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I’m skeptical that all planning is necessarily doomed to fail. Towns already do a considerable amount of planning via their zoning rules, and subdivisions are p

by notJim 5y ago

I’m skeptical that all planning is necessarily doomed to fail. Towns already do a considerable amount of planning via their zoning rules, and subdivisions are planned as well. The example here just seems like a subdivision, but planned for walkability rather requiring you to drive. Where did the place you lived in go wrong?

ethanbond 5y ago
Well… most towns/subdivisions with zealous planning suck. The best cities in the world appear to be very organically grown. Maybe this is an illusion?
- notJim 5y ago
  How would you measure this? How do you differentiate "zealous planning" from "normal [?] planning?" This just feels like confirmation bias to me.
  - ethanbond 5y ago
    Totally ripe for confirmation bias, which is why my comment seemed very uncertain. I’m kind of going from a heuristic of older cities versus newer ones under the (potentially wrong!) assumption that zoning has tended toward more stringency over time.
- Wowfunhappy 5y ago
  Well Manhattan, for example—obviously at first it developed organically, but the upper part of the island was largely planned, with a strict grid system of streets and avenues and a large park in the center! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaIOfgz8FVY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaIOfgz8FVY
  - harikb 5y ago
    Planning works great for public utilities- roads, libraries, parks etc. The moment we cross that are have a planned bank, grocer, retail I think it falls apart. The grocery shop needs guarantee on revenue to be setup, and then they will slack off because they won’t need to compete or innovate. People will realize once the HOA bill runs in to several hundred dollars and have to deal with shitty services. In the real world, depending on the area, one grocery chain will die and another will take its place.
    - caslon 5y ago
      Alternatively in the real world, one grocery store will die because a Wal*Mart opened an hour away and is replaced by an hour's drive instead of a brief walk to pick up groceries because people can't resist a dollar cheaper and ten more in gas.
      - kortilla 5y ago
        No, that’s not how the real world works. People go to the Walmart and deal with that misery because groceries for the week cost $100 instead of $200. People on a budget absolutely pay attention to the cost of gas.
        caslon 5y ago
        That absolutely is how the real world works. I'm not well-off myself, I keep track of prices, and this recently happened in my own town.
        sokoloff 5y ago
        Yes, the shoppers went to Walmart. No, they didn’t pay a net of $9 extra as a result of that choice.
        kortilla 5y ago
        No, you either didn’t read what I wrote or you haven’t been living on a budget. Poor people don’t waste more money on gas than they save by going to Walmart. They go to Walmart because it’s significantly cheaper to do weekly shopping there than even other big retail grocery outlets, let lone little ones. My parents absolutely fucking hate going to Walmart but they go there weekly because it’s $50/week difference just for the two of them vs Kroger.
        eyelidlessness 5y ago
        You’re both not wrong. I’ve seen both. I’ve lived both. One of my earliest memories was being chastised by my family for spending a tiny fraction more than the lowest price on something; same brand, twice the volume, didn’t have a shelf life, wasn’t over budget. I got in trouble as a poor kid in a poor family for listening to advice my family had given me to shop smart. I also got the same in reverse for being less thrifty and more considerate. Big shrug emoji. I know poverty so much it scares and traumatized me. I appreciate that not everyone does, but I also don’t think it should be represented as something uniquely rational. Poverty is duress. People make all kinds of good decisions because they have survival instincts, and all kinds of bad decisions because they have a bunch of incentives. They often do both and everything in between in a single outing because, yep, gas is expensive. And they’re tired. And the world is hard and expensive.
