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I take this more as a thought experiment on how building a town without the primary nuisances of 'modern' places. Cars have enabled many things but they are not

I take this more as a thought experiment on how building a town without the primary nuisances of 'modern' places. Cars have enabled many things but they are not unequivocally good. I understand the positives, but they produce a LOT of negative externalities and there is significant cost to spacing things further apart.

helen___keller 5y ago
> Cars have enabled many things but they are not unequivocally good. I understand the positives, but they produce a LOT of negative externalities and there is significant cost to spacing things further apart. Believe me, you're preaching to the choir here. My comment is really just to offer a counterpoint to the justifiable desire to create a "new world" without the troubles of the old one - most people aren't shopping for new lives, so these sorts of plans don't emerge organically in the way that towns did originally. And when "start over" towns built around some ideological principle do arise, they often fail comically[0]. [0] A fun read https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/21534416/free-state-project-new-hampshire-libertarians-matthew-hongoltz-hetling https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/21534416/free-state-...
- nyanpasu64 5y ago
  > What they needed was a town that was small enough that they could come up and elbow the existing citizenry, someplace where land was cheap, where they could come in and buy up a bunch of land and kind of host their incoming colonists. And they wanted a place that had no zoning, because they wanted to be able to live in nontraditional housing situations and not have to go through the rigamarole of building or buying expensive homes or preexisting homes. Is this the kind of bad scenario that NIMBY activists organize to prevent (despite the issues created by their zoning policies not letting people move in)?
- zip1234 5y ago
  That was indeed an interesting read. To be fair that sounds more anarchist/hippy commune than what the article today was about.
  - helen___keller 5y ago
    > To be fair that sounds more anarchist/hippy commune than what the article today was about To be more precise, Grafton was an attempt to "create" a new town governed by the ideas of Libertarianism, while the OP article is describing how to create a new town governed by the ideas of New Urbanism (roughly). The shared problem is that if you're founding a town on the basis of an ideology, you have a town full of ideologues, which isn't a very organic state and hence is prone to many unexpected issues

helen___keller 5y ago

> Cars have enabled many things but they are not unequivocally good. I understand the positives, but they produce a LOT of negative externalities and there is significant cost to spacing things further apart. Believe me, you're preaching to the choir here. My comment is really just to offer a counterpoint to the justifiable desire to create a "new world" without the troubles of the old one - most people aren't shopping for new lives, so these sorts of plans don't emerge organically in the way that towns did originally. And when "start over" towns built around some ideological principle do arise, they often fail comically[0]. [0] A fun read https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/21534416/free-state-project-new-hampshire-libertarians-matthew-hongoltz-hetling https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/21534416/free-state-...

nyanpasu64 5y ago
> What they needed was a town that was small enough that they could come up and elbow the existing citizenry, someplace where land was cheap, where they could come in and buy up a bunch of land and kind of host their incoming colonists. And they wanted a place that had no zoning, because they wanted to be able to live in nontraditional housing situations and not have to go through the rigamarole of building or buying expensive homes or preexisting homes. Is this the kind of bad scenario that NIMBY activists organize to prevent (despite the issues created by their zoning policies not letting people move in)?
zip1234 5y ago
That was indeed an interesting read. To be fair that sounds more anarchist/hippy commune than what the article today was about.
- helen___keller 5y ago
  > To be fair that sounds more anarchist/hippy commune than what the article today was about To be more precise, Grafton was an attempt to "create" a new town governed by the ideas of Libertarianism, while the OP article is describing how to create a new town governed by the ideas of New Urbanism (roughly). The shared problem is that if you're founding a town on the basis of an ideology, you have a town full of ideologues, which isn't a very organic state and hence is prone to many unexpected issues