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Hamburg build from 2008 on a new district, the HafenCity, a soulless place of concrete, expensive apartments, and chain stores. I recently thought about how gre

Hamburg build from 2008 on a new district, the HafenCity, a soulless place of concrete, expensive apartments, and chain stores. I recently thought about how great it would have been to try something radical new – like building everything with wood, fantastic public transport, and as little cars as possible. My conclusion was that the only way that realistically could have happend was with subsidies from a billionaire who had some kind of grand vision. I hardly doubt that we'll see such a thing from the public sector anytime soon, be it from fiduciary duties or their general incompetence of doing any kind of big real estate development (at least here in Germany). So from that angle, I welcome anyone with a vision for an utopian city.

ashtonkem 6y ago
As a general matter, I think Utopianism is a bad idea, and I don’t think we should be sinking huge amounts of resources into giant leaps like this. I’d rather see incremental tweaks in the right direction first, as I think those are far more effective at bringing lasting change. Fundamentally, we’re really bad at predicting the future. Utopian projects involve making big bets on what the future might hold, which makes them high risk high reward. I think making smaller, incremental bets allows us to not only wager fewer resources, but to also begin getting feedback sooner on the outcome of our decisions rather than hoping that we’re spot on in 20 years. More specifically, I’d like to see a lot less “we built a city for autonomous cars and hyperloops” and more “we added some bike lanes and bike parking, and converted commercial streets to pedestrian only.” These are changes we can make today to improve our quality of life, and they practically cost very little.
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
  Accommodating cars is the most important variable in all places I see. Once you design for accommodating cars, everything is so spread out that it precludes a non-car oriented life. So while you can make commercial streets pedestrian, you can’t change the fundamental fact that everything is too far from everything else to have the necessary foot traffic to sustain businesses. Not to mention the political challenges that come with trying to design a place simultaneously compatible with cars and pedestrians/bicyclists. I’m convinced that there is no in between.
  - aww_dang 6y ago
    Maybe people like their cars and choose to live in places that accommodate them? Personally, I am something of a bicycle extremist and have always found a way to navigate urban/suburban areas. It is something that comes with practice. Eventually you learn how to navigate these areas you felt were impassable. With practice you develop instincts for approaching new areas. I know it will be a bit unpopular at HN, but I think you need to be something of a self-starter and willing to take the plunge. I've been on planned bike lanes that felt less safe than just riding on the street with traffic. They can create the wrong expectations for both motorists and cyclists. Naturally you would encounter political problems in developing a "car-free" city, if your prospective residents want to use their cars. Especially if you are left using political leverage to impose your ideals upon the residents. If people truly loved cycling more than the convenience of automobiles, wouldn't they develop the similar techniques for navigating urban and suburban areas? That isn't to say that more can't be done to accommodate cyclists and pedestrians, but I disagree with your absolutist analysis.
    - lotsofpulp 6y ago
      This doesn’t address the root issue of things being too far from each other. What about all the old, young, and otherwise less mobile people getting around? How does shopping happen when everyone has a 100ft+ setback and you need to carry your groceries and whatnot that much further, for each individual property. The proof of my statement is that you can see a marked difference in the lifestyle of urban Tokyo and London and other places where the layout was made pre automobile. You can make all the bike lanes you want, but as long as you’re still placing 4+ lane roads all over the place, it’s not going to bring you the type of day to day life you can experience in dense areas. >Maybe people like their cars and choose to live in places that accommodate them? I don’t think people like their cars, so much as the knock on effects of a car oriented lifestyle. Obviously, people like detached single family houses with garages and front and back yards. Who wouldn’t. The ideal would be having this in the middle of an urban core. Obviously that’s not realistic. But the real benefits of cars come with pricing out people you may not want you and your family to deal with. You can separate into various socioeconomic classes, make it uneconomical for homeless and panhandlers to hang around since everything is so far apart. It’s definitely a valid solution to the situation in NYC/SF/SEA/PDX. I myself don’t see any other solution for a person than moving to a car oriented suburb.
- fennecfoxen 6y ago
  The fundamental problem with utopian vision usually isn't its bets on the future, it's the fact that there's no meaningful feedback loop. Typically, such a vision is the self-centered self-expression of some mogul or architect or politician who hopes to reshape the world, but does not understand the world and the people who live in the world, and will never bear the burden of the failures of his design. See, for instance, Le Corbusier's Ville Radieuse, or even Frank Lloyd Wright's Broadacre City.
