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Unfortunately this project lacks two things which are essential to a long-lasting, sustainable, and human-friendly town. 1) Architecture that inspires, elevate

Unfortunately this project lacks two things which are essential to a long-lasting, sustainable, and human-friendly town. 1) Architecture that inspires, elevates the soul, and will last the test of time. All I see is soulless pre-fabs. It looks like you're living in a shopping mall. 2) The freedom to create buildings and institutions that are meaningful to the residents who reside there. Churches, schools, sporting clubs. Trusting the company behind this to provide for your every need is naive. Maybe it will work for some people. But will people want to move and raise children here? Creating one-off experiences is not the way to create the sustainable towns and cities of the future. This is like Airbnb taken to an obscene level. We should be designing car-free towns where people can buy property, design beautiful homes, participate in a small local economy, work locally and start small businesses, create the local institutions that their children and their children's children will participate in. I don't want to rent my space in a town I'm only partially attached to. I want to put roots down, and build things that will last.

throwaway0a5e 5y ago
1 is a quintessential first world problem. If the value prop of the neighborhood is good people won't care how it looks. 2 is doing to doom it long term though IMO
goodpoint 5y ago
> All I see is soulless pre-fabs. It looks like you're living in a shopping mall. Spot on. Like a town from Greece or Portugal, Spain, Italy, Mexico... but with a dystopian feel.
- SilverRed 5y ago
  The dystopian feel was mostly coming from it being not so great renders which feel overly flat and vibrant.
nwallin 5y ago
I tend to agree. Communities need to be built organically. Let's say a town has 5,000 buildings in it; is somebody going to pay an architecture firm to design 5,000 buildings for them? Or are they going to pay them to design 40 buildings and copy and paste 125 times? Neighborhoods in the United States have a tendancy to look like shit, and that's because most of them are planned developments that were designed and constructed all at the same time. Each neighborhood is a snapshot in time of what "modern" "new" and "interesting" looked like some number of decades prior. IMHO the best thing about these houses is that they're not designed to last for 40 years. So 50 years from now after half of the houses are torn down and replaced with something different -- maybe worse, maybe better -- they have a chance of being nice. If you compare Factorio to Cities:Skylines, the best and worst feature of Factorio is that it lets you copy-paste, and C:S doesn't.
- FooBarBizBazz 5y ago
  Some planning can be good. Chicago had the Burnham Plan; New York had Olmsted. (People like to cite L'Enfant's DC but I don't actually think that turned out as well.) And Oglethorpe's Savannah Plan was a wonderful thing. And Poundbury in the UK looks like it might turn out well. But the designer has to have taste, give a shit, and care about something besides money.
- zepearl 5y ago
  I think that I agree, hoping that if I understood your comment correctly the crucial factor is "time"?
bpodgursky 5y ago
> But will people want to move and raise children here? It's pretty telling that not one of their CGI promotional images includes a family, or even a child.
- PostThisTooFast 5y ago
  Yeah, it's pretty surreal; there are very few depictions of people interacting. This looks like a Twilight Zone episode.
- noduerme 5y ago
  You move there to get laid, brah. Definitely not to have kids. But if last month's hot tub girl should text you with a baby emoji, don't, like, freak out and start saving money to buy a house. It's probably not your baby anyway. [/sarcasm, in case that was undetectable].
rblatz 5y ago
This isn’t a town, it’s an off campus dorm. Or at most a big apartment complex. A lot of ASU students and recent grads live in that part of town. I lived right down the street 7 years ago, it was a very party atmosphere. They also had a gym and a pool and right on a light rail stop with commercial space on the first floor. But they also had a giant parking garage and a public light rail park and ride (hint that’s where a lot of the residents will park their cars). It’s an interesting concept, but it’s applicability outside of this location is not clear to me.
helen___keller 5y ago
I agree with (2) more than (1) because if you have (2) then you're free to replace a soulless building you don't like, so the architecture of the region will mature and diversify over time.
snarfy 5y ago
We really just need the rules. The rest will grow organically. Why is our legal system so crappy that this cannot happen? Our legal system has everyone's hand in the pot and we end up with cities designed to extract maximum profit from its residents.
systemvoltage 5y ago
Yes, this place looks like its going to have an HOA with $472/month fee, a bunch of annoying people on a power trip to tell you how your house should look like. I'd want more of an "ground-up" place, not "top-down" neighborhood. Independent people, businesses and families getting together in an emergent fashion without a planner.

