
smashingfiasco 9y ago
Sounds like Celebration, Florida.
usrusr 9y ago
It's very difficult to successfully bootstrap an upmarket city: when everything is new at the same time, everything will also stop being new at same time. And still be a far cry from any nostalgic value. For sustainable quality, you want organic growth and a steady replacement pace that will provide a sprinkling of new and shiny over and over again, while leaving some survivors that will eventually reach nostalgia.

by tabeth 9y ago

oftenwrong 9y ago

Something like this maybe? http://www.andrewalexanderprice.com/blog20151203.php http://www.andrewalexanderprice.com/blog20151203.php Also, Amsterdam is creating a new neighbourhood like that: https://nltimes.nl/2017/11/23/amsterdam-set-build-massive-new-harbor-district-70k-new-homes https://nltimes.nl/2017/11/23/amsterdam-set-build-massive-ne... >The goal for Haven-Stad is to have everything within walking or cycling distance. "As a resident you can bring your children to school on foot or by bicycle and you can work around the corner", the city said.

crispyambulance 9y ago

That concept has already been implemented. Urban planners who practice it call it "new urbanism". It has been a mixed bag, but is better than the "malls-connected-by-highways" approach of many suburban development s.

jimmaswell 9y ago
Too much density decreases the quality of life. Overcrowdedness, very long waiting times at every establishment or government office, increased ease of pickpockets etc. to "disappear into the crowd", higher prices. You already see all this in many existing cities; you want that, but worse? I'll take malls connected by highways over that any day. Malls are nice and cars are a better experience than transit/walking in every facet besides the fact of not being able to web browse on a phone while doing it.
- davidw 9y ago
  Malls and freeways aren't really financially tenable, long term. https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2015/1/7/americas-suburban-experiment https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2015/1/7/americas-suburb...
- kuschku 9y ago
  More density allows more establishments and offices to exist, and of more different kinds. In a city with 10x the people, you can have 10x more shops, restaurants, etc, and you’ll as result also get 10x more variation.
  - oftenwrong 9y ago
    ...and a [shop, street, park, restaurant, school, etc] will have 10x as many people that are living within walking distance. This point is made well in this article: http://newworldeconomics.com/how-to-make-a-pile-of-dough-with-the-traditional-city-5-the-new-new-suburbanism/ http://newworldeconomics.com/how-to-make-a-pile-of-dough-wit... >Our basic goal, in all this, is to deliver roughly triple the density as this “New Urbanist” model, while still preserving what looks very much like a “traditional Small Town America single family house,” including a nice backyard and lush, tree-lined streets. This is what gets us from 8,000 people per square mile, for a typical Los Angeles suburb (with 5000sf plots), to maybe 10,000 for the New Urbanist example and more like 25,000-30,000 for our example. We have already seen how our basic house plot shrinks from 4000sf to 2000sf, which doubles the density right there. We even have some smaller house plots of 1,250sf and 625sf. Then, we have a huge amount of land now being consumed by vastly excessive roadways and associated Green Space, that we can replace with Really Narrow Streets, thus freeing up more land for houses. For example, if the house plot/total land area ratio rises from 50% to 75%, that is a 50% increase in density right there. The combination of half the lot size plus a 50% increase in density due to reduction in land used for streets/Green Space/parking lots gives us our triple density bogey. Triple the density means that every store or restaurant now has 30,000 people who are within an easy walk of 15 minutes or so, which means that they can have a viable business without a parking lot. It means that every school now has three times as many students that are within an easy walk. No more chauffering your kids to school. No more school buses. At 30,000 people per square mile, and if 15% of the people are school age (6-17), that means 4500 kids are within walking distance of the school. It means that the four-year high school would have about 1500 students, all within a half-mile walk of the school. It means that, if a train station is introduced later, three times as many people will be able to walk there as well. In short, everything becomes a lot more “walkable.” By making it walkable, we thus eliminate the need for cars unless travelling outside the immediate neighborhood, which eliminates auto traffic and also makes the neighborhood much more peaceful, quiet, and suitable for kids, families, and seniors.
- crispyambulance 9y ago
  > Too much density decreases the quality of life. Too much of anything decreases quality of life. Everyone has their own taste, but generally speaking, if every journey out of your home has to begin and end with a parking space because you live in a pedestrian-hostile environment, that will certainly damage quality of life and the social fabric of that place as a "town".
  - closeparen 9y ago
    The strength of the social fabric / level of community engagement in suburbs is way higher. Not even close.
    - tabeth 9y ago
      Any data to back that up? I'd be curious to know what the ideal density is.
    - oftenwrong 9y ago
      There is some debate on that point: https://books.google.com/books?id=Xk06al1sAmUC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA172#v=onepage&q&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=Xk06al1sAmUC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA... Passage begins on page 171 but I can't link to it via Google Books.
  - jimmaswell 9y ago