- niklasd 6y ago
  I would argue that this is already happening. We have some new bike lanes, and a little less cars here in Berlin, at some places. And I do not suggest that every development should be utopian. But why not give some utopies a try within a certain scope, e.g. a new district of one town? Worst thing that could happen is we sink a lot of money, and we have a not so nice quarter, but one could argue that exactly this happend with the conservative approach at the HafenCity. Best case is we recognize that this is actually the way we want to live, and it serve as a role model for future developments.
- hderms 6y ago
  Presumably, even if one thought that utopian projects were a good idea, experimenting with incremental improvements first would likely inform utopian projects better. Provided a utopian project has little outright chance of success, deferring them until we have more information about what solutions work (as well as what problems we'll need to solve in the future as these things change) seems wise. There may be a break-even point where the efficacy of incremental improvements is too low, requiring us to make larger leaps to make progress, but we're clearly not there yet.
aww_dang 6y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poundbury https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poundbury >Poundbury is "the town that Prince Charles built." Not surprisingly, given His Royal Highness's vocal campaign against modern architecture, British critics have been merciless in their ridicule of Poundbury's perceived shortcomings. https://www.architectmagazine.com/design/behind-the-facade-of-prince-charless-poundbury_o https://www.architectmagazine.com/design/behind-the-facade-o...
vzidex 6y ago
> Hamburg build from 2008 on a new district, the HafenCity, a soulless place of concrete, expensive apartments, and chain stores. I find your description here fascinating, because it's exactly how I've described the CityPlace district [1] here in Toronto that was built over the last 20 years, with most development in the last 10. Makes me wonder how common this style of modern, sterile, "ideal" development is in big cities around the world. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CityPlace,_Toronto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CityPlace,_Toronto (I also think it's interesting how both HafenCity and CityPlace work the word "city" into their title, with a similar naming scheme)
- thomasedwards 6y ago
  Really feel like they could have tried about 5% harder with the name. At least the brand doesn’t have to be soulless even if the place is.
  - iamatworknow 6y ago
    Interestingly, Long Island City in New York has become the same sort of concrete soulless high rise area, with an equally uninteresting name. https://ny.curbed.com/2016/8/31/12732412/long-island-city-development-before-after-photos https://ny.curbed.com/2016/8/31/12732412/long-island-city-de...
  - cryptoquick 6y ago
    Yeah, it sure shounds like a CityPlace
- jacobajit 6y ago
  Hudson Yards in NYC is probably the most notorious example of this trend. Seems to be emblematic of a shift toward real estate as a luxury commodity investment, combined with massive developers having free rein to set up inorganic star mega-blocks. All this in close cooperation with cities that have an incentive to improve what were once brownfield sites and are now the most valuable undeveloped sites into tax behemoths. See also: Seaport in Boston, Navy Yard in DC, Mission Bay in San Francisco
- 6y ago
pas 6y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4QYkEpw9pA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4QYkEpw9pA "This new district of Helsinki is being made almost entirely from timber [...]"
ajmurmann 6y ago
I think a large source of problems with cities actually comes from planning too much. Cities aren't larger houses. They are living things that need to be able to evolve. Most governments make the mistake of only interacting with that proves by introducing rules that stifle change or by planning the entire thing or large portions and getting it wrong or at least in more successful cases building something that cannot adapt when the world changes. Making it easier to build new things but keeping the shake of control any one entity gets small would likely yield much better results. That's how parts of older cities that we now love were build in the first place. Individuals build their buildings on fairly small lots, we didn't have developers build entire neighborhoods. I recommend the book Order Without Design and/or its corresponding podcast for great insights: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/order-without-design https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/order-without-design
LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
Wasn? Ham doch 'ne U-Bahn da! Have you ever been there at night in the new station at the end of the line, when all the gazillions of bridge spiders are crawling out onto their nets, including the ones over the touchscreens of the ticket ATMs? They are everywhere! Besides that, one could witness how they inject stinking glue into the sand, to make for sturdier foundations. I wonder how that is working out in the following decades, regarding outgassing into basements, garages and so on :-) Since seeing that happen around 2:30AM it is 'Pattexdorf' for me. See also 'Lackdosen-/Klebstoffschnüffeln'

