11 ms·

Transforming cities with superblocks

170 points by sohkamyung 5y ago

xt00 5y ago
These superblocks are also used a bunch in china in newer cities. When subway's come to the edge of the superblock where you live its pretty nice -- you basically never interact with cars or potentially once or twice even though you live in the middle of a huge city (Shanghai for example in certain areas). After work you see tons of families walking around, people on dates, dancing, etc doing whatever in the central squares between the big apartment buildings that surround the area. And since many other superblocks have their own area like this, typically the park area is not overcrowded.. vs. like going to golden gate park in the evening or weekends in the summer.
- moltar 5y ago
  Is there a commercial aspect there too? Are there “shop houses” on the first floor? To me the ultimate superblock is one that has everything needed for day to day. Like a small family grocer, barber, bank, etc.
  - xt00 5y ago
    Yes -- on the perimeter of the main square there is all of that exactly -- its pretty convenient for sure but having stores / shops like that on each of these super blocks I imagine works when you have tons of people living around there. Many of these complexes have say 20 buildings and each building houses probably 100 people.
  - Cthulhu_ 5y ago
    It sounds like it's a small town. Why not make small towns outside of cities feasible again? With remote work it should be doable.
    - LeanderK 5y ago
      Small towns are not for everyone. It's hard to escape small towns, everybody knows you and the cultural activities are just very limited. I feel quite trapped in my small student-city, there's just nothing new anymore and I am quite bored of the usual activities. In those superblocks you are still living in the city and it's easy reach other parts. But you don't have to for your day-to-day needs.
      - mark_l_watson 5y ago
        I am starting to think that living in a small town is not for me either. My wife and I have been living in a beautiful small town in the mountains in Central Arizona for 20 years. It is beautiful here, and we get a million tourists a year to verify that. What I miss is culture, things like music, museums, lots of ethnic food, stage productions, etc. Without success so far, I am trying to talk my wife into permanently renting our home, and downsizing to living out of 7 or 8 steamer trunks that could be shipped efficiently. To start with, I would like to live in apartments for about 6 months each in Quebec, Santa Barbara, near family in Rhode Island, etc., etc. I figure we could do that until we are ready for moving into an nice assisted living place.
        moltar 5y ago
        Montreal definitely ticks all your boxes!
    - jltsiren 5y ago
      Satellite towns have made sense for a long time. They are the best trade-off for those who want affordable housing, urban lifestyle, and access to a decent job market. Remote work doesn't change the situation much, because most jobs still require human contact. The recipe for a satellite town is simple. Create a fast and frequent rail connection to the central city and build dense mixed-use areas around the station, with lower-density areas farther away. The rail connection is the key. Car-centric satellite towns create too much traffic and often can't reach sufficient density to support local services.
    - 5y ago
- space_rock 5y ago
  Richer Asian cities often have good quality of life in the cities. Walkable and good transportation. It's true in many parts of China and all over developed Asia
  - ertian 5y ago
    Yeah, I don't feel like this is something China lacks. Most of the cities I've been to were mixed-zoning (or, well, maybe just un-zoned?), such that you could go for a quick walk from most apartments and quickly find convenience stores, restaurants, bars, coffee shops, etc.
- Aeolun 5y ago
  Maybe leave out the central block? I enjoy having some sunlight too.
  - bobthepanda 5y ago
    some of the superblock will have sun at any given moment. parks are tricky. if they are not busy enough they can at best become a dead zone no one wants to stay around in, and at worst degenerate into a haven for unsavory activities, since no one is keeping an eye on it. parks are basically force multipliers for activity, but it can be a positive or negative relationship.
  - jankcorn 5y ago
    In Japan, properties have "sunlight rights", so that neighboring properties above a certain height are not allowed to shade them (causing lots of sloped, north-facing roofs). In addition, height of buildings is determined by the width of the fronting street: tall buildings are allowed on trunk roadways, buildings in areas between trunk roads are limited to 3 stories or so. All it all, it makes Tokyo into a large 'collection of small towns', much like Berlin seems to be. Quite pleasant place to live.
    - Aeolun 5y ago
      > Quite pleasant place to live. I completely agree.
- ZYinMD 5y ago
  The US could have some of these nice things too if the zoning law didn't ban all business in residential areas. It baffles me how the US has no shops / restaurants / convenience stores in residential areas and nobody questioned it over half a century.
  - whatshisface 5y ago
    There is no "the zoning law," it is all local government and many places don't have those kinds of laws.
    - ertian 5y ago
      Many places do. It was very much the norm as cities were expanding rapidly in the 20th century. Something like 75+% of land in major metropolitan areas in North America are zoned for single-family housing only[1]. And of course that's not evenly distributed between cities, and much of the remaining 25% is still zoned as exclusively residential or commercial. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/18/upshot/cities-across-america-question-single-family-zoning.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/18/upshot/cities...
    - cowsandmilk 5y ago
      > many places don't have those kinds of laws. Even in places without zoning codes, you’ll find plenty of restrictions that shape what is built and what it looks like from setbacks to parking minimums. See Houston for example https://kinder.rice.edu/urbanedge/2020/01/09/no-zoning-in-Houston-there-are-workarounds https://kinder.rice.edu/urbanedge/2020/01/09/no-zoning-in-Ho...
      - jmkb 5y ago
