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Plans for a new city in the American desert
- webmobdev 5y agoThere are already so many dying or dead towns / cities in the US that building a new city in a desert sounds like thoughtless, careless waste (not to mention the ecological disaster of displacing / destroying the ecosystem of the desert). When there are so many habitable locations, why build a city in an inhospitable environment - so much energy resource is going to be wasted to make it habitable ... - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ghost_towns_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ghost_towns_in_the_Uni... - https://www.businessinsider.com/10-american-cities-that-are-dead-forever-2010-9?IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/10-american-cities-that-are-...
- zenonu 5y agoThis new city most likely depends on getting necessary regulatory and code approvals that would be impossible elsewhere. There's also a reason why towns become ghost towns, and the investors putting in $400B in funding probably don't want to start with one foot in the metaphorical grave.
- stephen_g 5y agoFrom the sound of it, he’s still looking for all of the “investors putting in $400B of funding” at this point. For now, it seems he’s just doing PR and paying an architecture firm to make 3D renders.
- kitsunesoba 5y agoTo me the set of issues that come with building up a pre-existing city/town are similar to those faced by companies and municipalities looking to lay fiberoptic cable for internet service: endless political hurdles and obstructionism coming from the numerous groups and individuals involved, slowing development to a crawl or stopping it altogether. It's no wonder why this project is pursuing a "clean slate" approach.
- Gimpei 5y agoAccording to the article Appalachia is also under consideration, which I guess would alleviate the water concerns. The only justification I can think of for a project like this is BANANAs making the reformation of current cities impossible. But I share your skepticism. But it's always nice to see cool architectural mockups!
- yuppie_scum 5y agoIf they tried to rebuild a functional modern city in an existing dying city it would be called gentrification and vilified by the current occupants.
- njarboe 5y agoBecause trying out new political structures that is the reason for building the new city. Nevada has passed a law recently that allows for basically the creation of new counties within existing ones. The county level is where quite a bit of political power lies, even though that level of government is often forgotten. Who knows what might come out of it, but I would like to see someone give it a try.
- KyleBrandt 5y agoEmphasis on "plans": "Now, he just needs somewhere to build it -- and $400 billion in funding"
- mindvirus 5y agoI love the ambition. One thing I've been really amazed about China has been the willingness to tackle big infrastructure projects - building cities like Shenzhen in a few decades and all of the infrastructure projects in the Pearl River Delta in general. I think we need more of that in the west. So I wish them luck - I hope real estate speculation doesn't ruin it. One thing I've noticed with US politics is that things tend to be viewed as local issues instead of national ones. For example, NYC's public transit is a key part of the US's financial engine, but still chronically underfunded and mismanaged, and New York's problem to deal with. So I hope people see projects like this as points of national pride, even if they don't live there.
- kiba 5y agoWe already have lot of infrastructure projects here in America. It's called roads. Endless ceaseless expansion of roads. I think we need to stop mindlessly expand roads, and reconsider our infrastructure priority before we can start doing massive megaprojects.
- wolfretcrap 5y agoIt's mind blowing how much land the US has. I live in India and here finding farmland is not easy to say least, while I see lot of cheap land available in the US all time with much more facilities than a small city in India would have. I've always wondered why America has not built many more cities with all that available land.
- mastax 5y agoLooks like that ridiculous city the Saudi Crown Prince is building. The difference is he has money to burn. Good luck finding investors for this.
- jessaustin 5y agoReal estate developers who can't find enough investors typically come up with some scam like TIF in order to extract funds from local governments with corrupt politicians. This project targets some area were the local government wouldn't have any capital to extract, so this wouldn't be an option. Maybe this billionaire can arrange for some federal-level corruption, like "opportunity zones".
- DenverCode 5y ago>purportedly drought-resistant water system I'd love to know more about this.
- TYPE_FASTER 5y agoThat was my first thought as well. Especially as we are continually learning more about our ability to estimate how much water is available to us: https://www.kuer.org/health-science-environment/2021-02-09/moabs-aquifer-may-be-maxed-out-prompting-city-to-explore-water-conservation https://www.kuer.org/health-science-environment/2021-02-09/m...