    What do you mean by the social fabric of the town? It doesn't sound like something I'd care much about. I just go to work and sometimes the grocery store, maybe a restaurant once in a while.
    - crispyambulance 9y ago
      > It doesn't sound like something I'd care much about. That's OK. It's a free country you can live where and how you want. But recognize that many, especially increasing numbers of millennials, feel differently and this is now reshaping the demographics of cities.
- supplied_demand 9y ago
  >Malls are nice and cars are a better experience than transit/walking in every facet This isn't even remotely true. You are forgetting the time spent finding a parking spot, the opportunity cost of having a parking lot instead of more housing or commercial space, transit/walking also provides exercise, which matters in an epidemically obese society. This doesn't even get into the pollution aspect of driving or the costs of car ownership/maintenance. Cars become a depreciating asset as soon as you buy them, should we be encouraging that type of investment?
  - vkou 9y ago
    Not to mention how many people cars kill each year.
  - jimmaswell 9y ago
    >time spent finding a parking spot Not a lot of time at all in my experience, certainly less than waiting for public transit or an uber to arrive. >opportunity cost To me it's worth it. >exercise You walk inside the mall. And what about people with certain disabilities? Do they get left out of this walking-only city? >pollution Emissions are improving all the time, and electric cars are on the rise. >depreciating asset So? Along with almost everything? Buy a used car if you're so concerned about your "asset" depreciating. You get value from it when you use it.
    - supplied_demand 9y ago
      >Certainly less than waiting for public transit or an uber to arrive. I can track train, bus or Uber/Lyft arrival on my phone. >To me it's worth it. You made that clear. For the rest of society, higher rents, heat capture and poor rainwater drainage make parking lots a net negative. >You walk inside the mall. And what about people with certain disabilities? Do they get left out of this walking-only city? I see plenty of disabled people on public transit and using sidewalks in my city. I'm not sure what cities your experience comes from, but my experience is different. I also don't see many obese people on public transit, but I do when walking around suburban malls. >Emissions are improving all the time, and electric cars are on the rise. Transportation (cars and trucks) is the biggest contributor to CO2 emissions in the US as of the past two years. https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/1/11/16874696/greenhouse-gas-co2-target-2017-paris-trump https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/1/11/1687469... >Along with almost everything? Buy a used car if you're so concerned about your "asset" depreciating. Except education, real estate, stocks and other large purchases people make. I actually can't think of something other than cars that people routinely pay over $10k (in December, the average new car in US sold for $36,495) for and expect it to decline in value immediately. Used cars are as much a depreciating asset as new ones. Typically the more used a car is, the more you will pay for upkeep.
- Dirlewanger 9y ago
  If density is so awful, why have malls been closing left and right for years? Why have so many people been flocking to more dense neighborhoods?
  - jimmaswell 9y ago
    I'd guess because of the economy. The high paying/skilled jobs are there so people were forced to move. Outside of this strange vocal minority that shows up here, very few people would actually prefer to live in an urban area instead of a small town or suburb or whatever given the choice.
    - gcampbell 9y ago
      Do you have stats to back that up? A lot of the recent polling I've seen implies the opposite, especially for younger generations.
    - ef4 9y ago
      > Outside of this strange vocal minority that shows up here, very few people would actually prefer to live in an urban area If that was really true it would create a huge arbitrage opportunity for people to make billions of dollars by building their businesses out in cheaper areas. > The high paying/skilled jobs are there Yes, but the question is why? If most people don't want to be in cities as you say, that would also include business owners, who could save a ton of money by moving their businesses into cheaper areas and paying lower rents and wages. But that's not happening, on net. We're seeing the reverse. Businesses that fled to the suburbs 60 years ago are steadily moving back into cities. https://www.economist.com/news/business/21706285-lots-prominent-american-companies-are-moving-downtown-leaving-city https://www.economist.com/news/business/21706285-lots-promin... http://fortune.com/2011/07/14/companies-head-back-downtown/ http://fortune.com/2011/07/14/companies-head-back-downtown/ https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/02/business/economy/why-corporate-america-is-leaving-the-suburbs-for-the-city.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/02/business/economy/why-corp... Many of these are sober, fortune 500 companies that wouldn't be moving if they didn't see a clear economic reason to do it. It's not some "strange vocal minority" position. We are returning to the long-term average for civilization since the first cities began 6000 years ago: cities are the centers of economic activity and power. America went through a weird inversion for two generations where that wasn't true. We're now reverting to the mean.
- matwood 9y ago
  > cars are a better experience than transit/walking in every facet I'm not sure how you came to this conclusion. There are plusses and minuses to both. IMO, the big plus with a car is freedom, but then there are many negatives like parking, traffic, and speed to destination. If I ever move again, it will be to a location where I do not have to own a car. I hate everything about driving, and realized it's a huge source of general stress for me personally.