        Many Houston neighborhoods are quite livable on foot and bike, if you don't mind a little perspiration. There are shops and restaurants scattered all around, sidewalks, even some multiuse trails. The mainstream culture is still overwhelmingly automobile-centric, though. Travel to your place of work, or to any particular shop/restaurant, will likely require a car. ...Somewhat related: In Houston I lived within walking distance of two grocery stores, Kroger and Fiesta. A lot of customers walked to these stores, and they'd often use the store's shopping carts to transport purchases back home. So naturally the stores were always losing carts. Kroger solved this problem by installing an electronic geofence and a wheel lock mechanism on each shopping cart, so they couldn't leave the parking lot. Fiesta hired a man in a pickup truck to cruise the neighborhood and bring the empty carts back. And customers cooperated by leaving the carts near the road. IIRC different Fiesta stores marked their carts with different bright neon colors, so they could be returned to the correct store if they wandered afield. Anytime I wanted to buy more than I could carry, of course, I'd go to Fiesta. (This was years ago; it's probably all razed for condo development now.)
- qwertox 5y ago
  New Cairo [0] in Egypt is a good example of it, which is being built in part by the Chinese. Also scroll around to the east, north-east, to get a feeling for the size of the entire project. [0] https://www.google.com/maps/place/New+Cairo+City,+Cairo+Governorate,+Egypt/@30.0294426,31.4588831,14390m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m13!1m7!3m6!1s0x14583fa60b21beeb:0x79dfb296e8423bba!2sCairo,+Cairo+Governorate,+Egypt!3b1!8m2!3d30.0444196!4d31.2357116!3m4!1s0x145822cffcd270e7:0x98b73d687889fd8!8m2!3d30.0074133!4d31.4913225 https://www.google.com/maps/place/New+Cairo+City,+Cairo+Gove...
asiachick 5y ago
Reminds of Tokyo's "blocks". I don't know where to find the details but I went to small exhibit in Omotesando (a part of Tokyo) where they showed how much of Tokyo is built where there are "large" (4-6 lane roads). The buildings on those roads are 8-15 stories tall. Behind the buildings on the main road are lots of side streets with small apartments buildings and single family homes. The 4-6 lane roads and the tall buildings are firewalls and were designed to prevent run away fires. I don't remember if this design was in response to 1923 fires or WW2 fire bombing. But, I did notice that I can except for a few spots (West Shinjuku, or Otemachi), I can be in a crazy popular famous busy part of town (Shinjuku, Shibuya, Harajuku) and just a few steps off the main street it's suddenly quiet and pleasant. It wasn't until I saw the exhibit that I realized one of the reasons. Compare to much of SF, NYC, I almost never feel any moment of "peace and quiet" during the day at least.
- Mountain_Skies 5y ago
  That all fits in well with the hierarchical way of assigning addresses in Tokyo as opposed to the street name and number used in much of the western world. I wonder if the address scheme came first or the urban development pattern came first and the address scheme followed.
  - Larrikin 5y ago
    Can you explain what you mean by the hierarchical way of assigning addresses? Every source I ever read and person I ever talked to that had even a slight guess was that chome were assigned in order of when they were constructed and there wasn't much rhyme or reason besides that. Discussing odd even numbering and city blocks going up by 100s and 1000s was one of the few things people thought was impressive about American infrastructure. Importance could make sense in that a first mover in Shibuya could get a prime chome but I'd still like more information.
    - Mountain_Skies 5y ago
      This explains it better than I can: https://www.japan-talk.com/jt/new/addresses-in-japan https://www.japan-talk.com/jt/new/addresses-in-japan In the US, addresses are typically in the form of nnnn Street Name. In some cities with a grid and a regular numbering scheme, if you're familiar with the scheme, you can get a sense of where in the city the address is located. In extreme cases like Salt Lake City, you're almost getting grid coordinates though if the address is a street within a block, some of that advantage goes away. But most cities have a haphazard naming and numbering scheme. Odd/Even for the side of the street is about the only thing you can somewhat rely on. Seeing the address 1905 Peachtree Street tells you nothing about where a building is located in Atlanta. Is that near 2205 Peachtree Street? What about 6823 Peachtree Road? Is that even the same street? Is the difference of 200 in address numbers a consistent distance in different parts of town? The address scheme in Tokyo gets you into a neighborhood though you will have to obtain local knowledge to find the building by number. You can walk up the hierarchy to get a general sense of how close two addresses are to each other, though nowhere near as exact as you would get from something like what is used in Manhattan (a relative rarity).
rhipitr 5y ago
Megacity 1?
- Daub 5y ago
  Beat me to it... https://judgedredd.fandom.com/wiki/Block https://judgedredd.fandom.com/wiki/Block
codesections 5y ago
Previous "Superblocks" discussion on HN: Superblocks: how Barcelona is taking city streets back from cars[0] (2016) - 236 comments What New York Can Learn from Barcelona’s ‘Superblocks’[1] (2016) - 133 comments Superblocks: Barcelona’s plan to take back streets from cars[2] (2019) - 31 comments [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12237966 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12237966 [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20200760 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20200760 [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12633414 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12633414
xvilka 5y ago
Superblocks are great, but they are bit boring. Take, for example, Barcelona - it looks the same everywhere. I think, the city should not be homogeneous. Thus, the idea is to make them heterogeneous.
- fennecs 5y ago
  And vast miles of suburban sprawl coupled with endless roads is not boring?
  - ertian 5y ago