- avaldes 5y agoStillsuits obviously, so you won't lose more than a thimbleful of moisture a day
- pcurve 5y ago"The cleanliness of Tokyo, the diversity of New York and the social services of Stockholm: Billionaire Marc Lore has outlined his vision for a 5-million-person "new city in America" and appointed a world-famous architect to design it" "The mission of Telosa is to create a more equitable and sustainable future. That's our North Star." I admire their ambition, but they are underestimating people's preference for inequity as long as they're on the right side of the graph. I don't know if they're asking the right questions and solving for the right problems... their web site hasn't moved beyond vaporware phase. https://cityoftelosa.com/ https://cityoftelosa.com/
- kiba 5y agoWhat would it take for the middle class homeowners of America to prioritize housing for everyone rather than the price of their home?
- catillac 5y agoFramed like that it’s hard to imagine choosing one or the other and the answer might be intractable. A more interesting question might be: What would it take to align policies around housing for everyone with policies around increasing the prices of homes such that the two things are strongly positively correlated?
- sokoloff 5y agoHousing cannot simultaneously remain affordable and “be a good investment” (meaning increase at a rate faster than general inflation).
- Ekaros 5y agoOne might also question should land even be sold. Something like 20 or 30 year lease with re-evaluation of value at end might make more sense. Ofc, this would potentially lead to losing homes, but on other hand would allow redevelopment for increased density regularly.
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- rowanG077 5y agoHoly shit, Night City is becoming real.
- Bayart 5y agoI feel every attempt at community-by-design bears within it the seed of inhumane horror. Forget about the energy equation of building a city in a desert, what's the on-boarding process for prospective inhabitants ? Putting the price of accommodation sky-high to make sure everybody's in the right tax-bracket (or even earns enough to not pay taxes) ? Going through an interview process to only take in people with the "right vibes" ? How do you get teachers, garbage collectors, plumbers, nurses, all sorts of manual workers ? Park them in a ghetto like in Dubai, make ideological adhesion rather than money the filter (good luck with funding) or try to automate them away ?
- lprubin 5y agoOne idea is an expansion of a law already on the books in many cities. When you create a new building / housing complex (which will be 100% in a new city), you require X% of units to be "affordable housing". I could see the city just increasing the required % and then giving tax credits to developers to offset the lost revenue to them. Given that this city would be built in stages, it will give them time to hone in on the desired percentage.
- kiba 5y agoI don't think this work as this is just rent controlled housing. Better to cut the unnecessary red tape and let developers build more housing. Also, I think penalizing vacant properties would also be a good idea.
- lprubin 5y agoI'm curious to hear why you think it doesn't work. I'm not necessarily disagreeing, just would like to know more.
- zozbot234 5y agoThe point is that no matter how much housing you reserve to be "affordable housing", it will still be scarce and thus unaffordable to most. And this kind of well-intentioned red tape often ends up shrinking the supply of housing as a whole, which only makes it even less affordable.
- jeffbee 5y agoThat initial stage isn't very promising. 50000 people on 1500 acres is only about 30 dwellings per acre, not very impressive. You can achieve that density with traditional row houses.
- bserge 5y agoWhy would anyone move there? You need work to attract workers. Why would any company move/start there? Middle of the desert smh. Why not build it underwater and get rid of all the pesky ethical/moral laws, allow any biotech research and free experimentation on humans?
- gremloni 5y agoSpeak for yourself. Middle of the desert is amazing given there is a source of water (aquifer, desalination plant etc.). Deserts are clean, nice and hot year round, not humid and extremely conducive to solar energy.
- Karrot_Kream 5y agoBuilding human-comfortable areas in a desert is quite environmentally friendly, given a source of water (and I don't want to brush this one under the rug; it's actually fairly difficult). Things about a desert that make energy use lower: - Evaporative cooling can decrease cooling needs. Using a fan or an evaporative cooler is much more feasible in dry environments. - Hot days and cool nights mean it's fairly simple to store thermal energy and use that for cooking, water heating, area heating, and/or clothes drying (if you want to actively heat your clothes) at night - Lots of sun, so solar energy is highly viable. That means lighting can be done through solar energy. - If the area is windy, fairly easy to ventilate homes just through outdoor wind and maybe an E/HRV if necessary High humidity areas are really difficult to cool because after a certain Relative Humidity level in the air, fans just stop being effective due to evaporative cooling being insufficient. ACs were originally invented as a method of dehumidification. That said, growing crops in these environments can be a challenge (you can certainly grow aeroponically in greenhouses, but that's energy use, so the numbers need to be crunched) and using transport to fetch water and crops could make the whole project non-viable. There is potential for using solar to desalinate but the water itself needs to come from somewhere.