  - jimmaswell 9y ago
    Parking, traffic, and speed to destination depend on where you live and your specific situation, but for a lot of people, speed to destination is always faster in a car, including parking. My commute is only 5 minutes by car and it would take a lot longer on transit. Subjectively, I prefer being in my own space with personal temperature controls and music, and a bit of traffic would be worth it. Compared to transit, where it's often crowded, you have to look out for your stop coming up, the seats aren't generally as good, the ambient temperature is liable to be uncomfortable, etc. I've also found that I just like driving lately.
    - matwood 9y ago
      > depend on where you live and your specific situation So it's not better in every facet. It's better for your exact current situation. Most people do not have a 5 minute drive to work [1]. On the whole, I think if we took the best car situation and the best city/public transportation situation (some EU city like London for example), the car situation does not scale and lags behind the car situation. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/02/22/the-american-commute-is-worse-today-than-its-ever-been/?utm_term=.5b41ff6f7572 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/02/22/the-a...
    - trgn 9y ago
      Driving isn't bad. Depending on the trip I prefer a car trip with traffic jams over a transit trip without. I really do love driving and cars, but just the stuff they show you in the commercials. The long cross-state family trip, the leisurely drive in the country, hauling a dishwasher, ... But car culture in the aggregate has absolutely killed american cities. My city tore down its downtown to accommodate highways and parking lots. It's ghastly. Nobody wants to live in a place like that, nobody wants to visit a place like that. Traffic should be calmed in the city, so it's slow, predictable, quiet and safe. We'd get our towns back. Instead of building cities so they're convenient for cars, we should build them so they're convenient for pedestrians. We can still use the car for all the other fun stuff.
- stale2002 9y ago
  If quality of life is so bad, then why are prices high? If it sucks to live somewhere, you would expect it to be CHEAPER than living in the surrounding area. But thats not what we see. What we see is that prices in urban areas are pretty much universally higher than living in the surrounding, less dense area? Do you know what that means? That means that the market has spoken, and it proves that people want to live in these areas, as proven by the fact that they are willing to pay a lot more money to do so. When it is just as cheap to live in the city as it is to live in low density areas, THEN we can talk about relative demand and the benefits of low density.
  - jimmaswell 9y ago
    You're oversimplifying the economics, elevating one aspect of it above all other considerations. Cost of living doesn't prove that people "want" to live in these areas. What about taxes? Different strictness of regulations? Parking fees? Some may want to, but how many are a captive audience due to their field of work? How many simply have family ties? How many can't afford to take the steps to move out because they're living paycheck to paycheck?
    - stale2002 9y ago
      I am sure that is true for some people, but is it true for MOST people? If anything, the examples you give mean that it is even more important to increase density. This is because, for all of those reasons you mentioned, there are people who need to live in certain areas, but they can't, because they are priced out of the area! The suburbs take up the majority of the world. If people want to live in low density areas, they can't live literally anywhere. The problem is that the demand for high density is unfulfilled. Cities take a very small amount of space, when compared to the rest of the living space. Thusly, there is nothing to lose. Don't want to live in a city? Then don't! You have 99% of the rest of the land to choose from.
- rsynnott 9y ago
  > Malls are nice and cars are a better experience than transit/walking in every facet besides the fact of not being able to web browse on a phone while doing it. This seems extremely subjective. I don't like malls very much, and won't set foot in one without good reason. I enjoy walking, and have no problem with public transport. I'd really have no interest in living somewhere where I couldn't either walk to work or take a short train/tram. Different people like different things.
- com2kid 9y ago
  Malls typically lack quality local retailers. Local artists renting out a store front to sell their works, local gyms, martial arts studios, dance studios, that small store stuffed to the brim with cute little decor items, clothing stores for local fashion designers, and of course small restaurants. Malls have none of those. Maybe a couple local jewelers, and everything else is large nation wide (or regional) chains. Density of construction drives down rents. Large parking lots are huge lost opportunity costs. They don't give much tax revenue, and they don't contribute to the economy, there is nothing on them. When I lived in an urban core, I was able to get everything I needed within a 5 minute walk. That included an outdoor mall, integrated into the walkable city, that was a mix of local stores and nationwide retailers. In contrast, the malls I drive to have none of that.
  - jimmaswell 9y ago
    I've seen small local coffee shops and small restaurants do fine in malls. Especially "mini malls" which have a lot more variety on that front. Some of the parking lots by where I lived were used for flea markets on the weekends. Regardless, I think parking lots sprinkled with islands containing trees/greenery make the landscape look nicer than if that area were packed full of buildings.
