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There are lots of planned cities that are natural experiments in this: Brasilia, Canberra, Ottawa, Abuja etc. They all show that yes, it is possible to "build

There are lots of planned cities that are natural experiments in this: Brasilia, Canberra, Ottawa, Abuja etc. They all show that yes, it is possible to "build it and they will come", but it's hugely expensive, takes a long, long time (decades) to get to critical mass, and produced mixed results at best, eg Brasilia's original strictly separated zoning has been widely panned as a disaster. And I'm pretty sure all of those would still suffer gravely if the capital was ever moved out.

nirimda 3y ago
> There are lots of planned cities that are natural experiments in this... They ... produced mixed results at best, eg Brasilia's original strictly separated zoning has been widely panned as a disaster. I'm not sure if there's been some slight shift of topic here. By "planned", I think we originally meant "deliberately built in relatively undeveloped land". But then you mention as an example of a failure of deliberately building a city in relatively undeveloped land, an example of a failure of micromanagement (also a kind of planning, but one that is completely orthogonal to the circumstances of the city's founding). So does Brasilia's original strictly separated zoning show the problems of strictly separated zoning, or does it show the problems of deliberately building a city where none was before? It's possible we just had the wrong idea of what you need to have a great city during the 20th century isn't it? Washington DC, for instance, is an artificial city with top-down planning, but it was built at a time when people had different ideas about what made a great city, and it doesn't really seem to be a failure. It doesn't even appear on your list, despite being the case that served as a template for your other examples. (I don't know. I don't know anything about Brasilia other than that it is the capital of Brazil.)
- midoridensha 3y ago
  >Washington DC, for instance, is an artificial city with top-down planning, but it was built at a time when people had different ideas about what made a great city, and it doesn't really seem to be a failure. As I recall, DC was designed by George Washington himself (probably with help from his friends), back in the late 1700s, but the city as a whole was not: what they designed was the Federal district only. The Capitol, the White House, the National Mall between them, etc. Over time, this grew with the additions of the Smithsonian buildings and many other things. The thing is, no one lives there. That district is entirely devoid of residential areas in fact, and with very little commercial stuff if any. All that stuff is mostly to the north, and I don't see any evidence of it being planned top-down at all, except maybe the original street layout which is largely a simple grid, with lettered streets running east-west, and a few interesting things like Dupont Circle (which probably came later). DC is definitely not a place I'd call a "master planned city" or "artificial city"; it's evolved far too much in the last 300+ years.
  - AeiumNE 3y ago
    What is your source here? I am from DC and it's pretty well known that it is a planned city. Look up the L'Enfant Plan. I'm not really sure what you are talking about.
    - midoridensha 3y ago
      Go look at the map of the L'Enfant Plan. Now compare it to a map of modern-day DC. They aren't the same: the modern city is much larger. The original plan just covers the federal district, street layouts, etc. Georgetown is just a name on the side of the plan, for instance, with no actual plan. The original plan certainly doesn't include the subway system, or Union station and all the train lines, or many many other things.
- piva00 3y ago
  Brasilia was designed exactly to not be what it became. The original plan from Lucio Costa introduced the concept of "superblocks" which would be more-or-less self-sufficient, having shops, residential apartments, schools, parks and so on every few superblocks. The military dictatorship decide to introduce strict zoning (probably lifting ideas that were happening in the USA during the 60s), completely destroying the urbanistic approach of the original design. It's a failure of micromanagement from authoritarianism, inspired by the misguided (and nowadays considered idiotic) approach to urban design of the USA in the 50s onward.
piva00 3y ago
Brasilia was not originally planned to have separate zoning, Lucio Costas's vision (Lucio Costa was one of the architects together with Niemeyer to design the city) was one of "superblocks", a block was supposed to be close to self-sufficiency (hence the enormous block sizes), each was to have housing, shops, schools and so on in the block or in neighbouring blocks. The military dictatorship of Brazil decided to revamp the plan and deploy stricter zoning, separating shops from residential areas which made the city a urban hell of traffic and commute. Brasilia is also what I would call "not a city", it has a pretty large population which doesn't live in it like in a city. There's very few vibrant public places there, from an urbanist perspective it's a complete disaster.
- midoridensha 3y ago
  Sounds just like a typical US city.
- rippercushions 3y ago
  TIL, thanks for sharing!
- lozenge 3y ago
  Grand city plans usually fail even with the best intentions. Eg Milton Keynes was meant to be a walking, bike and car friendly town - it achieved one of those.
noduerme 3y ago
>> if the capital was ever moved out I initially read this as meaning "if the money was ever moved out", and then laughed ... yes, if they ever stopped being the capital ...
- midoridensha 3y ago
  "Capital" is a weird word in English. It can mean money as you refer to, but it can also refer to the city where a country's seat of government lies. Then there's "capitol" (with an 'o'), which refers to a building in the capital city where the legislative body meets.
  - allturtles 3y ago
    There's also upper-case letters, the big letter at the head of a passage, and adjective forms: capital punishment, a capital idea (archaic). This article has a nice discussion of the etymology of capital: https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/financial-word-origins https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/financial-word... Usages that started out as living metaphors become 'fossilized' over time as independent meanings. Don't languages in general have single words with multiple meanings? Is this a special feature of English?
    - midoridensha 3y ago
      >Don't languages in general have single words with multiple meanings? Is this a special feature of English? That's not what I'm referring to; it's the confusion over "capital" vs "capitol" (in addition to the double meaning of capital city vs capital-money).