- Ekaros 5y agoWhat is viability of storing thermal energy for cooking? Out-side very few specific scenarios like sous-vide proteins, the temperatures generally used are too high for efficient energy transfer.
- pcmoney 5y agoOverall like the 15 minute focus but feel it is best achieved organically. Planned cities rarely work and they almost always feel weird. Look at Brasilia for example. I dont see the desert aspect, with what water?
- dukeofdoom 5y agoShenzhen and Dubai are key port cities, making them global hotspots for the flow of wealth and goods long before they became the modern cities of today. A city in the desert has none of those foundational benefits.
- Proven 5y ago> Although planners are still scouting for locations, possible targets include Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Arizona, Texas and the Appalachian region Although the project quotes problems with capitalism, they intend to maintain safe distance from socialist states.
- ThePadawan 5y agoI don't know who I would rather have design a city from scratch: - A billionaire "with a vision" - Someone who has spent more than 10k hours playing Cities: Skylines
- lom 5y agoDefinitely neither. The proposal here is a joke, only intended to grab money from investors - make some small efforts and to then run away with the money. And Cities Skylines has the large issue of separating housing, work (not really industrial, that belongs separated) and commercial parts; just like the american suburb.
- francilien 5y agoI would like a city from scratch designed by Alain Bertaud.
- mrfusion 5y agoHow would they handle homelessness and truancy?
- aero-glide2 5y agoNew city in desert reminded me of Neom, not quite sure what happened to it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neom
- mrfusion 5y agoWhat if we make an entire city in one giant building?
- LargoLasskhyfv 5y agoAhw! Looksie! Iz got rainbows! [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20120825041721/http://www.shimz.co.jp/english/theme/dream/try.html https://web.archive.org/web/20120825041721/http://www.shimz....
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- hn_throwaway_99 5y agoI'm very curious, have there ever been any "cities from the ground up" projects that don't turn out to be total shit that end up just reflecting the urban planning fallacies of the day? (Looking at you, Brasilia) I mean, all of the cities that are most "livable" in my mind are old cities that were designed before the car and thus have enough density and public transportation to make things both close and also the kind of place where it's fun to just walk around. These "master planned cities" always end up like houses that are designed with all these pretty rooms that nobody actually uses.
- lprubin 5y agoWikipedia has a really interesting world list of "Planned Cities" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_community https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_community) It also has a decent rundown of modern American ones (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_community#Modern_planned_cities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_community#Modern_plann...). You'll have to use your own judgement on a case by case basis if they were successful or not and if they meet your personal definition of master planned. But I found the lists a very interesting read.
- boomboomsubban 5y agoDubai? Not really something to emulate though. Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taipei also kind of fit.
- throw0101a 5y ago> Dubai? I have heard that Dubai does not have street names, so giving directions and arranging deliveries can be… challenging. Is this statement accurate?
- hn_throwaway_99 5y agoI think "missing street names" is probably #2879 on the prioritized list of things that make Dubai the best example of a complete modern dystopia.
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- adventured 5y agoYou can't have the cleaniless of Tokyo in a US city unless you're willing to harshly punish people - Singapore style - for transgressions. That won't stand up legally in terms of civil rights. You have to entirely remake the culture to get that outcome, and that's not going to happen. Urban US culture is largely mediocre. The last thing the US needs is another Las Vegas, building another major US city in the desert is moronic. In general the US does not need more cities. The US can't operate its existing cities properly. It's embarrassing how disgusting and violent most US cities are. Culturally the US should figure out how to run the cities it has before building new ones. To say nothing of the fact that the US has no need of new mega cities from a practical standpoint, we're facing population decline or stagnation, not a population boom. Cities are cultural extensions of the nations they reside in, along with regional influences. It's highly predictable what you'll get out of another city built in the US. Let's focus $400 billion on public transportation improvements for our existing cities, including rail and a lot more electric buses.
- nicoburns 5y agoYeah, when you start thinking about what you could do for infrastructure in existing cities for $400B then you start realising what a bad idea this project is.
- refurb 5y agoSingapore doesn’t harshly punish to maintain its level of cleanliness. There is plenty of littering. They just have a massive army of cheap foreign labor to constantly clean.
- smitty1e 5y agoHopefully the Southwest is ruled out. That region is wildly over-populated for the amount of water available.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y agoThere's still plenty of water in the SW for residential purposes. At least 70% of the water use is for commercial agriculture, an idea hatched in the early 20th century after two of the wettest decades in the last 1200 years. People living in this part of the world is not so much of an issue; growing lots of crops (especially high-water-use ones like alfalfa, rice, almonds) is.
