16 ms·

A Traditional City Primer

244 points by nopinsight 12y ago

cjf4 12y ago
This did a good job of highlighting the benefits of a traditional city and an awful job of recognizing why American cities and suburbia are the way they are, which is space. What's the stereotypical American Dream: a house, a yard, a family, and white picket fence. And while a stereotype, I think most Americans would prefer to have some sense of personally owned space in their domicile. A traditional city wouldn't be very good at providing this. There's certainly a cost to be paid for this individual space, which the post did a pretty good job of pointing out. But to completely ignore the benefits of suburbs and why the culture created them in the first place is not a recipe for change.
- deleted 12y ago
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- thrownaway2424 12y ago
  Speaking for myself, I strongly prefer a plentitude of public open space, rather than a little bit of private yard. It would be neat if a city were ever built along the lines of this proposal: http://carfree.com/topology.html http://carfree.com/topology.html It's a proposal for a city housing a million people, which is 80% non-urbanized, and in which nobody lives more than 400 meters from open space.
traughber 12y ago
This is fantastic. Great breakdown of the different city types.
wdewind 12y ago
Wow this is an incredibly short sighted and "get off my lawn" piece. The author completely negates the massive cultural multiplicative affect humans get from living millions at a time together, among many other advantages. I'm a New Yorker, so I'm biased, but I don't see problems with any of the types of living, they all have their advantages and disadvantages. The author writes as if this is not a preferential thing. To be honest, this isn't HN quality: it's poorly written, and poorly reasoned. The author is not an expert in city planning and doesn't seem to understand even the basic challenges being solved.
- deleted 12y ago
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- pessimizer 12y ago
  Could you be specific? Because: >I don't see problems with any of the types of living, they all have their advantages and disadvantages. could be said about anything. I don't understand your reasoning, and the only thing that I can figure out about your opinion is that you don't like think that there's anything wrong with places like New York because you live in New York(?), but I could definitely have that wrong.
  - bronbron 12y ago
    Fellow new yorker here, I'll contribute my 2c: The hypertrophic city is undoubtedly going to have advantages that suburbs and traditional cities don't (he touched on some of the disadvantages, so I won't repeat them here). The sheer scale ends up being a good thing and a bad thing. As a random example, if you're really into wingsuit flying you can easily find a sizable group of people who are similarly interested (and then you can arrange trips, etc.) That's much harder (sometimes even just impossible) to do at smaller scales (traditional cities) or smaller densities (the suburbs). Finding a good social cohort obviously has a noticeable impact on quality of life. I also heavily disagree with his assessment that mass transit discourages walking. The very nature of mass transit is that one must walk to specified stations, and it wouldn't shock me to learn that New Yorkers walk a few miles every day even with arguably the best mass transit system in America. Cities with mass transit systems regularly appear on lists of America's fittest cities (e.g. Seattle, SF). It seems silly to be arguing that traditional cities are a panacea to all problems when they obviously carry their own drawbacks.
  - wdewind 12y ago
    I object to the tone of the piece suggesting that one particular style of living is better as it is clearly preferential outside of any objective measurement (ie: GDP/person, CO2 emissions/person etc.).
- guard-of-terra 12y ago
  You may still lay a metro under a traditional city to permit million inhabitants to get where they want. Occassional light rail on the boulevard. Istanbul is 2nd largest city in Europe and they still have a huge traditional city core and outskirts are pretty close too. They have some subway and rail and ferries. I can't say I fully understand how they manage without collapsing, tho.
carsongross 12y ago
The hills around the bay area could be filled with smaller scale, well built cities like this, if Americans were civilized and tasteful enough to demand them. But... we aren't. Rather we will get sprawl and ridiculous techno-mansions. 'murica!
- sehr 12y ago
  Be the change you want to see in the world, sarcasm doesn't really get anybody anywhere
  - vinceguidry 12y ago
    > Be the change You want him to build cities?
    - sehr 12y ago
      > if Americans were civilized and tasteful enough to demand them. No.
    - coryrc 12y ago
      Yes. http://www.cohousing.org/ http://www.cohousing.org/
      - kimdouglasmason 12y ago
        I looked at their website. All I can see is a group of moneyed people choosing to live in an unconventional way, in semi-rural environments. For people earning a wage and living in large cities who have no choice but to rent, it's utterly meaningless. Please explain how this is anything but a privileged group of white people congratulating themselves on their ability to live precisely how they want.
        vinceguidry 12y ago
        Actually, I visited one co-housing group in the middle of Atlanta, the people living there just seemed like regular homeowners, not any more moneyed than any other homeowner. Co-housing is something I think you do if you don't have the cash to just build whatever you want on your huge plot of land, but still want to live someplace with amenities. Just share the cost. So co-housing might well be one way forward here.
seszett 12y ago
I agree with most of the author's points, however... isn't it too late to think about that, in the US? I might be wrong, but I don't think a lot of new cities are still being built there, so it would be necessary to destroy city centers to re-build them in a more human-friendly way? I don't see that happening anytime soon. Otherwise, I completely agree. The last time city centers were rebuilt here in France in large scale was in bombed cities after WWII, and they were transformed into car-friendly places (some of them really ugly). Only today are we trying to turn them back into pedestrian-friendly cities... but the wide avenues stay, it's better because there are less cars, but it's still not as nice as narrow paved streets (I'm thinking of the recent overhauling of Nantes' center, here).
- chippy 12y ago
  1) It's never too late to do anything. The idea is not to build a city and for the people to come, but to change places, or make new centres, new places. 2) There are cities around the world (Christchurch, NZ and Detroit US as two examples) which are already suffering for various reasons. Detroit is the centre for this "placemaking" movement - how do we rebuild a failed city?