nirimda 3y ago

> There are lots of planned cities that are natural experiments in this... They ... produced mixed results at best, eg Brasilia's original strictly separated zoning has been widely panned as a disaster. I'm not sure if there's been some slight shift of topic here. By "planned", I think we originally meant "deliberately built in relatively undeveloped land". But then you mention as an example of a failure of deliberately building a city in relatively undeveloped land, an example of a failure of micromanagement (also a kind of planning, but one that is completely orthogonal to the circumstances of the city's founding). So does Brasilia's original strictly separated zoning show the problems of strictly separated zoning, or does it show the problems of deliberately building a city where none was before? It's possible we just had the wrong idea of what you need to have a great city during the 20th century isn't it? Washington DC, for instance, is an artificial city with top-down planning, but it was built at a time when people had different ideas about what made a great city, and it doesn't really seem to be a failure. It doesn't even appear on your list, despite being the case that served as a template for your other examples. (I don't know. I don't know anything about Brasilia other than that it is the capital of Brazil.)

midoridensha 3y ago
>Washington DC, for instance, is an artificial city with top-down planning, but it was built at a time when people had different ideas about what made a great city, and it doesn't really seem to be a failure. As I recall, DC was designed by George Washington himself (probably with help from his friends), back in the late 1700s, but the city as a whole was not: what they designed was the Federal district only. The Capitol, the White House, the National Mall between them, etc. Over time, this grew with the additions of the Smithsonian buildings and many other things. The thing is, no one lives there. That district is entirely devoid of residential areas in fact, and with very little commercial stuff if any. All that stuff is mostly to the north, and I don't see any evidence of it being planned top-down at all, except maybe the original street layout which is largely a simple grid, with lettered streets running east-west, and a few interesting things like Dupont Circle (which probably came later). DC is definitely not a place I'd call a "master planned city" or "artificial city"; it's evolved far too much in the last 300+ years.
- AeiumNE 3y ago
  What is your source here? I am from DC and it's pretty well known that it is a planned city. Look up the L'Enfant Plan. I'm not really sure what you are talking about.
  - midoridensha 3y ago
    Go look at the map of the L'Enfant Plan. Now compare it to a map of modern-day DC. They aren't the same: the modern city is much larger. The original plan just covers the federal district, street layouts, etc. Georgetown is just a name on the side of the plan, for instance, with no actual plan. The original plan certainly doesn't include the subway system, or Union station and all the train lines, or many many other things.
piva00 3y ago
Brasilia was designed exactly to not be what it became. The original plan from Lucio Costa introduced the concept of "superblocks" which would be more-or-less self-sufficient, having shops, residential apartments, schools, parks and so on every few superblocks. The military dictatorship decide to introduce strict zoning (probably lifting ideas that were happening in the USA during the 60s), completely destroying the urbanistic approach of the original design. It's a failure of micromanagement from authoritarianism, inspired by the misguided (and nowadays considered idiotic) approach to urban design of the USA in the 50s onward.

piva00 3y ago

Brasilia was not originally planned to have separate zoning, Lucio Costas's vision (Lucio Costa was one of the architects together with Niemeyer to design the city) was one of "superblocks", a block was supposed to be close to self-sufficiency (hence the enormous block sizes), each was to have housing, shops, schools and so on in the block or in neighbouring blocks. The military dictatorship of Brazil decided to revamp the plan and deploy stricter zoning, separating shops from residential areas which made the city a urban hell of traffic and commute. Brasilia is also what I would call "not a city", it has a pretty large population which doesn't live in it like in a city. There's very few vibrant public places there, from an urbanist perspective it's a complete disaster.

midoridensha 3y ago
Sounds just like a typical US city.
rippercushions 3y ago
TIL, thanks for sharing!
lozenge 3y ago
Grand city plans usually fail even with the best intentions. Eg Milton Keynes was meant to be a walking, bike and car friendly town - it achieved one of those.

noduerme 3y ago

>> if the capital was ever moved out I initially read this as meaning "if the money was ever moved out", and then laughed ... yes, if they ever stopped being the capital ...

midoridensha 3y ago
"Capital" is a weird word in English. It can mean money as you refer to, but it can also refer to the city where a country's seat of government lies. Then there's "capitol" (with an 'o'), which refers to a building in the capital city where the legislative body meets.
- allturtles 3y ago
  There's also upper-case letters, the big letter at the head of a passage, and adjective forms: capital punishment, a capital idea (archaic). This article has a nice discussion of the etymology of capital: https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/financial-word-origins https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/financial-word... Usages that started out as living metaphors become 'fossilized' over time as independent meanings. Don't languages in general have single words with multiple meanings? Is this a special feature of English?
  - midoridensha 3y ago
    >Don't languages in general have single words with multiple meanings? Is this a special feature of English? That's not what I'm referring to; it's the confusion over "capital" vs "capitol" (in addition to the double meaning of capital city vs capital-money).