- amanaplanacanal 5y agoI believe for the most part the water is owned by the folks using it. Is there even a way for them to sell their water to a new city?
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y agoWest of the Mississippi, this is generally correct. The ability to lease/transfer water rights varies state by state. In NM where I live, it is extremely difficult.
- ChrisMarshallNY 5y agoI am not really educated about how things are going now, but, when I was attending school, they used Brasilia[0], as an example of a "great idea that never made it." I have also read about the giant Chinese "ghost cities." I think that having a reason to be there, is 99% of the incentive to build a city. There's a reason that almost every city is on a body of water. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bras%C3%ADlia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bras%C3%ADlia
- simonh 5y agoThe Chinese ghost city stories were largely unfounded. There was a supposed 'ghost city' near my wife's hometown in China, but it's now a thriving city full of people. The thing is building and kickstarting something like that takes time. The facades and roads go up first, but it takes months to get all the homes made liveable and get the basic utilities up and running, then ramp up the population.
- ChrisMarshallNY 5y agoCool. Thanks for setting the record straight. That makes perfect sense.
- prawn 5y agoI assume a major issue with Brasilia and co are that they are designed at car scale. I suspect if you designed without cars as a key factor, you'd immediately have a better chance of creating a more enjoyable place?
- spoonjim 5y agoWhy put this in the desert if you don’t need proximity to anywhere? Why not in a place that has abundant water?
- GDC7 5y ago"Build it and they will come" is fascinating but hasn't even worked for Dubai, and the Emirates have poured into Dubai way more than 400B since they decided that they'd open themselves up to the world. Dubai development started in 1980s. Still today Dubai is made up of Westeners who made money in their home country and they relocated there blinded by the lights and the promise of an "endless summer" (matter of fact it gets chilly in winter and I hope you like 120F on the regular during the summer). A city spurs up, you can't just build it and hope that people will come, it's too big of a project. Me thinks this is a PR move to get his name out there and use as a hook to get some fundraising for some more sensible project.
- gremloni 5y agoWhat are you on about? More than 50% of Dubai is Indians and Pakistanis and not in a second class citizen way you’re imagining. Most businesses, LEO, administration are south Asians. Not sure why you’re latching on to the small minority of westerners that live there.
- spankalee 5y agoIt's exciting to see a new ambitious project like this. America definitely needs new cities to help with housing abd environmental problems. I have a few concerns though: Location: We need new cities in there north add climate change ramps up. Desert doesn't sound great. And new cities need to be built in low population states to balance out the Senate. Wyoming, Montana, the Dakotas, WV would be best. Otherwise the country continues to become more dysfunctional. Up north there's underutilized Amtrak lines too. Local Transportation: autonomous cars are cool, but are still space inefficient compare to mass transit. A new city is an amazing opportunity to build mass transit more cheaply with cut-and-cover tunnels. You can also plan for commercial transportation with delivery tunnels and below ground docks. These are the kinds of things you can't easily add to an existing city and should be the focus. Regional Transportation: Where's the airport and how does it connect to the city? Will there be a central train station? How do carless residents reach regional attractions like state/national parks and recreation areas? Parks: It's nearly impossible to add large parks to a new city, but they immensely improve quality of life. A new city should be designed around large central parks and neighborhood parks. You also need to have a green belt surrounding the city to prevent sprawl. Density: SF density isn't it. SF is mostly a suburb west of Van Ness. Shoot for Paris. Industry: People need jobs. Where are the light industrial areas and how do they integrate with the city so they're not blighted pollution centers? Will they be transit connected so people don't need cars?
- hakfoo 5y agoWhy not pick an old Rust Belt town, plane it smooth, and start over? If you boost density substantially, you might only need a portion of the current land area (simplifying the acquisition and clearing process). Maybe you can even use the existing population base to help bootstrap the economy. I could see making some sort of offer for people to sign over their land (with decrepit buildings and worn-out infrastructure) for highly subsidized or free units in the newly built city.
- nemo44x 5y agoThe cognitive dissonance in their descriptions of how things will work and how things will be is amazing. Everything is “inclusive” and “equitisim” and the community has a direct voice in every decision (that will scale to 5 million people!). But yet all this is being dictated by what I assume is the authority over everything in this make-believe place. Everything on their website states as a matter of fact how “things will be”. This isn’t how things work and it’s written like it was created from the most upvoted posts on Reddit. Teachers will “be paid well” - what does that mean? Who decides what “paid well” means? What if they unionize, for example? What if the people that move there decide they don’t want any of these things? What if the first settlers decide to vote for individual property ownership? This place sounds more like a utopian commune than a realistic place.