  - lazerpants 9y ago
    Here's a really cool story about a mall that has almost all local retailers. https://www.texasmonthly.com/the-culture/scenes-inside-houston-zombie-mall/ https://www.texasmonthly.com/the-culture/scenes-inside-houst...
- luckydata 9y ago
  I don't know where you live, but you clearly never experienced a city the way it's being described by the others in this thread. I currently live in the US in a small town in the midwest after a long stint in California (socal first then bay area). Previously I lived for a few years in Madrid, an extremely dense city by western standards. I used to walk home from the office (roughly a mile and a half) when the weather was good, took metro and walked in bad weather. Bars and restaurants were all over the place, and it wasn't unusual I would walk by a store with something nice in the window and decide to go inside to see if I wanted to buy (young dude with a lot of disposable income, that was nice). Over time I got to create relationships with the owners of the stores I would visit more frequently, and it wasn't rare to meet coworkers randomly by getting a beer in a bar with a friend. We would join groups and my social circle would naturally change over time. Fast forward to now: I go from home to work, then back. I never meet anyone I haven't made plans to meet. I buy everything online. I haven't made a new friend in 3 years, and the variability of my social circle is also very limited. I'm bored all the time, and I eat too much and watch too much tv because I have no idea what to do with some of my free time. It sucks, and I wish I could go back to that lifestyle because it was a lot more fun than anything I experienced in the US.
  - lazerpants 9y ago
    To play devil's advocate, I have a lot of your current problems and live in NYC in a pretty dense area. Back when I lived in a far more suburban city I was able to play golf with friends, go hiking, and take road trips to see places and people. Restaurants were much more affordable and I rarely needed a reservation, stores weren't completely swarmed with people during the times I could visit them (which makes buying everything online easier). Everyone had a washer and dryer. People invited friends over for BBQs in their backyards. On weekends it was actually faster to go places than on weekdays, so I could visit people who lived in faraway parts of town and it was no big deal (in NYC I barely get to see my friends in Queens, it takes forever to get there). After dealing with so many people and broken down subways a lot of days I'm just tired and want to go home, so I end up just being home a lot. Now, there are a lot of reasons I like living in NYC and choose to do so, but there are serious trade offs to living in a very dense environment and there are some awesome things about living in a low density environment.
- jessaustin 9y ago
  Have you been to a mall recently? One that isn't dying? Where is it?
  - jimmaswell 9y ago
    The Galleria at Crystal Run in Middletown, NY, the Poughkeepsie Gallerie in Poughkeepsie, NY, the Newburgh Mall in Newburgh, NY, and the Palisades Mall in West Nyack, NY are all some that I've been to either within the past months or few years and they were all doing fine.
    - jessaustin 9y ago
      It's been some time since I was in that general area, but my impression is that many people in those suburbs commute via train for their employment. Surely those malls, if they are indeed thriving, owe some of their success to the rest of the NYC metro area, which is noted for being the most transit-oriented location in USA? Malls in the transit-free hinterlands you seemed to prefer, are not thriving.
      - jimmaswell 9y ago
        >Surely those malls, if they are indeed thriving, owe some of their success to the rest of the NYC metro area I suppose, but I'm not sure this proves your point. If anything, it shows that these commuters are choosing to go to the mall up there instead of window shopping in the city. I never said I prefer "transit-free hinterlands"? That general area is actually the specific example I had in mind all along.
  - Kephael 9y ago
    When I went to the Bellevue Square mall it was crowded beyond belief, it was like going back in time to before eCommerce.
  - DrScump 9y ago
    In a region with multiple malls within a 30-minute drive, the strong will survive (longer, at least) but the weak are dying. The most upscale in a region is probably doing fine. Near SV, for example, Stanford Shopping Center and Santana Row are fine for now. In contrast, Westgate and Vallco are mere shadows of what they once were.
- so33 9y ago
  I feel like I have talked about cars and transit quite a bit, and everyone else has covered this down thread. But I'd like to address your other comments: > Overcrowdedness Again - when we are talking about increasing density we are not talking about forcing people to get rid of their car or making a sleepy suburb look like Manhattan. Townhouses, for instance, increase residential density a lot compared to the tract housing popular in American suburbs and, if well-built, have very little downside. > very long waiting times at every establishment or government office Maybe to line up at a nightclub or an exceptionally popular restaurant. But the beauty of increased density is choice - if a place is busy, just walk to a less busy one. >increased ease of pickpockets etc. to "disappear into the crowd" Notorious pickpocketing hotspots in Paris or Barcelona mainly prey on tourists who are confused and disoriented and jet lagged. Keeping aware of your belongings at all times will greatly lower your chance of being pickpocketed. Also, I'd argue that if a crime occurs in a less dense area, there might not be anyone else who was there to witness or report the crime.

