4 ms·

FWIW, I spent some time researching the cost of tunnel-digging online, and off the top of my head, the costs were $30m/mile in India, $100m/mile in US, and $1b/

by DenisM 14y ago

FWIW, I spent some time researching the cost of tunnel-digging online, and off the top of my head, the costs were $30m/mile in India, $100m/mile in US, and $1b/mile in New York city. The reason I dug through this was to explore possibility of building an entire city where all motorized transportation is under ground, and surface area is reserved for pedestrians, wheelchairs, and bicycles. IIRC, the cost of tunneling came out comparable to the cost of housing, so it's not a completely unreasonable idea. Imagine a 10km grid of 20-40 story residential buildings spaced out with trees and parks and bike/walk paths among them for miles on end? And an underground entrance every 1000 meters. No cars on the street, no noise, no traffic lights - go/ride where you please. Now if only I had the budget to build a brand-new city I would start now. :)

aristus 14y ago
High-rises separated by green space was the original vision of high-rise designers. But what developers and financiers heard was "more salable square footage in less footprint" and we ended up with what we have now. I personally don't enjoy living in high-rises. If I had to design city, it'd be more like San Francisco: buildings 5-6 stories high, tops. Lots of walkspace, lots of trees, definitely a lot more greenways as you describe. But I don't see the point of having all that greenspace if the majority of people will be 20+ stories away from it.
- DenisM 14y ago
  Population density is required to make all amenities to be within walking distance, and to make meaningful public transportation (one you can rely on). In your scheme, low density would mean one has to drive to see your friends or visit favorite caffe (hello traffic gridlock) or take a bus, which will take forever over longer distances and all the traffic light stops. My concept is to build a city as a 10,000m square with building spaced out at 100m from each other in a grid for a total of 10,000 buildings, each one of 20 stories, 4 flats per story, each flat 12 meters to the side, three persons per flat. This way I could fit 2.4 million people in lavish 1400sqf condos in the city size of 10km to the side, and have the bus to cross the city in 10 minutes through underground tunnels with no traffic light stops. Large population density creates huge opportunities for development of arts, as there is more audience and a bigger chance of there being enough supporters for a given new art thing in one place.
  - aristus 14y ago
    I'm not sure San Francisco counts as "low density". Maybe compared to Hong Kong. :)
pessimizer 14y ago
You could name it Getrobbedsville. Sounds a lot like the Brutalist Chicago projects that I grew up near, or at least like the artists depictions used to get them financed. Massive human density with no structure freaks me out, and I don't even have a driver's license.
- mortenjorck 14y ago
  There's much, much more to it than just planning a community with some closely-spaced high-rises. The real failure of these projects like Chicago's Robert Taylor Homes and Cabrini-Green was that they were part of the whole misguided public housing system. They weren't just brutalist high-rises; they were cheaply-built, poorly-maintained structures into which the most disadvantaged members of society were rounded up and told to live. Not much more than a mile away from the former site of Cabrini-Green, in Chicago's Near North neighborhood, is Cabrini's urban-planning counter-example: Carl Sandburg Village. This series of mid-century high-rises and low-rises shares a lot of design concepts with Cabrini, but was privately built, with better architecture and higher quality, and following a conversion from rentals to condos, has been carefully maintained over the decades by its owners. While Sandburg Village's residents are not the city's poor, they aren't necessarily affluent either: The place has a reputation as an affordable area for first-time buyers as well as retirees.
enf 14y ago
Congratulations! You are Le Corbusier and you have invented midcentury modernist city planning. In all seriousness, if you are going to build a city with no vehicles on the surface, Towers in a Park is not the way to do it. There are many successful examples of medieval cities with high enclosure, and no successful examples of modernist cities with low enclosure. People are very sensitive to distance, and the only way they will ever walk from one of those towers to another is if there is also something interesting or useful for them to look at every 20-30 feet along the way.
- DenisM 14y ago
  I'll read up on that guy, thanks.
- DenisM 14y ago
  And to be sure, I am not married to the low-enclosure idea. I did the math for the worst-case scenario: "what if everyone wants plenty of space around?". If people in fact prefer higher enclosure I would have no qualms about spacing the buildings three times as closely, and maybe setting aside parts of the real estate for greenbelts a-la central park in NYC. That would actually allow me to achieve even higher population density, which is the goal I was shooting for. My only concern is that such approach creates non-uniformity in desirability of different buildings, which may in turn create population density distortions and thus trafic abnormalities. So I would have to schedule more busses in some areas. Too much thinking for a concept, but certainly manageable if one were to actually build this.
  - ef4 14y ago
    Isn't non-uniformity critical? Without it, there's no reason to go anywhere.
    - DenisM 14y ago
      I think uniformity of density allows for uniformity of traffic, however that does not require uniformity of "culture and ambiance" for lack of a better term. If there are 10 million people in the city you can have vastly different ambiance in different parts of the city, yet with roughly equal number of people trying to get to any such spot at any point in time. Does it make sense? I am trying to avoid a situation where some parts of the city are much more popular that others for people at large, and I think that does not contradict that some part of the city would be more attractive to a subset of people.