    It is. North American zoning certainly isn't ideal, IMHO. But a mix of superblocks, both dense and sparse mixed-zone housing, single family homes, and high rises would appeal to me. Just let people pick where they want to live. I also find these superblocks a bit oppressive, TBH. If they were one option among many I might find them appealing, but as the _only_ option they seem a bit...dystopian. Very much like the endless suburbs you find in American cities. Do we really need an absolute all-encompassing housing ideology?
    - dathos 5y ago
      People over cars is opressive? I don’t understand this mentality
      - ertian 5y ago
        I don't like American-style suburbs, I'm not defending cars over people. I think the lack of public transportation in the US is a tragedy. But "You must live in one of 100 identical walk-up 4-storey courtyard-facing brown brick blocks, with a limited selection of approved local community businesses, and commute or drive for anything else" seems oppressive, yeah. Some people want to live in shiny glass high rises, or pay a premium to have a private yard, or live on a busy street full of bars and clubs. We don't need to define the One True Housing for Everyone and then implement it city-wide, we could just put a few of these superblocks within cities. But Barcelona looks just as oppressive to me as endless American suburbs, though admittedly it may be more pleasant to live there.
swayvil 5y ago
we should call them MEGABLOCKS.
ryanj20021 5y ago
Superblocks have much potential. And in general there is so much potential to build cities for people instead of cars. Check out what we’re doing at Culdesac if you want to see how we’re approaching the opportunity. We’re building the first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US.
- thesuitonym 5y ago
  Hope this catches on. I'd love to see more of this!
ookblah 5y ago
i think seoul has something like this where the residential areas or "blocks" are basically this area of highrise apartments (prob covers a few minor blocks). inside this block there are big public square type areas for kids and fams to play or do whatever, usually a strip mall connected for convenience stores or what have you. no cars can really drive through it. i do understand the appeal to convience and safety, but honestly it's super boring to me. having grown up in suburban sprawl and then living in NYC for a few years, this type of community is basically just bringing the suburbs to the city in a different form. i enjoy the bustle of the streets. for seoul it may be borne out of necessity, but in the US if i had a choice i'd rather not. if you know know of stuytown apartments, just imagine if that was 50% of manhattan. it would totally suck IMO. just blocks of gated communities within the big city and ruins the "vibe" for lack of a better word.
- Balero 5y ago
  It's not a gated community. It is to keep cars out, and allow people to use more space in their city. If anything I think having tons of space wasted for cars is bringing the suburb to the city. You get much more bustle with people than you do with cars, and much better vibes.
  - ookblah 5y ago
    i mean to each their own, it's to keep "non-residents" out as well. some nicer places have guards that actively look for that. and by "bustle" i mean i can walk out of my apartment 50 ft and visit whatever shops i want on the corner or what not, cars and all. for these super-blocks you have to still walk outside of the insulated area to reach anything and during that time it is def not a city vibe. i'm speaking specifically to seoul and what i imagine this looks like.
wowokay 5y ago
This reminds me of Judge Dredd, does this open up the same pitfalls?
ggm 5y ago
Discusses Barcelona, and 3x3 superblocks, and uses a 2xN illustration. Maybe its just me but the visual completely failed to make me believe Barca has 3x3 superblocks because it didn't show it.
- mejutoco 5y ago
  Small note. Barcelona can be refered to as Barna or Bcn, but not Barça. Barça is the football club only.
  - dasloop 5y ago
    Smaller note: Barcelona can be decomposed in three Catalan words (a happy accident): Bar, Cel, Ona, meaning Bar (yeah, this one is easy), Sky and Wave. Being a mediterranean city, fits quite well :)
    - ggm 5y ago
      Bigger notes: Montserrat Caballé
maxbaines 5y ago
Reminds me of Arcology buildings in Sim City 2000 https://simcity.fandom.com/wiki/Arcology https://simcity.fandom.com/wiki/Arcology
Simon_O_Rourke 5y ago
Interesting to see this being developed in Spain, I wonder if it would be a manifestation of the greater community you see in Spanish cities like Barcelona.
wsaintx 5y ago
The superblocks initiative is in progress, with work due to start soon on the implementation on the central neighbourhood (Eixample). If you want to see how it is all shaping the information is available in English in: https://ajuntament.barcelona.cat/superilles/en/ https://ajuntament.barcelona.cat/superilles/en/ For example this is the map of the planned superblocks in Eixample: https://ajuntament.barcelona.cat/superilles/en/superilla/eixample https://ajuntament.barcelona.cat/superilles/en/superilla/eix... And a few renders https://ajuntament.barcelona.cat/superilles/en/content/the-new-green-hubs-and-squares https://ajuntament.barcelona.cat/superilles/en/content/the-n... As a resident I am ecstatic with the change.
- LeanderK 5y ago
  wow this is just breathtaking
thom 5y ago
Just seeing that aerial photo of Barcelona’s grid gave a dose of anxiety. I can’t really imagine living in one of these places, no matter how cleverly the Lego blocks are arranged.
- tgv 5y ago
  Barcelona is pretty nice. It feels like a normal, lively, European city.
- dionidium 5y ago
  A lot of people have this reaction to aerial photographs of densely-populated places, but, crucially, people don't live in aerial photographs -- they live at ground level. And the experience of being on the ground in places like Barcelona is very nice, no matter how it looks from the air.
forrestthewoods 5y ago
Some people see pictures of Barcelona and think r/CityPorn. I think CityHell. What a SimCity 2000 dystopian hellscape. I get why some people like it. But I hate everything about it. Cities suck. Their economic prowess is indisputable. In the age of remote work I hope we find a way to live in smaller, sparser villages as opposed to sardine cities. Blech.
- qayxc 5y ago
  I take it you've never actually been to Barcelona?
- the_gipsy 5y ago
