6 ms·
I just have to wonder —- how do you create such a city in a way that insures it’s actually populated and doesn’t become a ghost town.
by nip180 6y ago
I just have to wonder —- how do you create such a city in a way that insures it’s actually populated and doesn’t become a ghost town.
- cogman10 6y agoCheap housing and low utility bills would be prime selling points. IDK how you keep such a city from dilapidating though.
- elihu 6y agoI think the main thing is having enough employers to provide jobs for the people. This could be done by coordinating the construction with some local large businesses or maybe a University that wants to open a new branch. Or just locate near enough to an existing town/city that has jobs.
- nip180 6y agoYeah but I wouldn’t move to a new city in rural montana until it has schools, hospitals, firefighters, police, trashmen, and maybe a dozen other services that require a local market or a local tax base to support.
- WrtCdEvrydy 6y agoWhat if there was a $20,000 per year remote tax write-off? Work in our city and get a $20,000 federal tax write off...?
- wolco 6y agoThat's what happens in northern Canada.
- blaser-waffle 6y agoNot just northern, try "central" Canada -- still pretty dang far north compared to other places.
- dwighttk 6y agoso the federal government is building these cities?
- CyberDildonics 6y ago30 minutes north of san franscisco means you don't even have paved roads or cell phone service. I'm not sure why you think you would need to be in rural montana to plan some tall buildings.
- BurningFrog 6y ago> 30 minutes north of san franscisco... California won't allow building a park bench there, much less a new major city.
- mc32 6y agoI think Lucasfilm found out how much a counterforce there is to building things. Also a community center...
- CyberDildonics 6y agoYou realize they have two buildings there right?
- CyberDildonics 6y agoI think you are missing the point that there is a lot of free land. My question was why someone would bring up moving to rural montana, when most major cities are surrounded by uninhabited land. California is a state. You might be thinking of Marin county, which surrounds only about 12 miles of the 101 freeway, so this is nonsense from multiple angles.
- BurningFrog 6y ago> My question was why someone would bring up moving to rural montana, when most major cities are surrounded by uninhabited land I'll repeat my answer with less sarcasm: Because building new cities there is not legally allowed. It's physically, but not regulatorily possible.
- 6y ago
- nwatson 6y agoBrasília was built in the middle of nowhere in the 1950s/1960s. It took the mandate of federal government relocation to bring in the middle- and upper-classes who could afford life in the Plano Piloto (the Pilot Plan, the main part of the city). The government tried to expel or disincentivize permanent settlement by the temporary workers that did the initial construction of the city, the "candangos". They ended up instead in unplanned satellite cities usually at some distance from the main city. (Just one extreme example of a planned city.)
- spanhandler 6y agoThere was a Russian travel-photoblogger obsessed with street signs and fire hydrants whose blog I read a lot of a few years back, out of whose very extensive travels a few patterns and interesting observations emerged, one of which was: planned cities are almost always eerily empty, with streets way too wide and not enough in between them, and are typically just about the dullest cities to visit. [EDIT] and no, I don't have a link, I lost the URL years back and have repeatedly tried to find it again, failing every time.
- prawn 6y agoI don't think it's necessarily that the cities are planned but that they're planned for cars. Dubai, Vegas and parts of Doha are pretty miserable to explore due to the scale. You're expected to be in an air-conditioned car between buildings, not wandering the streets.
- michaelscott 6y agoIn Brasilia's case the city was designed from a "bird's eye view" by an architect who didn't really understand the scale of that kind of liveable space. If you look at it out of the window of an aeroplane it looks well designed and pleasingly laid out. Walking through it at ground level, not so much.
- spanhandler 6y agoThat seems to be a mistake in a lot of "city of the future" concept art. All that empty space, tons of long strips of green and trees, very wide streets, huge squares everywhere, looks nice on a drawing or a render but is miserable to exist in because it means everything's really far apart and the scale of everything feels overwhelmingly. A lot of naïve attempts at a "green" city design have the same problem—in trying to incorporate all kinds of "eco friendly" green space they make an area less walkable, spread out the urban footprint, and make it a ton less eco-friendly.