- Tiktaalik 12y ago
  It's not too late. Cities are constantly changing and reinventing themselves. Many cities have old industrial areas that are being converted to other uses, or very low density residential spaces that are being rezoned to higher density. Any time a neighbourhood undergoes change there's an opportunity to do it differently. Vancouver's Olympic village (built from old industrial land) is an example of a brand new neighbourhood in a North American city built close to this form. It's not pedestrian only in width, but the streets through it are only a single car width wide.
- jinushaun 12y ago
  Its's not too late. Many cities are creating more human scale neighborhoods when it comes time to revitalize a run-down area (think warehouse districts)
- bluthru 12y ago
  >however... isn't it too late to think about that, in the US? Is it too late to undergo chemotherapy to remove cancer? It's too important not to try.
thomasfl 12y ago
Building new urban cities that doesn't suck is extremely capital intensive, but also potentially very lucrative. New cities that doesn't suck needs laws that ensure the city will continue to stay that way to. The economist Paul Romer has proposed the idea of charter city. I can recommend some of Jan Gehl's writings. The man who made Copenhagen into to one of the most liveable city on the world, with more than 40% of the population commuting by bikes. Last week I came back after two weeks in the southern parts of France. Visited old cities like Conque, Couvertoirade, Belcastel, Toulouse, Albi and Cordes. Nice to see human scale towns where no two buildings are a like, but still they all look similar.
lelf 12y ago
I'd love if the photos were tagged with city names
- jmccree 12y ago
  One of the example "traditional city" photos is actually of a touristy shopping center in Gatlinburg, TN. Taking a photo looking the other direction would show a 4 lane highway running through the middle of the tourist strip.
  - gbhn 12y ago
    I took that as part of the argument: a "traditional city" doesn't have to eschew all cars and large roads. Putting some in to access more traditional areas is important. (I think the author suggested 20% of streets be like this.)
- oska 12y ago
  Yes, I found the lack of names frustrating too. Perhaps we could crowd-source the names? My identifications are: 21-4 Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France 21-5 Gold Coast, Australia 21-14 New York City, USA 21-18 Kyoto(?), Japan 18-7 Dublin, Ireland 18-8 Quebec City, Canada 9-69 ?, Australia 13-26 Montpellier, France (?)
  - m_myers 12y ago
    Pretty sure 11-3 is Grand Junction, CO, based on the highway signs and the mountains in the background.
coder23 12y ago
It is simply needed to calculate which type of city can support more people/area. If a large mall can provide more goods to people that smaller shops that take the same area, then it is better.
- seszett 12y ago
  > If a large mall can provide more goods to people that smaller shops that take the same area, then it is better. What if the people live better, more peaceful lives in the city with smaller shops? Is raw efficiency the only criterion that matters?
  - coder23 12y ago
    How do you measure that. As long as most people are happy with television and similar crap( most free time is spent with tv ), city landscape doesn't really matter; at least on the grand scale; the first step towards nicer cities is always removing personal cars.
- deleted 12y ago
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rayiner 12y ago
I've always found the "cars are freedom" angle a little odd. There's no bigger interface between your typical middle class American and the police/legal system than the automobile. The very fact of driving a dangerous two-ton machine around on expensive publicly-owned infrastructure spawns registration, taxation, regulation, enforcement (traffic cops, DUI checkpoints, ticketing, traffic courts), etc. A car isn't freedom, it's just the easiest way to get in trouble with the law. Another thing I find interesting is that suburbia is spawning manufactured human-scale areas. E.g. Atlantic station in Atlanta: http://vccusa.com/i/projects/atlantic_station1.jpg http://vccusa.com/i/projects/atlantic_station1.jpg. Reston Town Center in Virginia: http://www.fairfaxcountyeda.org/sites/default/files/photos/reston_town_72dpi_0.jpg http://www.fairfaxcountyeda.org/sites/default/files/photos/r.... They're planning on building an above-street level plaza in Tysons near the new Silver Line stop, because the street level of that area is beyond redemption: http://assets.macerichepicenter.com/FileManager/Tysons/Headers/InteriorPages/Plaza_Subhero.jpg http://assets.macerichepicenter.com/FileManager/Tysons/Heade....
- bignaj 12y ago
  Ever owned a car before? How about being able to hop in your vehicle and drive anywhere in the entire country whenever you want just because you feel like it? That's why cars are freedom. Ask any recently-turned 16-year-old what it's like actually being able to go places. You could also just step on the gas pedal, drive across the country and feel the freedom yourself. Your comment has some good side-points to add to the discussion of cars for sure but by far the biggest point has gone about 3,099 miles over your head (Boston to San Francisco). To add to the OP: I think the ideal mix would be traditional cities where walking/biking are the ideal (like older parts of Europe) and then something like the interstate system/cars to allow freedom and mobility across the entire country (USA). I live in a city and ride my bike anywhere downtown, but my car is absolutely essential to go anywhere else. Freedom!
  - icebraining 12y ago
    Sounds like you have a crap public transportation system if the kids under 16 can't "go to places". EDIT: You don't need a car to allow cross-country mobility; trains are more than adequate. Here in Europe you can travel from Portugal to Finland on rail, and we can visit up to 30 countries for less than $500 with an InterRail pass.
platz 12y ago
Strongly resonates with Christopher Alexander's "The Timeless Way of Building" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Timeless_Way_of_Building http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Timeless_Way_of_Building
guard-of-terra 12y ago
Istanbul's Fatih and Beyoglu districts come to mind as an example of a very large traditional city. And it's perhaps the most pleasing place I've been to - in my whole life. (Not just because it's a traditional city, but still)
Balgair 12y ago