andys627 9y ago

Yeah there are tons of 100-500 acre subdivision projects - surprising none of them are for this type of city. It would be like a new age streetcar suburb.

itaris 9y ago

Interesting, what would incentivize people to live there, as opposed to the city?

tabeth 9y ago
I'm still figuring that one out, hah. I think if the culture was strong enough and public transportation was "perfected" within the cofines of the 100acres people might gravitate their under normal market pressure. Otherwise I guess you could just make it cheap. For those reading -- what would incentivize you?
- beat 9y ago
  Well, what incentivizes people to live anywhere? Wanting to live near people like themselves, and wanting to not live near people unlike themselves. Living where they can afford to live - most people would like to live somewhere like where they currently live, but nicer (which they can't afford). Tradition... live where you grew up, where your family has "always" lived. Etc. Something to think about here... Noodles and Company. You know what their ad budget is? Zero. They're entirely location-driven. They build only in areas that satisfy certain economic criteria. People who frequent those kinds of areas recognize them from style and previous experience. They know who they want their customers to be. So you don't start with "I want to build a certain way". Start with "I want to build a community of a certain type of people, with particular incomes and social values". For example, my spouse and I live in a hundred year old house in a quiet Minneapolis neighborhood. We could have two or three times the space (inside and out) if we were willing to live in the burbs. But we live in the city proper for shared values... access to the artistic communities we love. We live where we can count on most of our neighbors to share our political values. Where we can get the diverse food we like. Etc. And if we had more money, we'd just live in a more expensive version of the same area (heck, my wife's dream house is about four blocks from ours, an old mansion on the Mississippi).
- yazan94 9y ago
  As a millennial, incentives for me would be a well paying job market for my career, diversity of food options, accessible outdoor activities, and an efficient metro system. Though one could get all that by living somewhere cheaper in the suburbs but sacrificing time to commute to work in this dense metropolis. Also, I do appreciate having a reasonable front/back yard. Maybe its an outdated feeling, but owning land that you can do almost anything with is empowering. I personally would not mind living in this hypothetical place while I am young, but I would definitely not want to stay there in the mid-long term.

wastedhours 9y ago

Seeing it at the larger end of the spectrum with Bill Gates [0], will be interesting to see whether all of the smart city tools people are developing will lead to the rise of really dense, human-centred cities.. [0] https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/14/16648290/bill-gates-smart-city-arizona https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/14/16648290/bill-gates-smar...

aqme28 9y ago

So like a mall, but bigger?

bpicolo 9y ago
Malls are high on retail and low on the day-to-day sorts of shops.

logfromblammo 9y ago

The PLSS grid favors doing this in chunks of exactly 40, 160, or 640 acres. That sort of thing has happened before, as a "planned community" or "company town". Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't. It really depends on the folks running the show, and their goals in doing it. I think the usual failure mode is when the interests of the residents and the corporate founders diverge. The founders then shut down and move out the major employer business, and the town fails because almost everything in it was predicated on that economic support pillar being there. It's like they built shopping malls with only one anchor store.

ars 9y ago

> a super dense town Sounds like a nightmare. Ugh, just thinking about it makes me shudder. Why would someone wealthy want to live that way?