- mvn9 6y agoUniversal basic income.
- CyberDildonics 6y agoI'm not sure that balances the equation.
- mvn9 6y agoCould you explain why? If you offer UBI for people who move into a new town, why shouldn't a huge number of people from all over the world take that offer?
- luckylion 6y agoThey probably will. And then what? You've now created a city that can't sustain itself and relies on being fed by others. And at some point the "others" (read: the rest of the country) will not want to pay to fund the cool new city.
- ikiris 6y agoThey burn thousands of times the cost on bullets. Its not that big of a problem.
- mvn9 6y agoThis assumes that UBI communities don't create value. But the city is not for free. UBI is just enough to pay for a basic life. If you want to eat great food, have a nice house or want to impress your friends or send your kids to a good school, money is needed. Money, that comes from taxable activities. The advantage of UBI is that there are no homeless people, no beggars, no petty crimes, no robberies. There is no excuse for robbing somebody because it clearly is a move to get luxuries. Punishment can be harsh, including expulsion from the city. Thus you have a friendly city where people can create value the most efficient way. All the people who don't create taxable value still create value. They create the network effect of the city and they manage the focus of the production processes. Somebody has to be an early adopter of a new restaurant or a new service. Who is better suited than somebody who has an entire day to spend? After all, money that is spent in the city is not lost. The only problem is spending money on external goods which can be managed by taxing imports.
- LargoLasskhyfv 6y agoWhy are you wondering about that when there are concepts for "seasteading" in international waters?
- Shivetya 6y agoTL;DR Cynically, China could do it but not many places else have the ability, certainly not the US. First step, don't build in the US nor any country with strong property rights nor a free citizenry. You need a place where control of the project is not going to get stuck in the courts of law or public opinion. This same place would need sufficient funds to pull it off and the desire to do so if it gained the leadership sufficient fame. As in, you need a China or similar. I had a nice long reason for why it could never happen in the US but you can summarize it as, politicians and special interest groups would dictate every thing either directly, intimidation, or through the courts.
- Merrill 6y agoParis' straight, wide avenues and beautiful parks are the result of Emperor Napoleon III and Baron Haussmann. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges-Eug%C3%A8ne_Haussmann https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges-Eug%C3%A8ne_Haussmann
- wolco 6y agoOffer startups free office space.
- ghaff 6y agoSo what do the employees do when the startups go out of business in a year or two?
- prawn 6y agoDo what the founders themselves did and start up another business? Doesn't pay the bills, but then that potentially held true for the initial founders also. Federal or state agencies could be an option.
- spankalee 6y agoI'm not a city planner, and this is just my fantasy, so... ? I think this is part of building to a larger initial scale and using partnerships to bootstrap the city. If you think about what features a thriving major city has, and which of those might be seeds to populations, things like universities and community colleges, large corporate campuses (if those ever matter again), and transportation/logistics hubs could be very good draws. Plus you'll need housing for the construction workers, food and services for them, etc. I would imagine that in the unlikely future of something like this happening, there would be major investors from philanthropists, corporations, that would help start the seed institutions as well. It's been a while since a billionaire started a new prestigious university with their name on it. Maybe Bezos, Buffett, or Page is game. Maybe Google or Amazon wants a new campus that's designed for a partial work-from-home employees and near suitable WFH housing with easy transportation to campus? One thing to keep in mind is that the centrally-planned Chinese cities that were criticized as ghost towns are now populated. Housing is expensive, and if there's a place with available housing, it'll likely be filled.
- Taniwha 6y agoLook how Trump Uni turned out .....
- WiseWeasel 6y agoSubsidized climate and air quality control could make many city centers more appealing. Bio-defense even seems relevant these days.