Yes, yes, charming little streets. However, having just last week spent a few nights in Weimar, Germany, I can say I do not like it. Weimar is a very little city. It is a perfect example of the OP. Lots of tiny streets, no right angles, nothing over 5 stories, taverns, hotels, children, a little chapel, window boxes with flowers on every window, etc. Truely, it did feel like traveling back in time. Heck, there is even a music school there to honor Bach's time in the city. And that, the music school, is the exact reason why I disliked every single night there. The SOUND! Yes, the cacophony of practice on 15 different instruments died off at about 10pm. But then all the students went to the bars to knock off until about 2 am. And, the drunker you get, the louder you are. Yes, it is the summer time, yes, it is a music school, that is unique. But I feel the point still stands, the sound is a big problem, not just in Large cities, but equally as in these human scale ones Don't get me wrong, I love having my apartment. I love that ability, even in LA, to walk across the street or down to 7-11. I like that i have weird neighbors. I like that my cat has other cats to play with. I like having little kids running around. But I HATE the #17 bus at 6am on Sunday. I HATE the Harleys blasting down Santa Monica at 4am. I HATE the damn Ambulance in the middle of a nice romantic dinner or in a movie theatre. I think that nice reduction and cancellation is the largest step to a better urban environment. Being able to play guitar, at proper volume, in an apartment, without hearing my neighbor's washing dishes, the cars outside, or the newly wed couple 2 windows over is a fantasy. A fantasy that engineers and architects might be able to make real. Why did everyone move to the suburbs? One, among many reasons, was so you could get a proper night's sleep.
- guard-of-terra 12y ago
  Your hate list can be easily solved by: modern windows that don't let sound thru; police; a policy for ambulances to make noizes only when they must. It's very solvable if that's what you have in mind. I live in an apartment block and I'm certainly not "hearing my neighbor's washing dishes, the cars outside, or the newly wed couple 2 windows over". Maybe some people are loud outside in the evening, but nights are usually undisturbed.
  - icebraining 12y ago
    Same here. What kind of crappy walls let the sounds of washing dishes through?!
peter_l_downs 12y ago
How does this work out for people with physical disabilities?
- chippy 12y ago
  This is what I thought of too when looking at the first few images. How can they "walk" in those places?. However, I believe not all of the examples were steep stepped or cobbled but had vehicular access and were level, and the article explains issues about access and ambulances etc - it would work out fine - arguably better in terms of human closeness.
  - tormeh 12y ago
    Motorized wheelchairs is what's mostly used in these cases.
- pouetpouet 12y ago
  The only examples you see are centuries old. There is no reason why you couldn't bild something accessible today.
chestnut-tree 12y ago
I think this is a rather romanticised view of a traditional city. I don't want to live in a city dominated by cars, but that doesn't mean the best alternative is to build extremely narrow streets. All cities need contrasting spaces. Even the medieval town or city was marked by narrow streets that led to an open piazza or square. The feeling of walking from a confined narrow space into a wide open expanse can give a feeling of exhiliration. It's something architects continue to use today inside buildings. Think of the walk through a corridor into the grounds of a stadium and the excitement it generates. Or the excitement of walking through a corridor in a theatre before you enter the large expanse of the auditorium. The scale and proportion of buildngs in relation to one another creates a sense of enclosure that can either feel comfortable or uncomfortable. The author calls the extremely narrow streets "intimate" and they are in many cases, but they can also be claustrophobic (especially if you live in them). For housing, not everyone will want to live in streets as narrow as the pictures in the blog post. Who doesn't prefer long views out of their window? (Preferably of some greenery) That doesn't mean building huge spaces between houses as is often the case in modern car suburbs. But there needs to be enough distance to psychologically feel you have a sense of privacy from your neighbours. Here is a random Victorian street (in a very expensive part of London) that I think has a good scale. The road is not too wide. Cars are parked on the street rather than in garages. The houses are of fairly high density. This is a better template for housing than modern car susburbs in my view. But it won't be for everyone. https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.556208,-0.165162,3a,75y,36.4h,95.29t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1s7s8c8K1PkJB5p_w2cTWCYA!2e0 https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.556208,-0.165162,3a,75y,36...
- graeme 12y ago
  This seems partly a straw man. I don't think the author would say not to build open plazas. They're very much a part of traditional cities. That is a nice street in London. I expect housing prices are high. I also expect housing prices are even higher in areas with narrower streets. We can talk in the abstract about what people "would prefer", but looking at actual choices is more instructive. Residential privacy is one of those things you can learn to do without. Many people would say that London street has no privacy. People have different preferences, but I've seen no evidence that people don't like narrow streets, even narrower than the one found in your image.
Systemic33 12y ago
I've seen the same kind of narrow streets in LA, which gave the same cozy feeling. I'm talking about places like The Grove in LA.[1] The difference between these and the authentic type of narrow streets is, that the grove is a privately owned estate area, that can set its own rules. Whereas the authentic ones are owned by the city, and don't just close for the night or ban alcohol, or what not. [1] https://www.google.dk/search?q=The+Grove+LA&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=nSTUU4_OMeqAywOV24D4Bw&ved=0CDwQsAQ&biw=1920&bih=979 https://www.google.dk/search?q=The+Grove+LA&tbm=isch&tbo=u&s...
graeme 12y ago