  - ethanbond 5y ago
    But that’s a very good example. The older parts of the city (way downtown and West Village) feel way better than all the more gridded areas.
    - Wowfunhappy 5y ago
      ...I mean, we’ll have to agree to disagree on that! I really like the grid, it’s one of the reasons I like living here. Makes it so easy to navigate.
      - ethanbond 5y ago
        I’m not disagreeing with the functionality, and personally don’t find the grid to be particularly bad, but do you really think West Village isn’t dramatically more liveable feeling? I suppose this quickly veers into hard-to-define sensations so perhaps the point is moot :) I do suspect that a lot of people would prefer to live in that part of town over the more modern areas… as evidenced by the especially insane rent.
        JackFr 5y ago
        It’s purely a matter of taste. I’ve lived in Manhattan for close to thirty years got married here and raised a family here. What you call a dramatically more livable feeling means different things to different people. Honestly it meant different things to me at 25, 35 and 45. It also meant different things when I was stretched financially and when I was flush.
        Wowfunhappy 5y ago
        The village substantially more expensive than e.g. the upper west side? (These places are all outside of my price range so I've never really looked.) There are also lots of other reasons the tip of manhattan may have been more expensive—for example, it's just the oldest part of the city, so everything started there and expanded outwards.
        ethanbond 5y ago
- drewr 5y ago
  I think it may indeed be an illusion. Paris, for example, was extremely planned. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haussmann%27s_renovation_of_Paris https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haussmann%27s_renovation_of_Pa...
  - ethanbond 5y ago
    This is fascinating! Thanks for sharing. It’s hard to tell what the specificity of the planning was… it seems to have included the street layouts and the below-ground infrastructure, but unclear on the facades and the shop/business distribution? I didn’t know about this but it makes a lot of sense. Those enormous boulevards are clearly not original nor unplanned.
    - laurencerowe 5y ago
      The 19th century equivalent of driving freeways through poor districts in American cities.
    - vidarh 5y ago
      Even the facades in Paris were planned to the point that there were regulations on color and material and design [1]. Regulations were eventually loosened up somewhat. [1] https://www.unjourdeplusaparis.com/en/paris-reportage/reconnaitre-immeuble-haussmannien https://www.unjourdeplusaparis.com/en/paris-reportage/reconn...
  - johncoltrane 5y ago
    You would have to consider Paris to be one of OP's "best cities in the world", though.
- kolinko 5y ago
  Half of Polish cities were rebuilt using central urban planning and came up awesome (build quality aside). There were a few rules: - 5-10 min walk to kindergarden/school and local stores - 3-5 min walk to a bus stop - tons of green space - taller buildings but varied in size and angles so that there is both ample space and variety This is my place I lived in when studying: https://goo.gl/maps/VQqNEY8rcjScsGFg6 https://goo.gl/maps/VQqNEY8rcjScsGFg6 (not even the greenest one) And this is my place where I grew up (street view not available because cars not allowed) https://goo.gl/maps/Q3MwszTjQDqqNFS28 https://goo.gl/maps/Q3MwszTjQDqqNFS28 I literally had no streets to cross when I had to go to an elementary school, and literally 1000 other kids had 1-2 small streets to cross at most, walking 10-15 min or less.