- kyleee 5y agoYep, it feels like it could be satire. The project will likely be a boondoggle, assuming it even gets off the ground
- human 5y agoOne more news story that makes me feel like we live in Black Mirror.
- recursivedoubts 5y agoHenry George is a forgotten hero of american history, swept under the rug by today's corporate conservative-v-liberal punch and judy show: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_George https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_George When he died 100,000 people showed up at his funeral: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_George#Death_and_funeral https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_George#Death_and_funeral Can you imagine anyone showing up at an economists funeral today, except to heckle? It's unfortunate that this project mixes Georgism w/ dehumanized modern architecture. Most people want to live in traditional, walkable neighborhoods, as prices suggest.
- larsiusprime 5y agoYeah as a Georgist I find this super-city plan pretty confusing. I mean if you're going to build a super-city go ahead and implement LVT, but it feels a bit quixotic to me. You could take all that money and put it into training the next generation of assessors to fix problems of chronically under-assessing land and you'd do much more immediate good for the world and spur much more development.
- aaron695 5y agoThis truly looks like a dystopian nightmare. Fucking glass. And roads with grass? Will there be robots making sure you neither walk or have drones on the grass? I guess they'd control the vehicle's to keep it pretty but how do they control you? I don't get the scam here, but it's also a grid city - https://newatlas.com/architecture/telosa-city-bjarke-ingels-marc-lore/#gallery:1 https://newatlas.com/architecture/telosa-city-bjarke-ingels-... WTF is with a grid city? I get all the awful stuff in the photos that make it look pretty, but surely people hate grids both in photos and real life. Is this some sort of propaganda thing? Grids are allegedly bad for cars, so we self flagellate by creating awful grid cities to hurt the 'car' If I think about places in every city I've visited or places I loved as a child, being on a grid is not place's I go too. It'll be short cuts and hidden parks in loops and random alleyways. I'm pretty sure psychology also confirms people like living in curved planning mentally.
- boulos 5y agoThe auto caps for the title transformed BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group) => Big. But I think I'd also replace this archdaily post with the direct https://cityoftelosa.com/ https://cityoftelosa.com/ .
- eCa 5y ago> will be built from scratch on a desert [...] with lush landscapes Will be interesting to see how sustainable that is.
- HeckFeck 5y agoMaybe they're working on terraforming technology.
- tpmx 5y agoThey're not planning anything beyond fancy renders.
- yourapostasy 5y agoSame concerns with THE LINE [1] in Saudi Arabia. I'm guessing that the energy harvesting from the geography and leveraging the locale's low humidity for evaporative cooling, along with the generally ultra-low cost of acquiring the dirt, are pretty attractive for moonshot projects like these. I've yet to see any of these types of projects start with fundamentals like better-than-PassivHaus insulation standards, or NetZero standards, or make form follow function by performing and designing around an energy flow analysis, or learn from the lessons that Strong Towns extracted from the population density factors, and so on, so these projects are likely run into many of the same foundational challenges that many nations and cities struggle with today. I think coming up with a framework that allows organic evolution towards integrating these many different factors continuously over the long-term is all we can really hope to accomplish for practical success; we likely simply don't have the sufficient analytical tools to design-up-front except in the most basic, infrastructural ways. [1] https://www.neom.com/en-us/whatistheline https://www.neom.com/en-us/whatistheline
- demadog 5y agoTelosa is eerily similar to Tesla. Of course it’s different but my brain makes the connection. Wonder if there’s a future trademark lawsuit.
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- TulliusCicero 5y agoGiven how zoning and urban design tend to have been done in US cities -- that is, very badly -- I'm not opposed to this. It even sounds intriguing, but I have a hard time personally finding a city in a desert to be attractive, even if the urban design is great.