Thanks for this. I moved from Toronto to Montreal, and am much happier for it. In Toronto, I felt a malaise. I couldn't articulate why. When I told people why I moved, I would say "Montreal has old buildings, a mountain, bilingualism, and....narrow streets". No one ever got the streets, and I never had seen much discussion, so I couldn't convey why that mattered. This drives it home. It's the human scale. I now live in the plateau Mont Royal. It was a neighborhood made possible by transit, but most of the streets are narrow and meant for the use of inhabitants. I am in the middle of a square grid; on a quiet street. A three minute walk north, east, south or west sends me to a different, bustling commercial district, each with their own distinct flavour. Side streets in other directions have their own shops, and there are residential streets extending ten blocks in any direction. I spend 90% of my time within a 5 minute walk of my house, and yet have a world of options to choose from. And almost every bit of it is human scale. Not accidently, rents are highest in this part of town, and this is where the tourist come to experience "charming, European Montreal". Some people talk about increasing density by building high rises in the plateau. I wonder why they don't talk about building more plateaus. (Note: Rents are actually quite low across the board in Montreal. A one bedroom can be had for less than $700 per month in the plateau.)
- peter_l_downs 12y ago
  Have you seen Waydowntown [0]? It's a movie about the malaise of living entirely indoors in a non-human-scale city (Calgary.) You might like it if you haven't already seen it! [0]: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0219405/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0219405/
- butchler 12y ago
  I actually just stayed at a little hotel in the plateau Mont Royal while on vacation in Canada a couple of weeks ago! It was amazing and I seriously think I might move to Montreal someday. Another thing that Montreal has that they don't have where I live is tons of Summer festivals. While we were there was some kind of festival put on by a clown school and we got to see basically a mini, outdoor Cirque du Soleil performance for free. I don't even usually like things like that very much, but it definitely helped give the experience of a "charming, European" city =P
gipp 12y ago
I'm not sure that going back to the exact sort of city we had pre-modernity is quite viable or desirable -- but I do think (or rather, hope) that something more "human-scale" is in our future, even if it isn't exactly this. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that self-driving cars are the catalyst. Car services -> Lower car ownership & drastically reduced need for colocated parking -> More easily hidden away infrastructure -> More livable cities.
heydenberk 12y ago
>> Chicago is over two centuries old, and has street widths that rival those of any modern highway Chicago wasn't incorporated as a city until 1837. It was the 10th biggest city in the US two decades later, but still, it's much younger than the east coast big cities.
istjohn 12y ago
It was interesting to read this with another HN post in mind from a month ago, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7965077 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7965077, a Wired article about the observation that increased road capacity paradoxically does nothing to decrease congestion as people just use the roads more. Road building has a coercive effect in that many of its costs are born by everyone, and there is no way to opt out of those costs if you live in the city. Everything is more diffuse and less pedestrian friendly and moving about the city is more expensive. If you opt out of car ownership, you bear the expenses without enjoying the dividends. People who can't afford to drive suffer a sort of regressive tax. They do not drive but nevertheless live in a sprawling city built for cars with dangerous roads, ungainly parking lots, sprawling commercial districts, and inadequate public transportation. Roads are terrific for creating distance to separate rich from poor. Those with means can hunker down in their gated community in the suburbs with a spacious private back yard and drive their air conditioned SUV to the parking garage downtown without even suffering a whiff of the common people on the street. Walkways and public transportation democratize the city. Everyone enjoys the fruit of public investment, and everyone rubs shoulders on the subway or railcar. Common areas create a public forum where an inclusive community can form. The streets and sidewalks and alleys are used by everyone, not just those who cannot afford to drive past them. So it is in everyone's interest to make the city streets a safe and healthy place to be.
sdotty 12y ago
"The only thing you have to do to build a traditional city - an environment where people naturally want to walk - is to build Really Narrow Streets; " Then pictures of several architectures of buildings are shown along very narrow streets, but nothing more than 4 stories high. My first thought when I read this was, the narrow streets constricts the heights of the buildings possible because if the buildings are taller than a few stories, the windows will not get light and there will be lack of wind, fresh air and sense of openness. When every building has to be short, how can you meet the demand for housing? Perhaps I'm biased because I live in Jersey City, across from NYC with its own share of residential high rises. Where are you going to house all the people who cannot afford to have a place to stay, due to high cost of housing, due to low supply, due to short buildings?
- michaelochurch 12y ago
  This is something the OP doesn't discuss well. The "traditional city" provides a sense of beauty and "place" for the tourist, but it's an annoyance for people who live there. Housing gets expensive, quality goes down over time, and building up becomes impossible. Living without a dishwasher, as one might have to do in old housing that can't be economically upgraded, gets old really quick. That's not to say that "traditional city" equals "no dishwasher"; I'm only pointing out that there are some serious hassles (noise, expense) to that way of living. The driver-centric planning of the US is pretty terrible, because cutting your urban land with ribbons that are dangerous to cross, unpleasant to look at and hear, and utter non-places turns out to have catastrophic effects on urban life, even in objectively great cities like Chicago and New York. I will agree with that. I don't think that four-story buildings and narrow streets are a workable solution. That will just make everywhere decent unaffordable, so you'll need transit or large towers nearby anyway to keep the local economy from falling to shit in bad times. What we've learned about the car is that it scales horribly. Robert Moses re-designed cities for the car because he was an elitist asshole. At that time, most working class people didn't have cars. "Parkways" were thus named because he intended them as actual motoring parks (for rich people). In the 1940s, cars became affordable to average people and promised to "disrupt" urban landlords-- a hard thing to oppose, as anyone who's lived in New York or London will agree-- by making previously useless land livable. However, we found out that when everyone drives, the result is congestion, misery, pollution, and actually surprisingly expensive. Between insurance and gas and maintenance and parking-- and the suburbs actually failing to be affordable except far away from urban centers and jobs-- the car became the new landlord in suburbia. I agree fully with OP that suburbia is ill-planned (who doesn't?) and that car-centric cities are a mistake. But the 21st century is going to call for something new and transit will have to be a big part of it. Personally, I think we should tax the tits off of landlords and real estate owners (beyond one house, owner-inhabited) and use the money to build a first-rate rapid transit system. Since their wealth comes directly from inefficiency of geography, we should tax them to pay to fix that inefficiency. It's only fair that those who benefit from a bad situation be called upon to pay to fix it.
