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Opinion: High density planned communities that try to take care of almost everything, like you describe, are a at serious risk of being insipid, mediocre, unins

Opinion: High density planned communities that try to take care of almost everything, like you describe, are a at serious risk of being insipid, mediocre, uninspiring, and worse. I think it’s something about the incentive structure, probably, but this is largely an empirical opinion; in my experience it’s just far better to live with a diversity of landlords in the area. New York has a great set of examples: A neighborhood like SoHo or Hell’s Kitchen or the Lower East Side is a magnet. An overproduced condo/office/retailplex like Hudson Yards, without much competition next door, is dull and insipid and soulless. A big complex like Rockefeller Center is actually kind of okay — because it’s embedded in a neighborhood where everyone has a dozen dozen places in a five minute walk they could go to instead. The D terminal at LaGuardia where everything is seamlessly integrated as a managed OTG Experience? The worst crime against commercial aviation in America in the past twenty years. Buy a hamburger there, I dare you.

fernmyth 4y ago
You’ve hit on three of the four of Jane Jacobs’s conditions for a healthy, high-density neighborhood in her book “The Death and Life of Great American Cities”! - Variety of building age/quality, to have rent levels that allow diversity of activities (low rent hole-in-the-wall for an art club; high rent, new construction, ground floor retail for luxury shopping) - Variety of building use schedules to ensure eyes on the street at all hours and full utilization of infrastructure (including restaurants). A pure residential area or pure office park will fail this and turn into a ghost town at some hours. Hudson Yards might hit 2 schedules but not 3, which is the ideal. - “a dozen dozen places in a five minute walk” allows niche businesses to survive, since the large effective service radius includes enough people to find some customers. Rockefeller Center’s arcade is actually quite important and covered in the book, since it cuts some too-long blocks into short enough blocks. I don’t remember the fourth condition, so read the book to find out.
- _8j50 4y ago
  Perhaps instead of buildings we can think "floors"?
  - fennecfoxen 4y ago
    I suspect that if the developer/landlord is out to capture all the value possible (as he is directly incentivized to do) having multiple floors just isn't going to be nearly enough.
_8j50 4y ago
You're comparing the past with the future. I am not proposing one giant managed thing like an airport but much like a small town where you can rent store space and open up any business you want. Although, even it would be for most basic needs. You would still be able to travel to other cities and megabuildings easily because transportation via rail and other means would be much cheaper and convenient. If this was central coast cali for example, you can have one hour rail to LA,San Francisco, and perhaps close enough to most state and national parks and beaches. I do not support people never living the megabuildings but to your point my local fastfood, walmart or even chinese,indian,mexican,etc... foods unless I venture out a bit are mediocre as is the case in most smaller towns. The thing is, there cannot and should not be another new york or manhattan. We need future cities to be energy efficient, sustainable and defensible. A city that would last the next two or three centuries allowing our current culture and history to be passed on is important and I am not sure cities like new york will be pleasant to live in by the end of the century nor are they or will they be cheap. That said, there many millions of people and they can still continue to live in existing cities but we can't just keep building more LAs and NYCs or continue to pretend homelessness, high rent/house prices, the ridiculous infrastructure required to support cars and the ever depletion of agriculture friendly land and sustainable water are not a problem. Now is the time to fix them not when famine and disasters are killing millions. But to counter your point about mediocrity, vegas is a good example. I have terrific food and entertainment there despite the seemingly endless interconnected structures of hotels and casinos. Perhaps given the proper financial incentive things can be not so mediocre?

fernmyth 4y ago

You’ve hit on three of the four of Jane Jacobs’s conditions for a healthy, high-density neighborhood in her book “The Death and Life of Great American Cities”! - Variety of building age/quality, to have rent levels that allow diversity of activities (low rent hole-in-the-wall for an art club; high rent, new construction, ground floor retail for luxury shopping) - Variety of building use schedules to ensure eyes on the street at all hours and full utilization of infrastructure (including restaurants). A pure residential area or pure office park will fail this and turn into a ghost town at some hours. Hudson Yards might hit 2 schedules but not 3, which is the ideal. - “a dozen dozen places in a five minute walk” allows niche businesses to survive, since the large effective service radius includes enough people to find some customers. Rockefeller Center’s arcade is actually quite important and covered in the book, since it cuts some too-long blocks into short enough blocks. I don’t remember the fourth condition, so read the book to find out.

_8j50 4y ago
Perhaps instead of buildings we can think "floors"?
- fennecfoxen 4y ago
  I suspect that if the developer/landlord is out to capture all the value possible (as he is directly incentivized to do) having multiple floors just isn't going to be nearly enough.

_8j50 4y ago

You're comparing the past with the future. I am not proposing one giant managed thing like an airport but much like a small town where you can rent store space and open up any business you want. Although, even it would be for most basic needs. You would still be able to travel to other cities and megabuildings easily because transportation via rail and other means would be much cheaper and convenient. If this was central coast cali for example, you can have one hour rail to LA,San Francisco, and perhaps close enough to most state and national parks and beaches. I do not support people never living the megabuildings but to your point my local fastfood, walmart or even chinese,indian,mexican,etc... foods unless I venture out a bit are mediocre as is the case in most smaller towns. The thing is, there cannot and should not be another new york or manhattan. We need future cities to be energy efficient, sustainable and defensible. A city that would last the next two or three centuries allowing our current culture and history to be passed on is important and I am not sure cities like new york will be pleasant to live in by the end of the century nor are they or will they be cheap. That said, there many millions of people and they can still continue to live in existing cities but we can't just keep building more LAs and NYCs or continue to pretend homelessness, high rent/house prices, the ridiculous infrastructure required to support cars and the ever depletion of agriculture friendly land and sustainable water are not a problem. Now is the time to fix them not when famine and disasters are killing millions. But to counter your point about mediocrity, vegas is a good example. I have terrific food and entertainment there despite the seemingly endless interconnected structures of hotels and casinos. Perhaps given the proper financial incentive things can be not so mediocre?