  So you want to just give up? Granted, I just moved away from Barcelona. But they are doing some really awesome transformation of the city while I was there. Finally you, as a person-out-of-a-car, you can just enjoy your city. They are moving away from being a tourist theme park, or the office park for the rich people from the surrounding suburbs who of course MUST be able to race into their parking spot in the city center. The major is getting an enormous amount of shit for doing all this, and in general anything she does or does not, because car-proponents are extremely vocal about everything. IIRC she proposed a tram line on one of the car-arteries, and the neighborhood voted "no". Which is insane. Who wants more loud cars, less PT, less pedestrian zones? It should be "people who live elsewhere", and even "businesses elsewhere", because it has been proven that better access brings more customers. So she learned her lesson and just doesn't do binding polls anymore, she just does it. And it's fantastic.
  - forrestthewoods 5y ago
    Give up? No. I grew up on a 30 acre farm. Dense cities are the antithesis of what I want to see.
- tonis2 5y ago
  I agree, because I was raised up in something like the picture below. Hopefully this won't arrive to Europe. https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/moscow-blocks-buildings-usual-orehkovo-borisovo-district-34551231.jpg https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/moscow-blocks-buildings-usua...
nextstep 5y ago
All of these nice things are happening in many European cities where they have prioritized people over cars. None of this will happen in any meaningful scale or timeline in the US to reverse the country’s decline.
- dasloop 5y ago
  Paris is leading the way: https://www.theverge.com/2022/2/18/22940512/paris-car-ban-2024-city-center-cycling-pollution https://www.theverge.com/2022/2/18/22940512/paris-car-ban-20... And the general idea is the 15 minute city: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15-minute_city https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15-minute_city
  - stefs 5y ago
    i'd say the leaders were the netherlands and denmark. iirc paris, barca and oslo have started changing things by removing cars from the centers more recently.
the_other 5y ago
Looks nice. Plans like this would be even better if the norm was for residents to own a share of the land and buildings (and the responsibility for maintaining) - co-housing style.
jclem 5y ago
I am curious what the difference is in property value and general perceived desirability between external-facing and internal-facing apartments in these superblocks in Barcelona.
- pauldavis 5y ago
  Anecdotally, rents rose in St. Antoni when the superblock was established.
mark_l_watson 5y ago
I wonder how superblocks tie into the idea that the World Economic Forum/Davos crowd are starting to push: “in 20 years you will own nothing, and be very happy…”? It might be more difficult to own your own property (like a condominium) in a superblock?
john-doe 5y ago
Barcelona’s superblocks ended up a little different than planned: https://failedarchitecture.com/behind-four-walls-barcelonas-lost-utopia/ https://failedarchitecture.com/behind-four-walls-barcelonas-...
- pauldavis 5y ago
  That story is about blocks, not superblocks.
- stevoski 5y ago
  I don't think you've understood what Barcelona's superblock concept is. Take a 3 by 3 grid of streets, and close the inner streets to through traffic. Then do creative stuff with those inner streets instead.
stevoski 5y ago
Every time Barcelona's superblocks come up on HN, people confuse them with mere blocks. A superblock (or superilla in Catalan) is usually a 3 by 3 grid of blocks. The inner streets are closed to through traffic, although locals can still get their cars to their apartment garages. The inner streets are then turned into a combination of parks, benches, bike lanes, and plants. Currently just a handful of these superblocks exist. You can read and understand the superblock concept here: https://ajuntament.barcelona.cat/superilles/en/ https://ajuntament.barcelona.cat/superilles/en/
dncornholio 5y ago
I'm too used to our cities that every block based design seems incredibly dull to me. I prefer designs like Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Warsaw, Prague. These cities are so much more interesting than Barcelona or Berlin. In Barcelona as a visitor, you don't even come inside these blocks. They are meant for people who actually live there, but nobody else has a reason to visit one. I hope we won't follow the superblock trend or what Dubai is doing. Basically a square grid full of isolated blocks or towers.
aristus 5y ago
Mexico City, at least in the central parts, has an interesting layout. Busy avenues roughly 1km apart grid the neighborhoods. Inside those squares most of the streets are one-way and low speed. You can walk in almost any direction and find a bus or subway station in 8 minutes. And of course they mix residential commercial and light industrial freely. It’s not unusual to find a small furniture maker next to a restaurant below an apartment building. They don’t ban cars and the “blocks” are larger, but it seems to work.
- L_Rahman 5y ago
  It does work really well and makes it really nice to walk or cycle inside your "zone" so to speak. The downside is that they concede the large avenues entirely to automobile centered design resulting in 10-13 way intersections that you have to navigate in order to get from one zone to another. The most egregions example is probably the exit from Chapultepec leading into Condesa which drops you off next to a highway with no way of crossing without a 1KM detour: https://www.google.com/maps/place/La+Condesa,+Mexico+City,+CDMX,+Mexico/@19.4210986,-99.1788215,16.87z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x85d1ff4489e635e3:0xed1c076e8bc9b8e7!8m2!3d19.4149803!4d-99.1774462 https://www.google.com/maps/place/La+Condesa,+Mexico+City,+C...
- ceras 5y ago
  That reminds me a bit of Tokyo. It's full of small streets[0] that cars can drive on, but they tend not to because they're narrow and don't have sidewalks, so making cars move slowly. Cars then naturally flow through to the larger streets[1] when possible, which do have sidewalks. [0] https://goo.gl/maps/4RtUzUUfjvMpLs8y6 https://goo.gl/maps/4RtUzUUfjvMpLs8y6 (this street has a small painted sidewalk since it has more commercial activity, though pedestrians often walk in the middle; the adjacent streets have no painted sidewalk). [1] https://goo.gl/maps/BquuyEvSrVExuyiu7 https://goo.gl/maps/BquuyEvSrVExuyiu7