throwaway0a5e 5y ago

1 is a quintessential first world problem. If the value prop of the neighborhood is good people won't care how it looks. 2 is doing to doom it long term though IMO

goodpoint 5y ago

> All I see is soulless pre-fabs. It looks like you're living in a shopping mall. Spot on. Like a town from Greece or Portugal, Spain, Italy, Mexico... but with a dystopian feel.

SilverRed 5y ago
The dystopian feel was mostly coming from it being not so great renders which feel overly flat and vibrant.

nwallin 5y ago

I tend to agree. Communities need to be built organically. Let's say a town has 5,000 buildings in it; is somebody going to pay an architecture firm to design 5,000 buildings for them? Or are they going to pay them to design 40 buildings and copy and paste 125 times? Neighborhoods in the United States have a tendancy to look like shit, and that's because most of them are planned developments that were designed and constructed all at the same time. Each neighborhood is a snapshot in time of what "modern" "new" and "interesting" looked like some number of decades prior. IMHO the best thing about these houses is that they're not designed to last for 40 years. So 50 years from now after half of the houses are torn down and replaced with something different -- maybe worse, maybe better -- they have a chance of being nice. If you compare Factorio to Cities:Skylines, the best and worst feature of Factorio is that it lets you copy-paste, and C:S doesn't.

FooBarBizBazz 5y ago
Some planning can be good. Chicago had the Burnham Plan; New York had Olmsted. (People like to cite L'Enfant's DC but I don't actually think that turned out as well.) And Oglethorpe's Savannah Plan was a wonderful thing. And Poundbury in the UK looks like it might turn out well. But the designer has to have taste, give a shit, and care about something besides money.
zepearl 5y ago
I think that I agree, hoping that if I understood your comment correctly the crucial factor is "time"?

bpodgursky 5y ago

> But will people want to move and raise children here? It's pretty telling that not one of their CGI promotional images includes a family, or even a child.

PostThisTooFast 5y ago
Yeah, it's pretty surreal; there are very few depictions of people interacting. This looks like a Twilight Zone episode.
noduerme 5y ago
You move there to get laid, brah. Definitely not to have kids. But if last month's hot tub girl should text you with a baby emoji, don't, like, freak out and start saving money to buy a house. It's probably not your baby anyway. [/sarcasm, in case that was undetectable].

rblatz 5y ago

This isn’t a town, it’s an off campus dorm. Or at most a big apartment complex. A lot of ASU students and recent grads live in that part of town. I lived right down the street 7 years ago, it was a very party atmosphere. They also had a gym and a pool and right on a light rail stop with commercial space on the first floor. But they also had a giant parking garage and a public light rail park and ride (hint that’s where a lot of the residents will park their cars). It’s an interesting concept, but it’s applicability outside of this location is not clear to me.

helen___keller 5y ago

I agree with (2) more than (1) because if you have (2) then you're free to replace a soulless building you don't like, so the architecture of the region will mature and diversify over time.

snarfy 5y ago

We really just need the rules. The rest will grow organically. Why is our legal system so crappy that this cannot happen? Our legal system has everyone's hand in the pot and we end up with cities designed to extract maximum profit from its residents.

systemvoltage 5y ago

Yes, this place looks like its going to have an HOA with $472/month fee, a bunch of annoying people on a power trip to tell you how your house should look like. I'd want more of an "ground-up" place, not "top-down" neighborhood. Independent people, businesses and families getting together in an emergent fashion without a planner.