- yourapostasy 5y agoDeserts can be great for living in once you manage the heat through shading and wind management. Desert sand is very amenable to conversion into rich loamy soil through taking in lots of organic matter in surprisingly few years. Living in such a climate can be made attractive. The challenge is clean, potable water, which is really embodied energy. The evaporation of such water happens at a ferocious rate out in the open. There are also daunting challenges around long-term high-density human impacts upon the desert ecosystem, which serve important functions that are still not well-understood [1]. [1] https://www.environmentalscience.org/deserts-ecosystems https://www.environmentalscience.org/deserts-ecosystems
- TulliusCicero 5y ago> There are also daunting challenges around long-term high-density human impacts upon the desert ecosystem, which serve important functions that are still not well-understood [1]. That's a rather odd way of framing it. For one thing, having higher density seems like a rather obvious environmental good, since it means less total natural area disrupted. If you refuse high density in some area, the people who would've lived there don't just disappear; they go live in some other area, probably lower density, in a way that hurts the environment even more. And while there's obviously life in desert ecosystems, there's substantially less of it compared to most other ecosystems -- you could say the same thing you said of grasslands or forest or what have you, except it'd be much more true.
- yourapostasy 5y ago> For one thing, having higher density... My concern was around our civilization's poor understanding of the interplay between ecosystems, high density, energy flows, authority flows and fiscal flows. I'm a proponent of organically learning by building in incrementally higher densities in both cold and hot-dry deserts; it frees up more arable land elsewhere, and might have the least environmental impact of other build patterns. "Might" because that is a pure supposition based upon the lower densities of life supported by those climate zones. But small, rapidly iterative experiments because I think we need lots of time and small failures to understand how to maintain sustainable, equitable high-density urban cores over long durations (hundreds to thousands of years), that do not exacerbate the centralization of socioeconomic power and authority which seem to plague lots of large-organization decision matrices. I've been looking for many years for literature that studies these kinds of inter-relationships. Our civilization seems to have a pretty good grasp of how to start building an urban core area (see China as the latest example, and many currently less-developed nations in elsewhere I expect will follow suit in the coming decades). But the wheels start to come off when land and improvements speculation (driven by the unique leverage+asset treatments real estate enjoys in law) drives up the pricing of a successfully started urban core, and emerges suburban and other anti-pattern responses when no other solutions to stay within high-density urban come forward. In the context of the desert builds, I'm reasonably confident after looking into the patterns I've researched so far, that absent some pretty fundamental changes in how high-density urban cores are maintained after they are started, even successful starts will rapidly (within two generations, say 40-80 years) dilute and falter from their original excellent high-density-driven metrics as the expected anti-patterns emerge again.
- oneplane 5y agoYou would think that anywhere that is not an extreme would be a better choice to build a project from scratch that is supposed to be 'the most' sustainable but also attractive. Perhaps this is a side-effect due to the state or country chosen, where there are no realistic alternatives? Even going to a more moderate location slightly farther away from the equator doesn't seem all that difficult vs. really sticking with a desert.
- jazzyjackson 5y agoIt's reminiscent of Arcosanti in it's aim of transforming a harsh environment into somewhere livable, instead of just picking somewhere livable in the first place. Maybe it's just pragmatic since arid land is the cheapest land, but it has a nice principal to it, of taking land and improving it instead of draining and farming everything out of it. I think Arcosanti has a second design advantage tho, it started with a small but livable urban core, so even with 50 residents the city is functional (given enough tourists) but the plans include expansions for 500 and then 5,000 residents. To grow the city as people show up seems like a better move then spending billions of dollars before you open the gates.
- neonate 5y agohttps://archive.is/fC5U0 https://archive.is/fC5U0 Longer article: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-09-01/how-diapers-com-founder-marc-lore-plans-to-build-utopian-city-telosa https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-09-01/how-diape... http://web.archive.org/web/20210905140905/https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-09-01/how-diapers-com-founder-marc-lore-plans-to-build-utopian-city-telosa http://web.archive.org/web/20210905140905/https://www.bloomb... https://archive.is/5j0tJ https://archive.is/5j0tJ
- IdontRememberIt 5y agoEco-friendly in the desert and away from oceans... A sure way to have low fix and variable costs. Is this a remake of Ghost towns in China?
- webwielder2 5y agoPlace it at the intersection of Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming to undo some of the Senate/EC slant.
- jessaustin 5y agoThere's already a popular national park in that location?
- Animats 5y agoOh, no, he's been reading Henry George. Check out Fairhope, Alabama, which has George's single land tax system. "Everybody Works but the Vacant Lot". What are the big skeletal towers with a few plants hung on them supposed to do?