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    There's also the classic - Nowa Huta, a former city and now part of Kraków, built next to Tadeusz Sędzimir Steelworks (formerly Vladimir Lenin Steelworks) - "nowa huta [stali]" translates to "new steelworks". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nowa_Huta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nowa_Huta Here's how it looks: https://goo.gl/maps/5v8zZHpPtZ7Cik7b7 https://goo.gl/maps/5v8zZHpPtZ7Cik7b7 I'm linking to a traffic map, because it's best at highlighting the structure of the place. See the big roads forming straight lines, crossing to form distinct cells? This was intentional, top-down design. Zoom on a cell, see how it's made from apartment blocks surrounding shared, green communal areas. It's currently the greenest place in Kraków, and despite having a reputation of a dangerous place in late 90s[0], it's one of the nicest and most family-friendly areas in the city. The urban legend I grew up with goes, this cell-based design is partially for defensive purposes: during a ground conflict, spaces between outermost apartment blocks form choke points and could be barricaded to close off the sub-district. There's another, less happy story that I've heard - that the steelworks and the city of Nowa Huta were purposefully placed by the Soviets on the most fertile soil in the area, destroying it in the process, in order to get the Poles to urbanize more and generally to spite them. I haven't found a confirmation of this - it might be an urban legend, but it's one that's widely believed over here. -- [0] - Since taken by other districts; last I heard, Kurdwanów was the prime "hot zone". By "dangerous" I mean "you can get robbed at knife point" and "you can get beat up by hooligans". The joke goes, hooligans that lived in Nowa Huta have since grown up, started families, and don't have time for petty crime anymore.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  > Maybe this is an illusion? It's a virulent meme. Planned towns are bad. Organic growth is good. Planning is tyranny, is oppression, is taxation. Please read "Seeing Like a State". Organic growth is freedom, is markets, is good. It's not entirely wrong, just extremely misleading. Urban planning doesn't have to create complete, inflexible designs, managing every tiny bit of life. And outside some failed experiments[0], it almost never is. Think of planning towns as growing gardens. You work with the forces of organic growth, not against them, but still nudge and direct them to create a result that's better[1] than what would be there on its own. -- [0] - Some planners got high on cybernetics/system thinking, in an era we could not computationally support designing complex systems - then others used this to push political ideologies; mix in power struggles and regular corruption, and of course it fails. What's annoying is that it gets painted as "planning bad", "cybernetics bad", "central bad", instead of recognizing the incentive failures in the mix. [1] - Better according to the gardener. Nature optimizes for its own thing. It's important to remember that natural, organic growth rarely optimizes for the benefit of individual units, whether plants or people.
  - AtlasBarfed 5y ago
    Maybe instead of urban planning, you need "urban philosophy". American urban philosophy is the car and the road and segregation. Everything else is secondary. American suburbia is just Conway's law on a massive scale.
- HWR_14 5y ago
  > The best cities in the world appear to be very organically grown. Maybe this is an illusion? Which ones do you think were organically grown vs. which have zealous planning? (It would be nice if you used large enough examples that we could discuss them, as opposed to small towns known only to you.)
Someone 5y ago
One of the main reasons to make a plan should be that it allows you to realize when you are starting to deviate from it. That’s a time you have to do some thinking and either realize you’re about to make a mistake or adjust the plan/come up with a new one. If you do plans badly, you don’t do the thinking, but just declare any deviation from the plan a mistake.

