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US has plenty of space. And unlike Europe, you can easily find a large "mostly empty" patch of land. But for some reason new cities are not built anymore. And
by 323 5y ago
US has plenty of space. And unlike Europe, you can easily find a large "mostly empty" patch of land.
But for some reason new cities are not built anymore.
And when someone proposes building a new city inevitably the press fills up with dystopia/rent-seeking/we-should-make-existing-housing-cheaper/... articles.
- alexashka 5y agoIt's not that surprising. It's not 'profitable' and it requires actual competence. It's the same reason you have meetings where nobody will commit to anything, hoping that some other fool will commit to take on extra responsibility for no extra pay. Politics is exactly like that.
- sgt 5y agoHow about we build a perfect grid of cities across the US - perfectly spaced 50 miles apart. Mountain in the way? We'll use explosives. /s
- ericmay 5y agoIs “building a new city” meaningfully different from just expanding or growing the current city or introducing medium density? I’m supportive of new cities as experimentation projects - think that’s great actually. If it’s take a sprawling suburb and build another one it’s like why would you bother doing that versus just doing the same thing you’re doing now in current cities?
- 323 5y agoI agree with you, expanding cities should be preferred. But that doesn't happen either, maybe because existing cities are surrounded by private lands, or other stuff that is hard to displace, in a litigious place like US.
- Scarblac 5y agoOr don't expand them, make them denser. Hopefully means less travel needed as well.
- rsj_hn 5y agoYeah, building a city from scratch opens up new possibilities for governance, institution building, city zoning and layout. I'm for a lot of small cities, each experimenting. Adding to an existing city plugs you into all these incumbent systems, including existing hierarchies and notables.
- throwawaymanbot 5y agois there a point making a new city when so many US cities need investment to make them better?
- zrail 5y agoCities grow around something. In the past, that "something" has generally been a point-specific natural resource that can be exploited. Natural harbors, confluences of rivers, mines, etc. Sometimes cities grow around point-specific artificial resources like crossroads. Sometimes there are resources that are exploited but everyone knows that the resource is very temporary so a city doesn't really grow. Instead, a town forms but never plants roots. For example, the small cities across the Bakken Formation which grew huge transitory populations but no one stays because everyone there knows when the price of oil shifts the Bakken will become unprofitable. The important thing is attempting to plant a city in the middle of nowhere almost always fails absent very strong government incentives. Washington DC is sort of like that, where it was put where it is because of very strong political incentives (Virginia and Maryland didn't want that land). Brasilia is the other example that jumps to mind, where they wanted the seat of government away from Rio and forced the issue.
- 323 5y ago> Cities grow around something. Today that resource could just be "cheap land". We don't need coal or iron today, we need housing. > very strong government incentives Could "cheap housing" be such an incentive?
- spacemanmatt 5y agoLast I checked, those resources are water and roads (or promises of roads). But people can't live without water and don't keep building where they can't get it.
- MisterBastahrd 5y agoYou can have all the empty space you want to build on, but if it doesn't have water or electricity, it will continue to be empty. Modern societies rely on modern infrastructure.
- 323 5y agoDo you think someone building a new city will not connect it to the grid and think about the water?
- larsiusprime 5y agoNot all space is the same, nobody wants to live in Gerlach, Nevada because there's nobody there and also because it's the middle of the desert, which in turn is why there's nobody there: https://web.archive.org/web/20210809032137/https://landequities.com/nevada/061-020-55 https://web.archive.org/web/20210809032137/https://landequit... Land in Gerlach goes for $0.0054/sqft Land in the heart of San Fran can go for $865.21/sqft That's 159,000 times more expensive. The increase comes from the fact that some land is more naturally productive than others, and also because of agglomeration effects: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_agglomeration#:~:text=Economies%20of%20agglomeration%20or%20agglomeration,major%20topic%20of%20urban%20economics.&text=It%20is%20the%20tension%20between,them%20from%20becoming%20too%20large https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_agglomeration#:~:....
- 323 5y agoPheonix is also in the middle of the desert: > Phoenix is officially America’s fastest-growing major city. https://news.yahoo.com/phoenix-nation-fastest-growing-big-170000990.html https://news.yahoo.com/phoenix-nation-fastest-growing-big-17...
- contrahax 5y agoPhoenix has some location advantages (large rivers flow into the valley, warmer climate, better soil for agriculture) than northern Nevada that makes it more desirable and spurred growth.
- larsiusprime 5y agoPhoenix was not just some random place in the desert that was as good as any other, it was founded because of a pre-existing canal system that the founders expanded upon that gave it much better access to water http://www.azheritagewaters.nau.edu/loc_hohokam.html http://www.azheritagewaters.nau.edu/loc_hohokam.html
- fragmede 5y agoOh, a fellow Burner. Nearby Gerlach is Reno, the biggest little city in the world. It's 100 miles or 1 hr:45 mins away by car, 51 weeks of the year. With no income tax and a Tesla plant, Reno is thriving. Northern Nevada may have a lot of desolation, but the same rules of real estate apply - the three most important things are location, location, location. Land in Reno is expensive compared to Gerlach but cheap compared to downtown SF, at $270/sq ft (of course, SF being one of the most expensive cities in the US means everywhere is cheaper).
- chrisco255 5y agoThe vast majority of that empty land is either in less ideal climates out in the west or on federal land. See: https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Fig1.png https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Fig1...
- snarf21 5y agoI don't understand "new cities are not built anymore". Villages become towns and towns become cities all over the place. There isn't likely to be new planned cities in the middle of nowhere. Cities need infrastructure like power, roads, water, airports, etc. These things happen organically except in state created cities like in China or Saudi Arabia.
- felistoria 5y agoI think there is a billionaire trying to make a utopian city called Telosa.
- _xnmw 5y agoWhy don't we build new cities? Because we don't have pioneers anymore. This is actually a really intriguing idea. We should crowdfund the creation of new cities, pioneered by a new generation of dissatisfied priced-out hyper-techified metrosexual young people.
- spideymans 5y agoWhy build new cities, when there are plenty of smaller towns (<500,000 population) that can grow?
- closeparen 5y agoCities are built from less intense settlements. We don't build cities anymore because we systematically declare them "done" when they're just getting started.