rdl 12y ago
I'd rather go completely the other direction -- maybe some tiny clusters of 50-100k square feet of living/work space shared with voluntarily self-selecting people, like a modern farm or industrial park with some nearby housing, but tens of kilometers separating these clusters.
- zephjc 12y ago
  we'll call them "tah-oons"
legulere 12y ago
Those narrow streets are illegal because it's a problem for the fire department. I have lots of old cities here in my region that stayed small (<10k inhabitants) and only few of the streets are narrow Another problem is that you're pretty limited in city size if you can only walk: people don't want to commute for more than 1 hour daily
- pouetpouet 12y ago
  European 'traditional' cities don't burn down all the time. They just have smaller engines, and because they are less sprawling, the fire truck come from a closer place and can afford to negotiate the streets a little bit slower.
twelvechairs 12y ago
This is my field. I trained as an architect and work as an urban designer (somewhere between an architect, landscape architect and planner). This article hits on some good points but misses a lot of others. Some dot points to keep it short: * People (especially those with children) often prefer to live in houses with space which are more private rather than in narrow apartments (required if you want low building heights and for everyone to walk everyhwere) on top of their neighbours. Do you really want to hear 3 screaming babies next door every night. Because that's how it works. * Modern business don't work in low desnity environments like this. You simply need to be as accessible as you can to as wide a market (of workers and other businesses you work with) as possible. Maybe once we are all working on the internet it will shift this way - but it hasn't gone far yet. * Even the 'traditional cities' shown will have outskirts with houses which are a pain to walk to rather than just apartments in a centre. * There is no single 'traditional city'. There are differences even across Europe. England has its widened-road market squares. Italy has its hill towns. Places like Japan usually built out of timber (which doesn't last) rather than stone. Etc. * There are plenty of examples of tower cities with bustling urban environments and low car ownership. Like Hong Kong. Dehumanising? Perhaps. It depends on your definition. * Most 'traditional cities' couldn't be built for anywhere near the same cost as a modern development. Overall though, this is pushing in the right direction, just not quite thought through as thoroughly as it might be. [edit] Perhaps the most successful attempt at building in this vein in the west recently has been Poundbury, England. It was Prince Charles' pet project. It has done some things well (like managing to break the highways codes) but in the end perhaps still isn't as nice as a traditional town or as attractive a location for modern living as other places being built. You can see it in streetview here: https://www.google.com/maps/@50.712904,-2.463939,3a,75y,145.8h,79.11t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sP_ymofrDtmlmk2aW3jaL5w!2e0 https://www.google.com/maps/@50.712904,-2.463939,3a,75y,145....
- lliwta 12y ago
  > * Most 'traditional cities' couldn't be built for anywhere near the same cost as a modern development. Why is this? E.g. The author points out that narrow streets should be cheaper to build and maintain. I grew up in suburbia, lived in a typical American city, and now live in a traditional city abroad. My best guesses as to why building a traditional city is more expensive are 1) construction might be more expensive because of the constrained space; 2) lots of roads are cobble stone rather than pavement; 3) maybe infrastructure (e.g. fire hydrants etc) Are there other more important reasons? I really can't figure it out.
archagon 12y ago
I guess this is a divisive topic, but I agree completely. Every time I visited one of these cities in Europe, it Felt Right in a way living in the US never did. "Human scale" is a great way to put it, and I think it's actually a two-way street (so to speak). I feel much more content being a living cell in an ancient, twisted, organic city rather than a replaceable tenant in some downtown highrise or suburban townhouse. You can see it in the decor: the narrow streets of traditional cities take on the attributes of their owners, whereas you'd be lucky to see an occasional window poster in a big US city. In addition to the traits mentioned in the article, there's one other feature that my ideal traditional city would have: proximity to nature. I want my home to be close to water, to have hills in view, to be littered with trees and greenery. This necessarily limits the size of the city, but I'm OK with that. Smaller cities have the additional advantage of having a tighter community and having better access to things like street markets, which are notoriously absent in the US. Tangentially, I really enjoy artistic representations of what happens when the two styles mix: http://www.agraart.pl/pics/dziela/091_yerka.jpg http://www.agraart.pl/pics/dziela/091_yerka.jpg. See also Imperial Boy.
VLM 12y ago
Only one pix was taken during winter. No pix of commuters during precipitation. No pix were taken in hot weather (at least the majority in pants not shorts). For the 1% or so of the worlds surface that never goes below 40F or above 70F and only rains at night, walkable architecture sounds pretty appealing. For the other 99% of the worlds surface, as soon as economically possible for to own a car, they're going to want a car to get out of the weather. I say this as a guy who considers hiking/backpacking and walking the neighborhood to be "recreational". I wouldn't want my livelihood and lifestyle to depend on walking in a heat wave, a cold snap, a snow storm, a thunderstorm. Its fun for recreation but not serious stuff, like living.
VLM 12y ago
Serious book idea: A treatment of new urbanism as an authoritarian conspiracy theory.