170 points by sohkamyung 5y ago

xt00 5y ago

These superblocks are also used a bunch in china in newer cities. When subway's come to the edge of the superblock where you live its pretty nice -- you basically never interact with cars or potentially once or twice even though you live in the middle of a huge city (Shanghai for example in certain areas). After work you see tons of families walking around, people on dates, dancing, etc doing whatever in the central squares between the big apartment buildings that surround the area. And since many other superblocks have their own area like this, typically the park area is not overcrowded.. vs. like going to golden gate park in the evening or weekends in the summer.

moltar 5y ago
Is there a commercial aspect there too? Are there “shop houses” on the first floor? To me the ultimate superblock is one that has everything needed for day to day. Like a small family grocer, barber, bank, etc.
- xt00 5y ago
  Yes -- on the perimeter of the main square there is all of that exactly -- its pretty convenient for sure but having stores / shops like that on each of these super blocks I imagine works when you have tons of people living around there. Many of these complexes have say 20 buildings and each building houses probably 100 people.
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  It sounds like it's a small town. Why not make small towns outside of cities feasible again? With remote work it should be doable.
  - LeanderK 5y ago
    Small towns are not for everyone. It's hard to escape small towns, everybody knows you and the cultural activities are just very limited. I feel quite trapped in my small student-city, there's just nothing new anymore and I am quite bored of the usual activities. In those superblocks you are still living in the city and it's easy reach other parts. But you don't have to for your day-to-day needs.
    - mark_l_watson 5y ago
      I am starting to think that living in a small town is not for me either. My wife and I have been living in a beautiful small town in the mountains in Central Arizona for 20 years. It is beautiful here, and we get a million tourists a year to verify that. What I miss is culture, things like music, museums, lots of ethnic food, stage productions, etc. Without success so far, I am trying to talk my wife into permanently renting our home, and downsizing to living out of 7 or 8 steamer trunks that could be shipped efficiently. To start with, I would like to live in apartments for about 6 months each in Quebec, Santa Barbara, near family in Rhode Island, etc., etc. I figure we could do that until we are ready for moving into an nice assisted living place.
      - moltar 5y ago
        Montreal definitely ticks all your boxes!
  - jltsiren 5y ago
    Satellite towns have made sense for a long time. They are the best trade-off for those who want affordable housing, urban lifestyle, and access to a decent job market. Remote work doesn't change the situation much, because most jobs still require human contact. The recipe for a satellite town is simple. Create a fast and frequent rail connection to the central city and build dense mixed-use areas around the station, with lower-density areas farther away. The rail connection is the key. Car-centric satellite towns create too much traffic and often can't reach sufficient density to support local services.
  - 5y ago
space_rock 5y ago
Richer Asian cities often have good quality of life in the cities. Walkable and good transportation. It's true in many parts of China and all over developed Asia
- ertian 5y ago
  Yeah, I don't feel like this is something China lacks. Most of the cities I've been to were mixed-zoning (or, well, maybe just un-zoned?), such that you could go for a quick walk from most apartments and quickly find convenience stores, restaurants, bars, coffee shops, etc.
Aeolun 5y ago
Maybe leave out the central block? I enjoy having some sunlight too.
- bobthepanda 5y ago
  some of the superblock will have sun at any given moment. parks are tricky. if they are not busy enough they can at best become a dead zone no one wants to stay around in, and at worst degenerate into a haven for unsavory activities, since no one is keeping an eye on it. parks are basically force multipliers for activity, but it can be a positive or negative relationship.
- jankcorn 5y ago
  In Japan, properties have "sunlight rights", so that neighboring properties above a certain height are not allowed to shade them (causing lots of sloped, north-facing roofs). In addition, height of buildings is determined by the width of the fronting street: tall buildings are allowed on trunk roadways, buildings in areas between trunk roads are limited to 3 stories or so. All it all, it makes Tokyo into a large 'collection of small towns', much like Berlin seems to be. Quite pleasant place to live.
  - Aeolun 5y ago
    > Quite pleasant place to live. I completely agree.
ZYinMD 5y ago
The US could have some of these nice things too if the zoning law didn't ban all business in residential areas. It baffles me how the US has no shops / restaurants / convenience stores in residential areas and nobody questioned it over half a century.
- whatshisface 5y ago
  There is no "the zoning law," it is all local government and many places don't have those kinds of laws.
  - ertian 5y ago
    Many places do. It was very much the norm as cities were expanding rapidly in the 20th century. Something like 75+% of land in major metropolitan areas in North America are zoned for single-family housing only[1]. And of course that's not evenly distributed between cities, and much of the remaining 25% is still zoned as exclusively residential or commercial. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/18/upshot/cities-across-america-question-single-family-zoning.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/18/upshot/cities...
  - cowsandmilk 5y ago
    > many places don't have those kinds of laws. Even in places without zoning codes, you’ll find plenty of restrictions that shape what is built and what it looks like from setbacks to parking minimums. See Houston for example https://kinder.rice.edu/urbanedge/2020/01/09/no-zoning-in-Houston-there-are-workarounds https://kinder.rice.edu/urbanedge/2020/01/09/no-zoning-in-Ho...
    - jmkb 5y ago
      Many Houston neighborhoods are quite livable on foot and bike, if you don't mind a little perspiration. There are shops and restaurants scattered all around, sidewalks, even some multiuse trails. The mainstream culture is still overwhelmingly automobile-centric, though. Travel to your place of work, or to any particular shop/restaurant, will likely require a car. ...Somewhat related: In Houston I lived within walking distance of two grocery stores, Kroger and Fiesta. A lot of customers walked to these stores, and they'd often use the store's shopping carts to transport purchases back home. So naturally the stores were always losing carts. Kroger solved this problem by installing an electronic geofence and a wheel lock mechanism on each shopping cart, so they couldn't leave the parking lot. Fiesta hired a man in a pickup truck to cruise the neighborhood and bring the empty carts back. And customers cooperated by leaving the carts near the road. IIRC different Fiesta stores marked their carts with different bright neon colors, so they could be returned to the correct store if they wandered afield. Anytime I wanted to buy more than I could carry, of course, I'd go to Fiesta. (This was years ago; it's probably all razed for condo development now.)
qwertox 5y ago
New Cairo [0] in Egypt is a good example of it, which is being built in part by the Chinese. Also scroll around to the east, north-east, to get a feeling for the size of the entire project. [0] https://www.google.com/maps/place/New+Cairo+City,+Cairo+Governorate,+Egypt/@30.0294426,31.4588831,14390m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m13!1m7!3m6!1s0x14583fa60b21beeb:0x79dfb296e8423bba!2sCairo,+Cairo+Governorate,+Egypt!3b1!8m2!3d30.0444196!4d31.2357116!3m4!1s0x145822cffcd270e7:0x98b73d687889fd8!8m2!3d30.0074133!4d31.4913225 https://www.google.com/maps/place/New+Cairo+City,+Cairo+Gove...

