5 ms·

The next great urban reset

51 points by jas_far 9y ago

cimmanom 9y ago
For anyone else who's having trouble reaching the server: http://web.archive.org/web/20180304061602/https://www.cnu.org/publicsquare/2018/02/26/next-great-urban-reset http://web.archive.org/web/20180304061602/https://www.cnu.or...
- icebraining 9y ago
  Thanks. Also, for those like me who didn't know what CNU was, it's the Congress for the New Urbanism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Urbanism#Organizations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Urbanism#Organizations
- mythrwy 9y ago
  ...You aren't missing much.
jakecopp 9y ago
I feel like I'm not really getting this article, though I am super interested in city planning. It feels too vague. Are they proposing the two most likely scenarios are 1. Everyone going back to running their own farms and 2. Continued urban sprawl? What is the reason for this reset? Millennials priced out of the housing market? I'd be very grateful to hear some clarification about this this piece from someone a lot more knowledgeable than I in urban design.
- sp332 9y ago
  1. "Ecological urbanism" doesn't literally mean growing plants. It means letting the city develop organically without a top-down vision. 2. The other option in the article is people giving up on sprawl and moving back into denser, better-planned cities.
- RobertRoberts 9y ago
  I am actually skeptical of any plan that calls for us to smash more people closer together. A development near my home wanted to smash 5 houses into the same location where 1 was before. With only 12 feet between, (6 feet of yard space for each house) chop down huge trees, etc... I won a small victory at city hall, got a bunch of people to show up, even measured the land and found their plans were 15 feet short! (greedy liars, it was unreal) I found out that this developer had a history of paving over wetlands and doing whatever they wanted. (they were in lawsuits with the state over this) And the kicker? He was a part of an initiative called "open spaces". The idea behind "open spaces" was to save the natural landscape, guess how they do that? By cramming in as many people into smallest housing they can, and by discouraging land ownership. Greed is disguised at many levels, and I no longer take any writer's suggestions or criticisms at face value anymore, especially when money is involved.
  - lotsofpulp 9y ago
    Theoretically, I think it makes sense that the less resources people use, including space, the better it is for the natural landscape.
    - viscanti 9y ago
      People should be forced to use and own more resources than they want/need. Who cares that 6 individuals or families might have wanted an opportunity to have affordable housing and didn't need a larger personal area (because they couldn't afford it)? Shouldn't they just be priced out of the area so that existing home owners can preserve their monoculture? Seems like a cause worth fighting for.
      - snuxoll 9y ago
        Sounds like San Francisco in a nutshell.
      - RobertRoberts 9y ago
        I guess this situation can be easily misunderstood, we are talking small rural area here. With very cheap housing already. The town near us already had this kind of housing built and it was all empty because they couldn't sell the houses because they were built too poorly. Plenty of older homes available. This is _not_ San Francisco. Edit: >Seems like a cause worth fighting for. Only where it makes sense, if there is 100 square miles of open space around you, forcing the living space inside a small town isn't the same as using the left over space in a big city wisely.
- larrydag 9y ago
  I didn't quite get it either. Even the historical "resets" seemed too simplified. There are huge macroeconomic reasons for why dwellings and communities change. I find it interesting of no mention of a global economy influence and how the author seems to think everything is localized.
- viraptor 9y ago
  > I feel like I'm not really getting this article, though I am super interested in city planning. The writing style was quite weird. I re-read some paragraphs a few times to realise he doesn't even make any point. It's like an old, ideology heavy manifesto, and so sure of how pure and right it is. It crossed some kind of line for me...
- jmull 9y ago