244 points by nopinsight 12y ago

cjf4 12y ago

This did a good job of highlighting the benefits of a traditional city and an awful job of recognizing why American cities and suburbia are the way they are, which is space. What's the stereotypical American Dream: a house, a yard, a family, and white picket fence. And while a stereotype, I think most Americans would prefer to have some sense of personally owned space in their domicile. A traditional city wouldn't be very good at providing this. There's certainly a cost to be paid for this individual space, which the post did a pretty good job of pointing out. But to completely ignore the benefits of suburbs and why the culture created them in the first place is not a recipe for change.

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thrownaway2424 12y ago
Speaking for myself, I strongly prefer a plentitude of public open space, rather than a little bit of private yard. It would be neat if a city were ever built along the lines of this proposal: http://carfree.com/topology.html http://carfree.com/topology.html It's a proposal for a city housing a million people, which is 80% non-urbanized, and in which nobody lives more than 400 meters from open space.

traughber 12y ago

This is fantastic. Great breakdown of the different city types.

wdewind 12y ago

Wow this is an incredibly short sighted and "get off my lawn" piece. The author completely negates the massive cultural multiplicative affect humans get from living millions at a time together, among many other advantages. I'm a New Yorker, so I'm biased, but I don't see problems with any of the types of living, they all have their advantages and disadvantages. The author writes as if this is not a preferential thing. To be honest, this isn't HN quality: it's poorly written, and poorly reasoned. The author is not an expert in city planning and doesn't seem to understand even the basic challenges being solved.

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pessimizer 12y ago
Could you be specific? Because: >I don't see problems with any of the types of living, they all have their advantages and disadvantages. could be said about anything. I don't understand your reasoning, and the only thing that I can figure out about your opinion is that you don't like think that there's anything wrong with places like New York because you live in New York(?), but I could definitely have that wrong.
- bronbron 12y ago
  Fellow new yorker here, I'll contribute my 2c: The hypertrophic city is undoubtedly going to have advantages that suburbs and traditional cities don't (he touched on some of the disadvantages, so I won't repeat them here). The sheer scale ends up being a good thing and a bad thing. As a random example, if you're really into wingsuit flying you can easily find a sizable group of people who are similarly interested (and then you can arrange trips, etc.) That's much harder (sometimes even just impossible) to do at smaller scales (traditional cities) or smaller densities (the suburbs). Finding a good social cohort obviously has a noticeable impact on quality of life. I also heavily disagree with his assessment that mass transit discourages walking. The very nature of mass transit is that one must walk to specified stations, and it wouldn't shock me to learn that New Yorkers walk a few miles every day even with arguably the best mass transit system in America. Cities with mass transit systems regularly appear on lists of America's fittest cities (e.g. Seattle, SF). It seems silly to be arguing that traditional cities are a panacea to all problems when they obviously carry their own drawbacks.
- wdewind 12y ago
  I object to the tone of the piece suggesting that one particular style of living is better as it is clearly preferential outside of any objective measurement (ie: GDP/person, CO2 emissions/person etc.).
guard-of-terra 12y ago
You may still lay a metro under a traditional city to permit million inhabitants to get where they want. Occassional light rail on the boulevard. Istanbul is 2nd largest city in Europe and they still have a huge traditional city core and outskirts are pretty close too. They have some subway and rail and ferries. I can't say I fully understand how they manage without collapsing, tho.

carsongross 12y ago

The hills around the bay area could be filled with smaller scale, well built cities like this, if Americans were civilized and tasteful enough to demand them. But... we aren't. Rather we will get sprawl and ridiculous techno-mansions. 'murica!

sehr 12y ago
Be the change you want to see in the world, sarcasm doesn't really get anybody anywhere
- vinceguidry 12y ago
  > Be the change You want him to build cities?
  - sehr 12y ago
    > if Americans were civilized and tasteful enough to demand them. No.
  - coryrc 12y ago
    Yes. http://www.cohousing.org/ http://www.cohousing.org/
    - kimdouglasmason 12y ago
      I looked at their website. All I can see is a group of moneyed people choosing to live in an unconventional way, in semi-rural environments. For people earning a wage and living in large cities who have no choice but to rent, it's utterly meaningless. Please explain how this is anything but a privileged group of white people congratulating themselves on their ability to live precisely how they want.
      - vinceguidry 12y ago
        Actually, I visited one co-housing group in the middle of Atlanta, the people living there just seemed like regular homeowners, not any more moneyed than any other homeowner. Co-housing is something I think you do if you don't have the cash to just build whatever you want on your huge plot of land, but still want to live someplace with amenities. Just share the cost. So co-housing might well be one way forward here.

seszett 12y ago

I agree with most of the author's points, however... isn't it too late to think about that, in the US? I might be wrong, but I don't think a lot of new cities are still being built there, so it would be necessary to destroy city centers to re-build them in a more human-friendly way? I don't see that happening anytime soon. Otherwise, I completely agree. The last time city centers were rebuilt here in France in large scale was in bombed cities after WWII, and they were transformed into car-friendly places (some of them really ugly). Only today are we trying to turn them back into pedestrian-friendly cities... but the wide avenues stay, it's better because there are less cars, but it's still not as nice as narrow paved streets (I'm thinking of the recent overhauling of Nantes' center, here).