asiachick 5y ago

Reminds of Tokyo's "blocks". I don't know where to find the details but I went to small exhibit in Omotesando (a part of Tokyo) where they showed how much of Tokyo is built where there are "large" (4-6 lane roads). The buildings on those roads are 8-15 stories tall. Behind the buildings on the main road are lots of side streets with small apartments buildings and single family homes. The 4-6 lane roads and the tall buildings are firewalls and were designed to prevent run away fires. I don't remember if this design was in response to 1923 fires or WW2 fire bombing. But, I did notice that I can except for a few spots (West Shinjuku, or Otemachi), I can be in a crazy popular famous busy part of town (Shinjuku, Shibuya, Harajuku) and just a few steps off the main street it's suddenly quiet and pleasant. It wasn't until I saw the exhibit that I realized one of the reasons. Compare to much of SF, NYC, I almost never feel any moment of "peace and quiet" during the day at least.

Mountain_Skies 5y ago
That all fits in well with the hierarchical way of assigning addresses in Tokyo as opposed to the street name and number used in much of the western world. I wonder if the address scheme came first or the urban development pattern came first and the address scheme followed.
- Larrikin 5y ago
  Can you explain what you mean by the hierarchical way of assigning addresses? Every source I ever read and person I ever talked to that had even a slight guess was that chome were assigned in order of when they were constructed and there wasn't much rhyme or reason besides that. Discussing odd even numbering and city blocks going up by 100s and 1000s was one of the few things people thought was impressive about American infrastructure. Importance could make sense in that a first mover in Shibuya could get a prime chome but I'd still like more information.
  - Mountain_Skies 5y ago
    This explains it better than I can: https://www.japan-talk.com/jt/new/addresses-in-japan https://www.japan-talk.com/jt/new/addresses-in-japan In the US, addresses are typically in the form of nnnn Street Name. In some cities with a grid and a regular numbering scheme, if you're familiar with the scheme, you can get a sense of where in the city the address is located. In extreme cases like Salt Lake City, you're almost getting grid coordinates though if the address is a street within a block, some of that advantage goes away. But most cities have a haphazard naming and numbering scheme. Odd/Even for the side of the street is about the only thing you can somewhat rely on. Seeing the address 1905 Peachtree Street tells you nothing about where a building is located in Atlanta. Is that near 2205 Peachtree Street? What about 6823 Peachtree Road? Is that even the same street? Is the difference of 200 in address numbers a consistent distance in different parts of town? The address scheme in Tokyo gets you into a neighborhood though you will have to obtain local knowledge to find the building by number. You can walk up the hierarchy to get a general sense of how close two addresses are to each other, though nowhere near as exact as you would get from something like what is used in Manhattan (a relative rarity).

rhipitr 5y ago

Megacity 1?

Daub 5y ago
Beat me to it... https://judgedredd.fandom.com/wiki/Block https://judgedredd.fandom.com/wiki/Block

codesections 5y ago

Previous "Superblocks" discussion on HN: Superblocks: how Barcelona is taking city streets back from cars[0] (2016) - 236 comments What New York Can Learn from Barcelona’s ‘Superblocks’[1] (2016) - 133 comments Superblocks: Barcelona’s plan to take back streets from cars[2] (2019) - 31 comments [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12237966 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12237966 [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20200760 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20200760 [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12633414 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12633414

xvilka 5y ago

Superblocks are great, but they are bit boring. Take, for example, Barcelona - it looks the same everywhere. I think, the city should not be homogeneous. Thus, the idea is to make them heterogeneous.