- larsiusprime 5y agoFairhope has experienced quite a bit of mission drift from it's original plan. A better example would be Houston in 1911: https://twitter.com/larsiusprime/status/1427107150053183505 https://twitter.com/larsiusprime/status/1427107150053183505 Or if you want a really good and thorough modern empirical study on the effects of land value tax, this paper from Denmark from 2017: https://www.zbw.eu/econis-archiv/bitstream/11159/1082/1/arbejdspapir_land_tax.pdf https://www.zbw.eu/econis-archiv/bitstream/11159/1082/1/arbe...
- IdontRememberIt 5y agoA better bet, would be to have a strong government building and planning efficient infrastructure (transportation, utilities, ecology, etc) so that private initiatives make economical and competitive sense.
- IdontRememberIt 5y agoThis is actually what Switzerland or Singapore do. Can the downvoters elaborate to enlight me why it is wrong? Thanks.
- yongjik 5y agoThis doesn't sound like a serious business proposal. Just consider one example: > The building features elevated water storage, aeroponic farms and an energy-producing photovoltaic roof that allow it to "share and distribute all it produces." In other words, this building is going to be freaking expensive: (1) Upper floors of a skyscraper is probably the most expensive place you could store water in. (2) There's a reason why we're not buying cabbages and avocados from aeroponic farms now - they're much more expensive than traditional farming. (3) If you have a city in the middle of a desert, why would you put solar panels on top of a building, instead of right next to the city? Also, there's no mention on what kind of industry and jobs the city could attract - which isn't surprising given the tone of the article.
- eloff 5y agoEvery apartment building I've lived in over 20 stories puts their water reservoir on the roof. The reason is to let gravity distribute it when a tap is opened.
- tadfisher 5y agoBasically all water storage in NYC is rooftop storage. The water system needs to maintain a pressure gradient, and converting cheap electricity to potential energy is much more economical than running twice the number of pumps to meet instantaneous demand.
- jcranmer 5y ago> (1) Upper floors of a skyscraper is probably the most expensive place you could store water in. Water pipes are pressurized using gravity (there's a reason tanks for water distribution systems are commonly referred to as "water towers"); indeed, water systems frequently measure pressure using the height above sea level it can reach without pumps rather than more natural units of pressure. If the city's water mains aren't capable of pushing it to every floor of your building (which is going to be true for a skyscraper), then you'll have to naturally pressurize it yourself by keeping the main water tank high. If you don't do that, your options are either to pump the main water main anyways (just without a natural tank on the top), with lots of pressure regulators for the lower flows; several vertical water mains to service different vertical pressure zones; or one water main with lots and lots of smaller (and hence less efficient overall) pumps to keep the pressure reasonable at different altitudes. Keeping the water tank high instead lowers the amount of infrastructure you need, lowers the costs of regulating pressure, and has better fail-safe conditions if the power cuts out for a while.
- secnono 5y agoWhen I see Billionaires trying to "improve society" I spend my time trying to figure out the angle so that they not only don't spend any of their own money, but become far richer even if they fail spectacularly.
- aufhebung 5y agoThis is somewhat off topic from the article, but why did the web designers for this site choose such an awful font for the title?
- tracerbulletx 5y agoIf they're considering the Appalachians it's not so much they want to build a city in the desert, as a city anywhere they can get cheap land and government to leave them alone.
- dave333 5y agoFigure out the best location for a hyperloop hub and put it there
- jmugan 5y agoReminds me of The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi.
- myrandomcomment 5y agoThe cleanliness of Tokyo is 100% because of cultural issues, not because the government did anything special. Durning the major 2011 earthquake everything shutdown and you had to walk home. When you went into the “Konbini” (7/11, FamilyMart, Lawsons) in Tokyo there was always a bottle of water left. Why? Because culturally no Japanese would ever buy the last bottle.
- dragonwriter 5y ago> The cleanliness of Tokyo is 100% because of cultural issues, not because the government did anything special Social disapproval over time, including that expressed through government policy, has effect on culture. So, while it may not result particularly from the government doing something immediate to cause the cleanliness, I would be hesitant to assert it is independent of government action merely because it is cultural.
- myrandomcomment 5y agoGovernment policy reflects the culture. I have spent 30% of the last 20 years of my life in Japan, on and off again. One of the highest compliments paid to me by a group of Japanese friends was, “you must not do X again, you are Japanese and know better now.” I.E. as a foreigner I would get a pass, but my understanding of the culture reached a point where they expected better. I was both very highly embarrassed and also quite flattered. It is an amazingly nuanced civilization, sometimes unfortunately to the detriment of progress and equality. It is not clear to me that shame as a function of policy works in the USA.