chippy 12y ago
1) It's never too late to do anything. The idea is not to build a city and for the people to come, but to change places, or make new centres, new places. 2) There are cities around the world (Christchurch, NZ and Detroit US as two examples) which are already suffering for various reasons. Detroit is the centre for this "placemaking" movement - how do we rebuild a failed city?
Tiktaalik 12y ago
It's not too late. Cities are constantly changing and reinventing themselves. Many cities have old industrial areas that are being converted to other uses, or very low density residential spaces that are being rezoned to higher density. Any time a neighbourhood undergoes change there's an opportunity to do it differently. Vancouver's Olympic village (built from old industrial land) is an example of a brand new neighbourhood in a North American city built close to this form. It's not pedestrian only in width, but the streets through it are only a single car width wide.
jinushaun 12y ago
Its's not too late. Many cities are creating more human scale neighborhoods when it comes time to revitalize a run-down area (think warehouse districts)
bluthru 12y ago
>however... isn't it too late to think about that, in the US? Is it too late to undergo chemotherapy to remove cancer? It's too important not to try.

thomasfl 12y ago

Building new urban cities that doesn't suck is extremely capital intensive, but also potentially very lucrative. New cities that doesn't suck needs laws that ensure the city will continue to stay that way to. The economist Paul Romer has proposed the idea of charter city. I can recommend some of Jan Gehl's writings. The man who made Copenhagen into to one of the most liveable city on the world, with more than 40% of the population commuting by bikes. Last week I came back after two weeks in the southern parts of France. Visited old cities like Conque, Couvertoirade, Belcastel, Toulouse, Albi and Cordes. Nice to see human scale towns where no two buildings are a like, but still they all look similar.

lelf 12y ago

I'd love if the photos were tagged with city names

jmccree 12y ago
One of the example "traditional city" photos is actually of a touristy shopping center in Gatlinburg, TN. Taking a photo looking the other direction would show a 4 lane highway running through the middle of the tourist strip.
- gbhn 12y ago
  I took that as part of the argument: a "traditional city" doesn't have to eschew all cars and large roads. Putting some in to access more traditional areas is important. (I think the author suggested 20% of streets be like this.)
oska 12y ago
Yes, I found the lack of names frustrating too. Perhaps we could crowd-source the names? My identifications are: 21-4 Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France 21-5 Gold Coast, Australia 21-14 New York City, USA 21-18 Kyoto(?), Japan 18-7 Dublin, Ireland 18-8 Quebec City, Canada 9-69 ?, Australia 13-26 Montpellier, France (?)
- m_myers 12y ago
  Pretty sure 11-3 is Grand Junction, CO, based on the highway signs and the mountains in the background.

coder23 12y ago

It is simply needed to calculate which type of city can support more people/area. If a large mall can provide more goods to people that smaller shops that take the same area, then it is better.

seszett 12y ago
> If a large mall can provide more goods to people that smaller shops that take the same area, then it is better. What if the people live better, more peaceful lives in the city with smaller shops? Is raw efficiency the only criterion that matters?
- coder23 12y ago
  How do you measure that. As long as most people are happy with television and similar crap( most free time is spent with tv ), city landscape doesn't really matter; at least on the grand scale; the first step towards nicer cities is always removing personal cars.
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rayiner 12y ago

I've always found the "cars are freedom" angle a little odd. There's no bigger interface between your typical middle class American and the police/legal system than the automobile. The very fact of driving a dangerous two-ton machine around on expensive publicly-owned infrastructure spawns registration, taxation, regulation, enforcement (traffic cops, DUI checkpoints, ticketing, traffic courts), etc. A car isn't freedom, it's just the easiest way to get in trouble with the law. Another thing I find interesting is that suburbia is spawning manufactured human-scale areas. E.g. Atlantic station in Atlanta: http://vccusa.com/i/projects/atlantic_station1.jpg http://vccusa.com/i/projects/atlantic_station1.jpg. Reston Town Center in Virginia: http://www.fairfaxcountyeda.org/sites/default/files/photos/reston_town_72dpi_0.jpg http://www.fairfaxcountyeda.org/sites/default/files/photos/r.... They're planning on building an above-street level plaza in Tysons near the new Silver Line stop, because the street level of that area is beyond redemption: http://assets.macerichepicenter.com/FileManager/Tysons/Headers/InteriorPages/Plaza_Subhero.jpg http://assets.macerichepicenter.com/FileManager/Tysons/Heade....

bignaj 12y ago
Ever owned a car before? How about being able to hop in your vehicle and drive anywhere in the entire country whenever you want just because you feel like it? That's why cars are freedom. Ask any recently-turned 16-year-old what it's like actually being able to go places. You could also just step on the gas pedal, drive across the country and feel the freedom yourself. Your comment has some good side-points to add to the discussion of cars for sure but by far the biggest point has gone about 3,099 miles over your head (Boston to San Francisco). To add to the OP: I think the ideal mix would be traditional cities where walking/biking are the ideal (like older parts of Europe) and then something like the interstate system/cars to allow freedom and mobility across the entire country (USA). I live in a city and ride my bike anywhere downtown, but my car is absolutely essential to go anywhere else. Freedom!
- icebraining 12y ago
  Sounds like you have a crap public transportation system if the kids under 16 can't "go to places". EDIT: You don't need a car to allow cross-country mobility; trains are more than adequate. Here in Europe you can travel from Portugal to Finland on rail, and we can visit up to 30 countries for less than $500 with an InterRail pass.

platz 12y ago

Strongly resonates with Christopher Alexander's "The Timeless Way of Building" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Timeless_Way_of_Building http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Timeless_Way_of_Building

guard-of-terra 12y ago

Istanbul's Fatih and Beyoglu districts come to mind as an example of a very large traditional city. And it's perhaps the most pleasing place I've been to - in my whole life. (Not just because it's a traditional city, but still)