fennecs 5y ago
And vast miles of suburban sprawl coupled with endless roads is not boring?
- ertian 5y ago
  It is. North American zoning certainly isn't ideal, IMHO. But a mix of superblocks, both dense and sparse mixed-zone housing, single family homes, and high rises would appeal to me. Just let people pick where they want to live. I also find these superblocks a bit oppressive, TBH. If they were one option among many I might find them appealing, but as the _only_ option they seem a bit...dystopian. Very much like the endless suburbs you find in American cities. Do we really need an absolute all-encompassing housing ideology?
  - dathos 5y ago
    People over cars is opressive? I don’t understand this mentality
    - ertian 5y ago
      I don't like American-style suburbs, I'm not defending cars over people. I think the lack of public transportation in the US is a tragedy. But "You must live in one of 100 identical walk-up 4-storey courtyard-facing brown brick blocks, with a limited selection of approved local community businesses, and commute or drive for anything else" seems oppressive, yeah. Some people want to live in shiny glass high rises, or pay a premium to have a private yard, or live on a busy street full of bars and clubs. We don't need to define the One True Housing for Everyone and then implement it city-wide, we could just put a few of these superblocks within cities. But Barcelona looks just as oppressive to me as endless American suburbs, though admittedly it may be more pleasant to live there.

swayvil 5y ago

we should call them MEGABLOCKS.

ryanj20021 5y ago

Superblocks have much potential. And in general there is so much potential to build cities for people instead of cars. Check out what we’re doing at Culdesac if you want to see how we’re approaching the opportunity. We’re building the first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US.

thesuitonym 5y ago
Hope this catches on. I'd love to see more of this!

ookblah 5y ago

i think seoul has something like this where the residential areas or "blocks" are basically this area of highrise apartments (prob covers a few minor blocks). inside this block there are big public square type areas for kids and fams to play or do whatever, usually a strip mall connected for convenience stores or what have you. no cars can really drive through it. i do understand the appeal to convience and safety, but honestly it's super boring to me. having grown up in suburban sprawl and then living in NYC for a few years, this type of community is basically just bringing the suburbs to the city in a different form. i enjoy the bustle of the streets. for seoul it may be borne out of necessity, but in the US if i had a choice i'd rather not. if you know know of stuytown apartments, just imagine if that was 50% of manhattan. it would totally suck IMO. just blocks of gated communities within the big city and ruins the "vibe" for lack of a better word.

Balero 5y ago
It's not a gated community. It is to keep cars out, and allow people to use more space in their city. If anything I think having tons of space wasted for cars is bringing the suburb to the city. You get much more bustle with people than you do with cars, and much better vibes.
- ookblah 5y ago
  i mean to each their own, it's to keep "non-residents" out as well. some nicer places have guards that actively look for that. and by "bustle" i mean i can walk out of my apartment 50 ft and visit whatever shops i want on the corner or what not, cars and all. for these super-blocks you have to still walk outside of the insulated area to reach anything and during that time it is def not a city vibe. i'm speaking specifically to seoul and what i imagine this looks like.

wowokay 5y ago

This reminds me of Judge Dredd, does this open up the same pitfalls?

ggm 5y ago

Discusses Barcelona, and 3x3 superblocks, and uses a 2xN illustration. Maybe its just me but the visual completely failed to make me believe Barca has 3x3 superblocks because it didn't show it.

mejutoco 5y ago
Small note. Barcelona can be refered to as Barna or Bcn, but not Barça. Barça is the football club only.
- dasloop 5y ago
  Smaller note: Barcelona can be decomposed in three Catalan words (a happy accident): Bar, Cel, Ona, meaning Bar (yeah, this one is easy), Sky and Wave. Being a mediterranean city, fits quite well :)
  - ggm 5y ago
    Bigger notes: Montserrat Caballé

maxbaines 5y ago

Reminds me of Arcology buildings in Sim City 2000 https://simcity.fandom.com/wiki/Arcology https://simcity.fandom.com/wiki/Arcology

Simon_O_Rourke 5y ago

Interesting to see this being developed in Spain, I wonder if it would be a manifestation of the greater community you see in Spanish cities like Barcelona.

wsaintx 5y ago

The superblocks initiative is in progress, with work due to start soon on the implementation on the central neighbourhood (Eixample). If you want to see how it is all shaping the information is available in English in: https://ajuntament.barcelona.cat/superilles/en/ https://ajuntament.barcelona.cat/superilles/en/ For example this is the map of the planned superblocks in Eixample: https://ajuntament.barcelona.cat/superilles/en/superilla/eixample https://ajuntament.barcelona.cat/superilles/en/superilla/eix... And a few renders https://ajuntament.barcelona.cat/superilles/en/content/the-new-green-hubs-and-squares https://ajuntament.barcelona.cat/superilles/en/content/the-n... As a resident I am ecstatic with the change.

LeanderK 5y ago
wow this is just breathtaking

thom 5y ago

Just seeing that aerial photo of Barcelona’s grid gave a dose of anxiety. I can’t really imagine living in one of these places, no matter how cleverly the Lego blocks are arranged.

tgv 5y ago
Barcelona is pretty nice. It feels like a normal, lively, European city.
dionidium 5y ago
A lot of people have this reaction to aerial photographs of densely-populated places, but, crucially, people don't live in aerial photographs -- they live at ground level. And the experience of being on the ground in places like Barcelona is very nice, no matter how it looks from the air.

forrestthewoods 5y ago

Some people see pictures of Barcelona and think r/CityPorn. I think CityHell. What a SimCity 2000 dystopian hellscape. I get why some people like it. But I hate everything about it. Cities suck. Their economic prowess is indisputable. In the age of remote work I hope we find a way to live in smaller, sparser villages as opposed to sardine cities. Blech.