by notJim 5y ago

ethanbond 5y ago

Well… most towns/subdivisions with zealous planning suck. The best cities in the world appear to be very organically grown. Maybe this is an illusion?

notJim 5y ago
How would you measure this? How do you differentiate "zealous planning" from "normal [?] planning?" This just feels like confirmation bias to me.
- ethanbond 5y ago
  Totally ripe for confirmation bias, which is why my comment seemed very uncertain. I’m kind of going from a heuristic of older cities versus newer ones under the (potentially wrong!) assumption that zoning has tended toward more stringency over time.
Wowfunhappy 5y ago
Well Manhattan, for example—obviously at first it developed organically, but the upper part of the island was largely planned, with a strict grid system of streets and avenues and a large park in the center! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaIOfgz8FVY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaIOfgz8FVY
- harikb 5y ago
  Planning works great for public utilities- roads, libraries, parks etc. The moment we cross that are have a planned bank, grocer, retail I think it falls apart. The grocery shop needs guarantee on revenue to be setup, and then they will slack off because they won’t need to compete or innovate. People will realize once the HOA bill runs in to several hundred dollars and have to deal with shitty services. In the real world, depending on the area, one grocery chain will die and another will take its place.
  - caslon 5y ago
    Alternatively in the real world, one grocery store will die because a Wal*Mart opened an hour away and is replaced by an hour's drive instead of a brief walk to pick up groceries because people can't resist a dollar cheaper and ten more in gas.
    - kortilla 5y ago
      No, that’s not how the real world works. People go to the Walmart and deal with that misery because groceries for the week cost $100 instead of $200. People on a budget absolutely pay attention to the cost of gas.
      - caslon 5y ago
        That absolutely is how the real world works. I'm not well-off myself, I keep track of prices, and this recently happened in my own town.
        sokoloff 5y ago
        Yes, the shoppers went to Walmart. No, they didn’t pay a net of $9 extra as a result of that choice.
        kortilla 5y ago
        No, you either didn’t read what I wrote or you haven’t been living on a budget. Poor people don’t waste more money on gas than they save by going to Walmart. They go to Walmart because it’s significantly cheaper to do weekly shopping there than even other big retail grocery outlets, let lone little ones. My parents absolutely fucking hate going to Walmart but they go there weekly because it’s $50/week difference just for the two of them vs Kroger.
        eyelidlessness 5y ago
        You’re both not wrong. I’ve seen both. I’ve lived both. One of my earliest memories was being chastised by my family for spending a tiny fraction more than the lowest price on something; same brand, twice the volume, didn’t have a shelf life, wasn’t over budget. I got in trouble as a poor kid in a poor family for listening to advice my family had given me to shop smart. I also got the same in reverse for being less thrifty and more considerate. Big shrug emoji. I know poverty so much it scares and traumatized me. I appreciate that not everyone does, but I also don’t think it should be represented as something uniquely rational. Poverty is duress. People make all kinds of good decisions because they have survival instincts, and all kinds of bad decisions because they have a bunch of incentives. They often do both and everything in between in a single outing because, yep, gas is expensive. And they’re tired. And the world is hard and expensive.
- ethanbond 5y ago
  But that’s a very good example. The older parts of the city (way downtown and West Village) feel way better than all the more gridded areas.
  - Wowfunhappy 5y ago
    ...I mean, we’ll have to agree to disagree on that! I really like the grid, it’s one of the reasons I like living here. Makes it so easy to navigate.
    - ethanbond 5y ago
      I’m not disagreeing with the functionality, and personally don’t find the grid to be particularly bad, but do you really think West Village isn’t dramatically more liveable feeling? I suppose this quickly veers into hard-to-define sensations so perhaps the point is moot :) I do suspect that a lot of people would prefer to live in that part of town over the more modern areas… as evidenced by the especially insane rent.
      - JackFr 5y ago
        It’s purely a matter of taste. I’ve lived in Manhattan for close to thirty years got married here and raised a family here. What you call a dramatically more livable feeling means different things to different people. Honestly it meant different things to me at 25, 35 and 45. It also meant different things when I was stretched financially and when I was flush.
      - Wowfunhappy 5y ago
        The village substantially more expensive than e.g. the upper west side? (These places are all outside of my price range so I've never really looked.) There are also lots of other reasons the tip of manhattan may have been more expensive—for example, it's just the oldest part of the city, so everything started there and expanded outwards.
        ethanbond 5y ago
drewr 5y ago
I think it may indeed be an illusion. Paris, for example, was extremely planned. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haussmann%27s_renovation_of_Paris https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haussmann%27s_renovation_of_Pa...
- ethanbond 5y ago