ashtonkem 6y ago

As a general matter, I think Utopianism is a bad idea, and I don’t think we should be sinking huge amounts of resources into giant leaps like this. I’d rather see incremental tweaks in the right direction first, as I think those are far more effective at bringing lasting change. Fundamentally, we’re really bad at predicting the future. Utopian projects involve making big bets on what the future might hold, which makes them high risk high reward. I think making smaller, incremental bets allows us to not only wager fewer resources, but to also begin getting feedback sooner on the outcome of our decisions rather than hoping that we’re spot on in 20 years. More specifically, I’d like to see a lot less “we built a city for autonomous cars and hyperloops” and more “we added some bike lanes and bike parking, and converted commercial streets to pedestrian only.” These are changes we can make today to improve our quality of life, and they practically cost very little.

lotsofpulp 6y ago
Accommodating cars is the most important variable in all places I see. Once you design for accommodating cars, everything is so spread out that it precludes a non-car oriented life. So while you can make commercial streets pedestrian, you can’t change the fundamental fact that everything is too far from everything else to have the necessary foot traffic to sustain businesses. Not to mention the political challenges that come with trying to design a place simultaneously compatible with cars and pedestrians/bicyclists. I’m convinced that there is no in between.
- aww_dang 6y ago
  Maybe people like their cars and choose to live in places that accommodate them? Personally, I am something of a bicycle extremist and have always found a way to navigate urban/suburban areas. It is something that comes with practice. Eventually you learn how to navigate these areas you felt were impassable. With practice you develop instincts for approaching new areas. I know it will be a bit unpopular at HN, but I think you need to be something of a self-starter and willing to take the plunge. I've been on planned bike lanes that felt less safe than just riding on the street with traffic. They can create the wrong expectations for both motorists and cyclists. Naturally you would encounter political problems in developing a "car-free" city, if your prospective residents want to use their cars. Especially if you are left using political leverage to impose your ideals upon the residents. If people truly loved cycling more than the convenience of automobiles, wouldn't they develop the similar techniques for navigating urban and suburban areas? That isn't to say that more can't be done to accommodate cyclists and pedestrians, but I disagree with your absolutist analysis.
  - lotsofpulp 6y ago
    This doesn’t address the root issue of things being too far from each other. What about all the old, young, and otherwise less mobile people getting around? How does shopping happen when everyone has a 100ft+ setback and you need to carry your groceries and whatnot that much further, for each individual property. The proof of my statement is that you can see a marked difference in the lifestyle of urban Tokyo and London and other places where the layout was made pre automobile. You can make all the bike lanes you want, but as long as you’re still placing 4+ lane roads all over the place, it’s not going to bring you the type of day to day life you can experience in dense areas. >Maybe people like their cars and choose to live in places that accommodate them? I don’t think people like their cars, so much as the knock on effects of a car oriented lifestyle. Obviously, people like detached single family houses with garages and front and back yards. Who wouldn’t. The ideal would be having this in the middle of an urban core. Obviously that’s not realistic. But the real benefits of cars come with pricing out people you may not want you and your family to deal with. You can separate into various socioeconomic classes, make it uneconomical for homeless and panhandlers to hang around since everything is so far apart. It’s definitely a valid solution to the situation in NYC/SF/SEA/PDX. I myself don’t see any other solution for a person than moving to a car oriented suburb.
fennecfoxen 6y ago
The fundamental problem with utopian vision usually isn't its bets on the future, it's the fact that there's no meaningful feedback loop. Typically, such a vision is the self-centered self-expression of some mogul or architect or politician who hopes to reshape the world, but does not understand the world and the people who live in the world, and will never bear the burden of the failures of his design. See, for instance, Le Corbusier's Ville Radieuse, or even Frank Lloyd Wright's Broadacre City.
niklasd 6y ago
I would argue that this is already happening. We have some new bike lanes, and a little less cars here in Berlin, at some places. And I do not suggest that every development should be utopian. But why not give some utopies a try within a certain scope, e.g. a new district of one town? Worst thing that could happen is we sink a lot of money, and we have a not so nice quarter, but one could argue that exactly this happend with the conservative approach at the HafenCity. Best case is we recognize that this is actually the way we want to live, and it serve as a role model for future developments.
hderms 6y ago
Presumably, even if one thought that utopian projects were a good idea, experimenting with incremental improvements first would likely inform utopian projects better. Provided a utopian project has little outright chance of success, deferring them until we have more information about what solutions work (as well as what problems we'll need to solve in the future as these things change) seems wise. There may be a break-even point where the efficacy of incremental improvements is too low, requiring us to make larger leaps to make progress, but we're clearly not there yet.