by DenisM 14y ago

aristus 14y ago

High-rises separated by green space was the original vision of high-rise designers. But what developers and financiers heard was "more salable square footage in less footprint" and we ended up with what we have now. I personally don't enjoy living in high-rises. If I had to design city, it'd be more like San Francisco: buildings 5-6 stories high, tops. Lots of walkspace, lots of trees, definitely a lot more greenways as you describe. But I don't see the point of having all that greenspace if the majority of people will be 20+ stories away from it.

DenisM 14y ago
Population density is required to make all amenities to be within walking distance, and to make meaningful public transportation (one you can rely on). In your scheme, low density would mean one has to drive to see your friends or visit favorite caffe (hello traffic gridlock) or take a bus, which will take forever over longer distances and all the traffic light stops. My concept is to build a city as a 10,000m square with building spaced out at 100m from each other in a grid for a total of 10,000 buildings, each one of 20 stories, 4 flats per story, each flat 12 meters to the side, three persons per flat. This way I could fit 2.4 million people in lavish 1400sqf condos in the city size of 10km to the side, and have the bus to cross the city in 10 minutes through underground tunnels with no traffic light stops. Large population density creates huge opportunities for development of arts, as there is more audience and a bigger chance of there being enough supporters for a given new art thing in one place.
- aristus 14y ago
  I'm not sure San Francisco counts as "low density". Maybe compared to Hong Kong. :)

pessimizer 14y ago

You could name it Getrobbedsville. Sounds a lot like the Brutalist Chicago projects that I grew up near, or at least like the artists depictions used to get them financed. Massive human density with no structure freaks me out, and I don't even have a driver's license.

mortenjorck 14y ago
There's much, much more to it than just planning a community with some closely-spaced high-rises. The real failure of these projects like Chicago's Robert Taylor Homes and Cabrini-Green was that they were part of the whole misguided public housing system. They weren't just brutalist high-rises; they were cheaply-built, poorly-maintained structures into which the most disadvantaged members of society were rounded up and told to live. Not much more than a mile away from the former site of Cabrini-Green, in Chicago's Near North neighborhood, is Cabrini's urban-planning counter-example: Carl Sandburg Village. This series of mid-century high-rises and low-rises shares a lot of design concepts with Cabrini, but was privately built, with better architecture and higher quality, and following a conversion from rentals to condos, has been carefully maintained over the decades by its owners. While Sandburg Village's residents are not the city's poor, they aren't necessarily affluent either: The place has a reputation as an affordable area for first-time buyers as well as retirees.

enf 14y ago

Congratulations! You are Le Corbusier and you have invented midcentury modernist city planning. In all seriousness, if you are going to build a city with no vehicles on the surface, Towers in a Park is not the way to do it. There are many successful examples of medieval cities with high enclosure, and no successful examples of modernist cities with low enclosure. People are very sensitive to distance, and the only way they will ever walk from one of those towers to another is if there is also something interesting or useful for them to look at every 20-30 feet along the way.

DenisM 14y ago
I'll read up on that guy, thanks.
DenisM 14y ago
And to be sure, I am not married to the low-enclosure idea. I did the math for the worst-case scenario: "what if everyone wants plenty of space around?". If people in fact prefer higher enclosure I would have no qualms about spacing the buildings three times as closely, and maybe setting aside parts of the real estate for greenbelts a-la central park in NYC. That would actually allow me to achieve even higher population density, which is the goal I was shooting for. My only concern is that such approach creates non-uniformity in desirability of different buildings, which may in turn create population density distortions and thus trafic abnormalities. So I would have to schedule more busses in some areas. Too much thinking for a concept, but certainly manageable if one were to actually build this.
- ef4 14y ago
  Isn't non-uniformity critical? Without it, there's no reason to go anywhere.
  - DenisM 14y ago
    I think uniformity of density allows for uniformity of traffic, however that does not require uniformity of "culture and ambiance" for lack of a better term. If there are 10 million people in the city you can have vastly different ambiance in different parts of the city, yet with roughly equal number of people trying to get to any such spot at any point in time. Does it make sense? I am trying to avoid a situation where some parts of the city are much more popular that others for people at large, and I think that does not contradict that some part of the city would be more attractive to a subset of people.