qayxc 5y ago
I take it you've never actually been to Barcelona?
the_gipsy 5y ago
So you want to just give up? Granted, I just moved away from Barcelona. But they are doing some really awesome transformation of the city while I was there. Finally you, as a person-out-of-a-car, you can just enjoy your city. They are moving away from being a tourist theme park, or the office park for the rich people from the surrounding suburbs who of course MUST be able to race into their parking spot in the city center. The major is getting an enormous amount of shit for doing all this, and in general anything she does or does not, because car-proponents are extremely vocal about everything. IIRC she proposed a tram line on one of the car-arteries, and the neighborhood voted "no". Which is insane. Who wants more loud cars, less PT, less pedestrian zones? It should be "people who live elsewhere", and even "businesses elsewhere", because it has been proven that better access brings more customers. So she learned her lesson and just doesn't do binding polls anymore, she just does it. And it's fantastic.
- forrestthewoods 5y ago
  Give up? No. I grew up on a 30 acre farm. Dense cities are the antithesis of what I want to see.
tonis2 5y ago
I agree, because I was raised up in something like the picture below. Hopefully this won't arrive to Europe. https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/moscow-blocks-buildings-usual-orehkovo-borisovo-district-34551231.jpg https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/moscow-blocks-buildings-usua...

nextstep 5y ago

All of these nice things are happening in many European cities where they have prioritized people over cars. None of this will happen in any meaningful scale or timeline in the US to reverse the country’s decline.

dasloop 5y ago
Paris is leading the way: https://www.theverge.com/2022/2/18/22940512/paris-car-ban-2024-city-center-cycling-pollution https://www.theverge.com/2022/2/18/22940512/paris-car-ban-20... And the general idea is the 15 minute city: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15-minute_city https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15-minute_city
- stefs 5y ago
  i'd say the leaders were the netherlands and denmark. iirc paris, barca and oslo have started changing things by removing cars from the centers more recently.

the_other 5y ago

Looks nice. Plans like this would be even better if the norm was for residents to own a share of the land and buildings (and the responsibility for maintaining) - co-housing style.

jclem 5y ago

I am curious what the difference is in property value and general perceived desirability between external-facing and internal-facing apartments in these superblocks in Barcelona.

pauldavis 5y ago
Anecdotally, rents rose in St. Antoni when the superblock was established.

mark_l_watson 5y ago

I wonder how superblocks tie into the idea that the World Economic Forum/Davos crowd are starting to push: “in 20 years you will own nothing, and be very happy…”? It might be more difficult to own your own property (like a condominium) in a superblock?

john-doe 5y ago

Barcelona’s superblocks ended up a little different than planned: https://failedarchitecture.com/behind-four-walls-barcelonas-lost-utopia/ https://failedarchitecture.com/behind-four-walls-barcelonas-...

pauldavis 5y ago
That story is about blocks, not superblocks.
stevoski 5y ago
I don't think you've understood what Barcelona's superblock concept is. Take a 3 by 3 grid of streets, and close the inner streets to through traffic. Then do creative stuff with those inner streets instead.

stevoski 5y ago

Every time Barcelona's superblocks come up on HN, people confuse them with mere blocks. A superblock (or superilla in Catalan) is usually a 3 by 3 grid of blocks. The inner streets are closed to through traffic, although locals can still get their cars to their apartment garages. The inner streets are then turned into a combination of parks, benches, bike lanes, and plants. Currently just a handful of these superblocks exist. You can read and understand the superblock concept here: https://ajuntament.barcelona.cat/superilles/en/ https://ajuntament.barcelona.cat/superilles/en/

dncornholio 5y ago

I'm too used to our cities that every block based design seems incredibly dull to me. I prefer designs like Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Warsaw, Prague. These cities are so much more interesting than Barcelona or Berlin. In Barcelona as a visitor, you don't even come inside these blocks. They are meant for people who actually live there, but nobody else has a reason to visit one. I hope we won't follow the superblock trend or what Dubai is doing. Basically a square grid full of isolated blocks or towers.

aristus 5y ago

Mexico City, at least in the central parts, has an interesting layout. Busy avenues roughly 1km apart grid the neighborhoods. Inside those squares most of the streets are one-way and low speed. You can walk in almost any direction and find a bus or subway station in 8 minutes. And of course they mix residential commercial and light industrial freely. It’s not unusual to find a small furniture maker next to a restaurant below an apartment building. They don’t ban cars and the “blocks” are larger, but it seems to work.

L_Rahman 5y ago
It does work really well and makes it really nice to walk or cycle inside your "zone" so to speak. The downside is that they concede the large avenues entirely to automobile centered design resulting in 10-13 way intersections that you have to navigate in order to get from one zone to another. The most egregions example is probably the exit from Chapultepec leading into Condesa which drops you off next to a highway with no way of crossing without a 1KM detour: https://www.google.com/maps/place/La+Condesa,+Mexico+City,+CDMX,+Mexico/@19.4210986,-99.1788215,16.87z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x85d1ff4489e635e3:0xed1c076e8bc9b8e7!8m2!3d19.4149803!4d-99.1774462 https://www.google.com/maps/place/La+Condesa,+Mexico+City,+C...
ceras 5y ago
That reminds me a bit of Tokyo. It's full of small streets[0] that cars can drive on, but they tend not to because they're narrow and don't have sidewalks, so making cars move slowly. Cars then naturally flow through to the larger streets[1] when possible, which do have sidewalks. [0] https://goo.gl/maps/4RtUzUUfjvMpLs8y6 https://goo.gl/maps/4RtUzUUfjvMpLs8y6 (this street has a small painted sidewalk since it has more commercial activity, though pedestrians often walk in the middle; the adjacent streets have no painted sidewalk). [1] https://goo.gl/maps/BquuyEvSrVExuyiu7 https://goo.gl/maps/BquuyEvSrVExuyiu7