aww_dang 6y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poundbury https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poundbury >Poundbury is "the town that Prince Charles built." Not surprisingly, given His Royal Highness's vocal campaign against modern architecture, British critics have been merciless in their ridicule of Poundbury's perceived shortcomings. https://www.architectmagazine.com/design/behind-the-facade-of-prince-charless-poundbury_o https://www.architectmagazine.com/design/behind-the-facade-o...

vzidex 6y ago

> Hamburg build from 2008 on a new district, the HafenCity, a soulless place of concrete, expensive apartments, and chain stores. I find your description here fascinating, because it's exactly how I've described the CityPlace district [1] here in Toronto that was built over the last 20 years, with most development in the last 10. Makes me wonder how common this style of modern, sterile, "ideal" development is in big cities around the world. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CityPlace,_Toronto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CityPlace,_Toronto (I also think it's interesting how both HafenCity and CityPlace work the word "city" into their title, with a similar naming scheme)

thomasedwards 6y ago
Really feel like they could have tried about 5% harder with the name. At least the brand doesn’t have to be soulless even if the place is.
- iamatworknow 6y ago
  Interestingly, Long Island City in New York has become the same sort of concrete soulless high rise area, with an equally uninteresting name. https://ny.curbed.com/2016/8/31/12732412/long-island-city-development-before-after-photos https://ny.curbed.com/2016/8/31/12732412/long-island-city-de...
- cryptoquick 6y ago
  Yeah, it sure shounds like a CityPlace
jacobajit 6y ago
Hudson Yards in NYC is probably the most notorious example of this trend. Seems to be emblematic of a shift toward real estate as a luxury commodity investment, combined with massive developers having free rein to set up inorganic star mega-blocks. All this in close cooperation with cities that have an incentive to improve what were once brownfield sites and are now the most valuable undeveloped sites into tax behemoths. See also: Seaport in Boston, Navy Yard in DC, Mission Bay in San Francisco
6y ago

pas 6y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4QYkEpw9pA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4QYkEpw9pA "This new district of Helsinki is being made almost entirely from timber [...]"

ajmurmann 6y ago

I think a large source of problems with cities actually comes from planning too much. Cities aren't larger houses. They are living things that need to be able to evolve. Most governments make the mistake of only interacting with that proves by introducing rules that stifle change or by planning the entire thing or large portions and getting it wrong or at least in more successful cases building something that cannot adapt when the world changes. Making it easier to build new things but keeping the shake of control any one entity gets small would likely yield much better results. That's how parts of older cities that we now love were build in the first place. Individuals build their buildings on fairly small lots, we didn't have developers build entire neighborhoods. I recommend the book Order Without Design and/or its corresponding podcast for great insights: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/order-without-design https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/order-without-design

LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago

Wasn? Ham doch 'ne U-Bahn da! Have you ever been there at night in the new station at the end of the line, when all the gazillions of bridge spiders are crawling out onto their nets, including the ones over the touchscreens of the ticket ATMs? They are everywhere! Besides that, one could witness how they inject stinking glue into the sand, to make for sturdier foundations. I wonder how that is working out in the following decades, regarding outgassing into basements, garages and so on :-) Since seeing that happen around 2:30AM it is 'Pattexdorf' for me. See also 'Lackdosen-/Klebstoffschnüffeln'