- dragonwriter 5y ago> Government policy reflects the culture In general, sure. It also is one of many things that influences it. Culture doesn't just arrive ex nihilo with no influence from concrete experience.
- mc32 5y ago
- dave333 5y agoStart with Las Vegas and figure out how you would improve things - hardest thing would be replacing the mob as the source of funding.
- sluggosaurus 5y agoThe mob funds jack shit, the gambling tourists do all the funding. The mob is a parasite.
- cletus 5y agoIt's been done [1]. [1]: https://www.businessinsider.com/california-city-ghost-town-in-the-mojave-desert-2015-12 https://www.businessinsider.com/california-city-ghost-town-i...
- dv_dt 5y agoI wonder where they think they will get a water allocation for five million people in desert areas?
- mchusma 5y agoI don't get this city from the article. Here are a list of things I would want from a city: - no minimum parking requirements - no zoning requirements - no community involvement - no free street parking - a plan for walkability & parks - a community of "doers" or committed (this is the hardest) I feel like Starbase in Texas is perhaps the most exciting new city.
- only_as_i_fall 5y agoWhat is "no community involvement"? Wouldn't you still want some zoning laws to prevent for example having a sewage treatment plant put up in your back yard?
- 8bitsrule 5y ago"The first phase of construction, which would accommodate 50,000 residents across 1,500 acres, comes with an estimated cost of $25 billion." $500,000 each for the first 50,000. Guessing I wouldn't fit into that "new model for society."
- chmod775 5y agoThe cleanliness of Tokyo, the diversity of New York and the social services of Stockholm... in the fucking desert of the US and with an American demographic. Well. Good luck. Should be able to nail at least one out of those three. Not that building this project virtually anywhere else might've made it easier.
- bpodgursky 5y agofwiw, the article says desert, but they're considering a lot of options including West Virginia (decidedly not desert). Going to depend a lot on the local politics and where they can find the land.
- sangnoir 5y agoI don't know why your comment was downvoted, but Appalachia is one of the candidate locations (not desert). The title is misleading.
- seanmcdirmid 5y agoDoes Appalachia have enough available flat land for something like this? Urbanization has been challenging for that reason, while the article talks more about solving water resource problems. Something more like Hong Kong or Chongqing.
- nbzso 5y agoI am a regular guy with a regular dream. Imagine small villages with self-sustained planning, energy efficiency and agriculture. Imagine living as a human being close to nature but with all benefits of civilization. We will have hyper-connectivity available soon. This pandemic situation has given me something valuable after all. I can live away from the big city and be happy, productive and healthy. This grandiose futuristic dream is not exiting anymore for me. Behind all the beautiful picture I can fell dystopian reality. But hey, I am a regular guy with a regular dream:)
- tiagod 5y agoIf everyone lived close to nature in small villages, there would soon be no more nature to live nearby.
- nbzso 5y agoAgree to disagree. If people live close to nature they change a lot. The Bernays idea of man as an atroucious anymal that must be controlled with entertaiment, consumerism and survaillance is in sync with corporate control and exploitation of resources.:)
- prawn 5y agoI think Canberra was designed to be urban pockets surrounded by natural environment. Probably more pocket and less environment than you're envisaged though: https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Canberra+ACT+2601/@-35.2906092,149.0752633,12.48z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x6b164d69b05c9021:0x500ea6ea7695660!8m2!3d-35.2809368!4d149.1300092?hl=en https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Canberra+ACT+2601/@-35....
- counternotions 5y agoSounds like the desert arcologies from the book Water Knife: self-sustaining biospheres where the rich and privileged bubble themselves off, breathing clean air and enjoying long, hot showers.
- SkyMarshal 5y ago> Although planners are still scouting for locations, possible targets include Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Arizona, Texas and the Appalachian region Interesting, one of these things is not like the others.
- TedShiller 5y agowater?
- hamburga 5y agoDystopian, horrific, bound to fail. I actually went and listened to the "billionaire visionary" on a podcast about this: https://ideas.beondeck.com/mission-driven-cities-with-marc-lore/ https://ideas.beondeck.com/mission-driven-cities-with-marc-l... You can get a very quick sense that he has no appreciate for even the textbook issues in urbanism. At 41:00, he says, "One of the reasons I don't read is that it takes time away from thinking." Gavin Belson could not have said it better.
- johndubchak 5y agoThis is a non-starter from the get go. Water will remain an unsolvable and unsustainable resources regardless of the number of times you pull that wish out of your ass.