  I think it’s a “rally the supporters” type of thing. CNU — the Congress for the New Urbanism — is a group of people who would like towns, cities, etc. to be designed differently. So this article suggests the attractive notion that the opportunity to redesign these things is “coming soon”. So far, so good. But then it takes an odd turn and enumerates two ways NOT to redesign things. That seems to really blunt the force of the message. But perhaps they are having a hard time agreeing on a vision, and this is a baby step toward narrowing down the range of the debate? It’s always easy to assemble a group of people who are dissaisfied by the way things are. But much harder to get them to agree on the way things should be. Personally, I’m somewhat doubtful of “urbanism” at all. Perhaps wide-spread remote work and remote shopping will weaken the need for people to live in specific area near where the jobs are and near where the stuff is, and perhaps without those forces, the downsides of urban living may override the upsides and urban centers will no longer hold together. (Just speculation, though, of course.)
  - icebraining 9y ago
    I think the message here is intended to be read by other new urbanists, not by the general public. The historical review and prediction of a new reset are just the prelude to set the topic, not the main message - that's the "threats" part.
contingencies 9y ago
Reset threat #0: Police become ineffective, increasingly working only for corporations and politicians and increasingly militarizing through 'free' gear hand-me-downs. As a result, us-versus-them and FUD mentalities come to dominate, and the increasingly shrinking middle classes retreat from any form of community, leaving them at the mercy of commercial greed which farms neoslums in the workerdrone mass commute peripheries that come to circle all major urban expanses.
- matt_wulfeck 9y ago
  Politics is a funny thing. The extreme right and left tend to meet. People in Utah and other areas have been complaining about the power of our government over its people for long time.
jeffreyrogers 9y ago
I'm not sure what the point of this article is, but given that the largest cities in the world are still the most desirable place to live for young people (despite the high cost of living), I don't think the status quo will change anytime soon.
matt_wulfeck 9y ago
> How it will play out exactly is uncertain. My bet is that financial pressure from broke Millennials to central bank asset bubbles finally running out of steam will converge with new technologies such as ‘automated everything’ to produce the perfect storm, toppling the current paradigm When complex societies collapse, is it right to say they will rebuild with a simpler system, not a more complex one? To realize the vision of these cities requires strong central planning leadership and money. I imagine imagine both of those qualities lacking in round 3.
- marcosdumay 9y ago
  The article is not about society collapse (something the West does not see since the beginning of the Middle Age). It is about urban collapse, something that happens from time to time, mostly when new technology appears. That later one can go into either a more or a less complex direction. You'll have to dig some better targeted evidence to predict it.
rexgallorum2 9y ago
This was definitely aimed at specialists and advocates of new urbanism. The writer is correct to a degree--post war urban planning (sprawl building) in the US has been a disaster and the paradigm is on the verge of changing (and it will be a generational shift). In some areas it has already changed--this is one issue the author talks about when referring to 'retreat' to urban districts that predate sprawl. I think that bit was referring to the recent tendency for 'walkable' pre-war urban districts to experience rapid gentrification, while post-war sprawl areas (in some cases inner ring suburbs) lag behind and decay. This model doesn't apply everywhere, but it is emerging in some places nonetheless. Right now you can easily find examples of new sprawl construction and rapidly rising property values in pockets of pre-modernist neighborhoods in a single city.
rexgallorum2 9y ago
I think we are currently watching a number of cultural currents and counter-currents (re)emerging, and the increasing interest in new urbanism and walkable, mid-density, mixed-use neighborhoods is one of them. You could tie it to a broader rejection of modernism and capitalist realism and a dozen other -isms that have defined the look and feel and very substance of life in the US since 1945, and an increasing tendency to look to the past for traces of alternative presents/futures that never came into being (see Mark Fisher). Hipster retro fetishism is only the tip of the iceberg.