Retra 9y ago
What does one's wealth have to do with how dense of an area in which one prefers to live?
stale2002 9y ago
Wealthy people do that all the time. It is called "Living in downtown New York". The high prices of living in the city prove that people actually prefer to live in high density places. Why else would they be willing to pay so much money to live there if they didn't like it?
- tabeth 9y ago
  To be fair it's possible that they just want to maximize time, which is done by living as close as possible to where they work.
  - stale2002 9y ago
    .... Which is a benefit of high density cities, correct?
    - chc 9y ago
      This isn't particularly a benefit of high-density cities. I work in a fairly low-density city, but some of my coworkers still live close to work. My mom grew up in a small southern town in the '60s, and my impression is that many people there lived pretty close to work.
      - so33 9y ago
        >My mom grew up in a small southern town in the '60s, and my impression is that many people there lived pretty close to work. In the 1960s there was approximately half the population in the United States that exists now. The problem is that living close to work and extreme low density doesn't scale. For a majority of people to live close to work, something has to give, whether it be density or perhaps companies allowing telework.

bhewes 9y ago

The Woodlands, TX is the closest thing in the US. 2,500 people/sqmi 100k town outside of Houston. Started in 1974. At least as far as large scale current corporate city developments.

lakechfoma 9y ago
I was there recently, I don't think it hits the mark. Way too corporate, too expensive, something about it is fake or trying too hard or something. It's also just a few islands of walkable spots interspersed with 4 lane divided roads. I felt like it was Exxon trying to impress business travelers, not something we can really replicate everywhere.
- bhewes 9y ago
  I agree. Exxon came late to the game think more Chevron and Anadarko. And the city is straight out of the 1970's Texas developer thought process. And yeah it is a new money striver town. I know one person who built a 14k sqft house only to build later the largest house in the Woodlands at something like 30k sqft. Then the weird lake front new urbanism project. Where you can live in a high rise.
  - lakechfoma 9y ago
    Yeah I was running down that walk during construction, very odd area but I guess cool if you work at one of those corpos, dig whole foods, and don't mind a lack of local character. That walk would be beautiful to run on if it weren't Houston, I am not used to that humidity!
    - bhewes 9y ago
      I should have listed the urban development in Oklahoma City happening. It is just small 3k people urban district near downtown. https://www.wheelerdistrict.com https://www.wheelerdistrict.com But it is basically a town built by a rich family right next to the river and five minutes from downtown OKC and the rest of the metro.

dalbasal 9y ago

There have been efforts along these lines, but with big hairy projects that need to involve city planning, public transport, building and other big hairy parts... It's hard to get everything perfect. Anyway, things like this are happening to an extent. Israel is currently well in a building boom. A lot of the new development within the Tel Aviv and Jerusalem areas are like this, especially on the outskirts of suburburban towns. 100 buildings on a couple hundred acres, near train stations. 50-100 families per building. Some good, some bad. It's very land efficient, which is important considering population density. Its easier to plan, and produce housing stock fast. Being big corporate development, it can feel a little soulless. You get high density on the outskirts of suburban towns, which generally average 3 stories in the older centres. Still, all the walkable, shopable, cafeable streets are in the old centre, not the outskirts regardless of density. That gets to the last point.... there's a limit to how much these things can be designed. Architects sometimes seem to think (when they get excited) that peoples use of places is dictated by the design of those places. I think causation runs both ways. Grafton Street (Dublin street often used as an example of walkablility) is a packed, lively, window shopping and street performance centre because of its culture. Pedestrian only, and all its things other physical characteristics got way because of the culture, not just the other way around. Culture takes time, and is not always designable. This is a gotcha with a lot of big ideas in planning & architecture. Cities are how they are for reasons other than just buildings, often causation runs the reverse way...

smashingfiasco 9y ago

Sounds like Celebration, Florida.

usrusr 9y ago

It's very difficult to successfully bootstrap an upmarket city: when everything is new at the same time, everything will also stop being new at same time. And still be a far cry from any nostalgic value. For sustainable quality, you want organic growth and a steady replacement pace that will provide a sprinkling of new and shiny over and over again, while leaving some survivors that will eventually reach nostalgia.