  This is fascinating! Thanks for sharing. It’s hard to tell what the specificity of the planning was… it seems to have included the street layouts and the below-ground infrastructure, but unclear on the facades and the shop/business distribution? I didn’t know about this but it makes a lot of sense. Those enormous boulevards are clearly not original nor unplanned.
  - laurencerowe 5y ago
    The 19th century equivalent of driving freeways through poor districts in American cities.
  - vidarh 5y ago
    Even the facades in Paris were planned to the point that there were regulations on color and material and design [1]. Regulations were eventually loosened up somewhat. [1] https://www.unjourdeplusaparis.com/en/paris-reportage/reconnaitre-immeuble-haussmannien https://www.unjourdeplusaparis.com/en/paris-reportage/reconn...
- johncoltrane 5y ago
  You would have to consider Paris to be one of OP's "best cities in the world", though.
kolinko 5y ago
Half of Polish cities were rebuilt using central urban planning and came up awesome (build quality aside). There were a few rules: - 5-10 min walk to kindergarden/school and local stores - 3-5 min walk to a bus stop - tons of green space - taller buildings but varied in size and angles so that there is both ample space and variety This is my place I lived in when studying: https://goo.gl/maps/VQqNEY8rcjScsGFg6 https://goo.gl/maps/VQqNEY8rcjScsGFg6 (not even the greenest one) And this is my place where I grew up (street view not available because cars not allowed) https://goo.gl/maps/Q3MwszTjQDqqNFS28 https://goo.gl/maps/Q3MwszTjQDqqNFS28 I literally had no streets to cross when I had to go to an elementary school, and literally 1000 other kids had 1-2 small streets to cross at most, walking 10-15 min or less.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  There's also the classic - Nowa Huta, a former city and now part of Kraków, built next to Tadeusz Sędzimir Steelworks (formerly Vladimir Lenin Steelworks) - "nowa huta [stali]" translates to "new steelworks". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nowa_Huta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nowa_Huta Here's how it looks: https://goo.gl/maps/5v8zZHpPtZ7Cik7b7 https://goo.gl/maps/5v8zZHpPtZ7Cik7b7 I'm linking to a traffic map, because it's best at highlighting the structure of the place. See the big roads forming straight lines, crossing to form distinct cells? This was intentional, top-down design. Zoom on a cell, see how it's made from apartment blocks surrounding shared, green communal areas. It's currently the greenest place in Kraków, and despite having a reputation of a dangerous place in late 90s[0], it's one of the nicest and most family-friendly areas in the city. The urban legend I grew up with goes, this cell-based design is partially for defensive purposes: during a ground conflict, spaces between outermost apartment blocks form choke points and could be barricaded to close off the sub-district. There's another, less happy story that I've heard - that the steelworks and the city of Nowa Huta were purposefully placed by the Soviets on the most fertile soil in the area, destroying it in the process, in order to get the Poles to urbanize more and generally to spite them. I haven't found a confirmation of this - it might be an urban legend, but it's one that's widely believed over here. -- [0] - Since taken by other districts; last I heard, Kurdwanów was the prime "hot zone". By "dangerous" I mean "you can get robbed at knife point" and "you can get beat up by hooligans". The joke goes, hooligans that lived in Nowa Huta have since grown up, started families, and don't have time for petty crime anymore.
TeMPOraL 5y ago
> Maybe this is an illusion? It's a virulent meme. Planned towns are bad. Organic growth is good. Planning is tyranny, is oppression, is taxation. Please read "Seeing Like a State". Organic growth is freedom, is markets, is good. It's not entirely wrong, just extremely misleading. Urban planning doesn't have to create complete, inflexible designs, managing every tiny bit of life. And outside some failed experiments[0], it almost never is. Think of planning towns as growing gardens. You work with the forces of organic growth, not against them, but still nudge and direct them to create a result that's better[1] than what would be there on its own. -- [0] - Some planners got high on cybernetics/system thinking, in an era we could not computationally support designing complex systems - then others used this to push political ideologies; mix in power struggles and regular corruption, and of course it fails. What's annoying is that it gets painted as "planning bad", "cybernetics bad", "central bad", instead of recognizing the incentive failures in the mix. [1] - Better according to the gardener. Nature optimizes for its own thing. It's important to remember that natural, organic growth rarely optimizes for the benefit of individual units, whether plants or people.
- AtlasBarfed 5y ago
  Maybe instead of urban planning, you need "urban philosophy". American urban philosophy is the car and the road and segregation. Everything else is secondary. American suburbia is just Conway's law on a massive scale.
HWR_14 5y ago
> The best cities in the world appear to be very organically grown. Maybe this is an illusion? Which ones do you think were organically grown vs. which have zealous planning? (It would be nice if you used large enough examples that we could discuss them, as opposed to small towns known only to you.)

Someone 5y ago

One of the main reasons to make a plan should be that it allows you to realize when you are starting to deviate from it. That’s a time you have to do some thinking and either realize you’re about to make a mistake or adjust the plan/come up with a new one. If you do plans badly, you don’t do the thinking, but just declare any deviation from the plan a mistake.