51 points by jas_far 9y ago

For anyone else who's having trouble reaching the server: http://web.archive.org/web/20180304061602/https://www.cnu.org/publicsquare/2018/02/26/next-great-urban-reset http://web.archive.org/web/20180304061602/https://www.cnu.or...

icebraining 9y ago
Thanks. Also, for those like me who didn't know what CNU was, it's the Congress for the New Urbanism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Urbanism#Organizations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Urbanism#Organizations
mythrwy 9y ago
...You aren't missing much.

jakecopp 9y ago

I feel like I'm not really getting this article, though I am super interested in city planning. It feels too vague. Are they proposing the two most likely scenarios are 1. Everyone going back to running their own farms and 2. Continued urban sprawl? What is the reason for this reset? Millennials priced out of the housing market? I'd be very grateful to hear some clarification about this this piece from someone a lot more knowledgeable than I in urban design.

sp332 9y ago
1. "Ecological urbanism" doesn't literally mean growing plants. It means letting the city develop organically without a top-down vision. 2. The other option in the article is people giving up on sprawl and moving back into denser, better-planned cities.
RobertRoberts 9y ago
I am actually skeptical of any plan that calls for us to smash more people closer together. A development near my home wanted to smash 5 houses into the same location where 1 was before. With only 12 feet between, (6 feet of yard space for each house) chop down huge trees, etc... I won a small victory at city hall, got a bunch of people to show up, even measured the land and found their plans were 15 feet short! (greedy liars, it was unreal) I found out that this developer had a history of paving over wetlands and doing whatever they wanted. (they were in lawsuits with the state over this) And the kicker? He was a part of an initiative called "open spaces". The idea behind "open spaces" was to save the natural landscape, guess how they do that? By cramming in as many people into smallest housing they can, and by discouraging land ownership. Greed is disguised at many levels, and I no longer take any writer's suggestions or criticisms at face value anymore, especially when money is involved.
- lotsofpulp 9y ago
  Theoretically, I think it makes sense that the less resources people use, including space, the better it is for the natural landscape.
  - viscanti 9y ago
    People should be forced to use and own more resources than they want/need. Who cares that 6 individuals or families might have wanted an opportunity to have affordable housing and didn't need a larger personal area (because they couldn't afford it)? Shouldn't they just be priced out of the area so that existing home owners can preserve their monoculture? Seems like a cause worth fighting for.
    - snuxoll 9y ago
      Sounds like San Francisco in a nutshell.
    - RobertRoberts 9y ago
      I guess this situation can be easily misunderstood, we are talking small rural area here. With very cheap housing already. The town near us already had this kind of housing built and it was all empty because they couldn't sell the houses because they were built too poorly. Plenty of older homes available. This is _not_ San Francisco. Edit: >Seems like a cause worth fighting for. Only where it makes sense, if there is 100 square miles of open space around you, forcing the living space inside a small town isn't the same as using the left over space in a big city wisely.
larrydag 9y ago
I didn't quite get it either. Even the historical "resets" seemed too simplified. There are huge macroeconomic reasons for why dwellings and communities change. I find it interesting of no mention of a global economy influence and how the author seems to think everything is localized.
viraptor 9y ago
> I feel like I'm not really getting this article, though I am super interested in city planning. The writing style was quite weird. I re-read some paragraphs a few times to realise he doesn't even make any point. It's like an old, ideology heavy manifesto, and so sure of how pure and right it is. It crossed some kind of line for me...
jmull 9y ago
I think it’s a “rally the supporters” type of thing. CNU — the Congress for the New Urbanism — is a group of people who would like towns, cities, etc. to be designed differently. So this article suggests the attractive notion that the opportunity to redesign these things is “coming soon”. So far, so good. But then it takes an odd turn and enumerates two ways NOT to redesign things. That seems to really blunt the force of the message. But perhaps they are having a hard time agreeing on a vision, and this is a baby step toward narrowing down the range of the debate? It’s always easy to assemble a group of people who are dissaisfied by the way things are. But much harder to get them to agree on the way things should be. Personally, I’m somewhat doubtful of “urbanism” at all. Perhaps wide-spread remote work and remote shopping will weaken the need for people to live in specific area near where the jobs are and near where the stuff is, and perhaps without those forces, the downsides of urban living may override the upsides and urban centers will no longer hold together. (Just speculation, though, of course.)
- icebraining 9y ago
  I think the message here is intended to be read by other new urbanists, not by the general public. The historical review and prediction of a new reset are just the prelude to set the topic, not the main message - that's the "threats" part.

contingencies 9y ago

Reset threat #0: Police become ineffective, increasingly working only for corporations and politicians and increasingly militarizing through 'free' gear hand-me-downs. As a result, us-versus-them and FUD mentalities come to dominate, and the increasingly shrinking middle classes retreat from any form of community, leaving them at the mercy of commercial greed which farms neoslums in the workerdrone mass commute peripheries that come to circle all major urban expanses.

matt_wulfeck 9y ago
Politics is a funny thing. The extreme right and left tend to meet. People in Utah and other areas have been complaining about the power of our government over its people for long time.

jeffreyrogers 9y ago

I'm not sure what the point of this article is, but given that the largest cities in the world are still the most desirable place to live for young people (despite the high cost of living), I don't think the status quo will change anytime soon.

matt_wulfeck 9y ago

> How it will play out exactly is uncertain. My bet is that financial pressure from broke Millennials to central bank asset bubbles finally running out of steam will converge with new technologies such as ‘automated everything’ to produce the perfect storm, toppling the current paradigm When complex societies collapse, is it right to say they will rebuild with a simpler system, not a more complex one? To realize the vision of these cities requires strong central planning leadership and money. I imagine imagine both of those qualities lacking in round 3.

marcosdumay 9y ago
The article is not about society collapse (something the West does not see since the beginning of the Middle Age). It is about urban collapse, something that happens from time to time, mostly when new technology appears. That later one can go into either a more or a less complex direction. You'll have to dig some better targeted evidence to predict it.

rexgallorum2 9y ago

This was definitely aimed at specialists and advocates of new urbanism. The writer is correct to a degree--post war urban planning (sprawl building) in the US has been a disaster and the paradigm is on the verge of changing (and it will be a generational shift). In some areas it has already changed--this is one issue the author talks about when referring to 'retreat' to urban districts that predate sprawl. I think that bit was referring to the recent tendency for 'walkable' pre-war urban districts to experience rapid gentrification, while post-war sprawl areas (in some cases inner ring suburbs) lag behind and decay. This model doesn't apply everywhere, but it is emerging in some places nonetheless. Right now you can easily find examples of new sprawl construction and rapidly rising property values in pockets of pre-modernist neighborhoods in a single city.

rexgallorum2 9y ago

I think we are currently watching a number of cultural currents and counter-currents (re)emerging, and the increasing interest in new urbanism and walkable, mid-density, mixed-use neighborhoods is one of them. You could tie it to a broader rejection of modernism and capitalist realism and a dozen other -isms that have defined the look and feel and very substance of life in the US since 1945, and an increasing tendency to look to the past for traces of alternative presents/futures that never came into being (see Mark Fisher). Hipster retro fetishism is only the tip of the iceberg.