Balgair 12y ago

Yes, yes, charming little streets. However, having just last week spent a few nights in Weimar, Germany, I can say I do not like it. Weimar is a very little city. It is a perfect example of the OP. Lots of tiny streets, no right angles, nothing over 5 stories, taverns, hotels, children, a little chapel, window boxes with flowers on every window, etc. Truely, it did feel like traveling back in time. Heck, there is even a music school there to honor Bach's time in the city. And that, the music school, is the exact reason why I disliked every single night there. The SOUND! Yes, the cacophony of practice on 15 different instruments died off at about 10pm. But then all the students went to the bars to knock off until about 2 am. And, the drunker you get, the louder you are. Yes, it is the summer time, yes, it is a music school, that is unique. But I feel the point still stands, the sound is a big problem, not just in Large cities, but equally as in these human scale ones Don't get me wrong, I love having my apartment. I love that ability, even in LA, to walk across the street or down to 7-11. I like that i have weird neighbors. I like that my cat has other cats to play with. I like having little kids running around. But I HATE the #17 bus at 6am on Sunday. I HATE the Harleys blasting down Santa Monica at 4am. I HATE the damn Ambulance in the middle of a nice romantic dinner or in a movie theatre. I think that nice reduction and cancellation is the largest step to a better urban environment. Being able to play guitar, at proper volume, in an apartment, without hearing my neighbor's washing dishes, the cars outside, or the newly wed couple 2 windows over is a fantasy. A fantasy that engineers and architects might be able to make real. Why did everyone move to the suburbs? One, among many reasons, was so you could get a proper night's sleep.

guard-of-terra 12y ago
Your hate list can be easily solved by: modern windows that don't let sound thru; police; a policy for ambulances to make noizes only when they must. It's very solvable if that's what you have in mind. I live in an apartment block and I'm certainly not "hearing my neighbor's washing dishes, the cars outside, or the newly wed couple 2 windows over". Maybe some people are loud outside in the evening, but nights are usually undisturbed.
- icebraining 12y ago
  Same here. What kind of crappy walls let the sounds of washing dishes through?!

peter_l_downs 12y ago

How does this work out for people with physical disabilities?

chippy 12y ago
This is what I thought of too when looking at the first few images. How can they "walk" in those places?. However, I believe not all of the examples were steep stepped or cobbled but had vehicular access and were level, and the article explains issues about access and ambulances etc - it would work out fine - arguably better in terms of human closeness.
- tormeh 12y ago
  Motorized wheelchairs is what's mostly used in these cases.
pouetpouet 12y ago
The only examples you see are centuries old. There is no reason why you couldn't bild something accessible today.

chestnut-tree 12y ago

I think this is a rather romanticised view of a traditional city. I don't want to live in a city dominated by cars, but that doesn't mean the best alternative is to build extremely narrow streets. All cities need contrasting spaces. Even the medieval town or city was marked by narrow streets that led to an open piazza or square. The feeling of walking from a confined narrow space into a wide open expanse can give a feeling of exhiliration. It's something architects continue to use today inside buildings. Think of the walk through a corridor into the grounds of a stadium and the excitement it generates. Or the excitement of walking through a corridor in a theatre before you enter the large expanse of the auditorium. The scale and proportion of buildngs in relation to one another creates a sense of enclosure that can either feel comfortable or uncomfortable. The author calls the extremely narrow streets "intimate" and they are in many cases, but they can also be claustrophobic (especially if you live in them). For housing, not everyone will want to live in streets as narrow as the pictures in the blog post. Who doesn't prefer long views out of their window? (Preferably of some greenery) That doesn't mean building huge spaces between houses as is often the case in modern car suburbs. But there needs to be enough distance to psychologically feel you have a sense of privacy from your neighbours. Here is a random Victorian street (in a very expensive part of London) that I think has a good scale. The road is not too wide. Cars are parked on the street rather than in garages. The houses are of fairly high density. This is a better template for housing than modern car susburbs in my view. But it won't be for everyone. https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.556208,-0.165162,3a,75y,36.4h,95.29t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1s7s8c8K1PkJB5p_w2cTWCYA!2e0 https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.556208,-0.165162,3a,75y,36...

graeme 12y ago
This seems partly a straw man. I don't think the author would say not to build open plazas. They're very much a part of traditional cities. That is a nice street in London. I expect housing prices are high. I also expect housing prices are even higher in areas with narrower streets. We can talk in the abstract about what people "would prefer", but looking at actual choices is more instructive. Residential privacy is one of those things you can learn to do without. Many people would say that London street has no privacy. People have different preferences, but I've seen no evidence that people don't like narrow streets, even narrower than the one found in your image.

Systemic33 12y ago

I've seen the same kind of narrow streets in LA, which gave the same cozy feeling. I'm talking about places like The Grove in LA.[1] The difference between these and the authentic type of narrow streets is, that the grove is a privately owned estate area, that can set its own rules. Whereas the authentic ones are owned by the city, and don't just close for the night or ban alcohol, or what not. [1] https://www.google.dk/search?q=The+Grove+LA&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=nSTUU4_OMeqAywOV24D4Bw&ved=0CDwQsAQ&biw=1920&bih=979 https://www.google.dk/search?q=The+Grove+LA&tbm=isch&tbo=u&s...

graeme 12y ago

Thanks for this. I moved from Toronto to Montreal, and am much happier for it. In Toronto, I felt a malaise. I couldn't articulate why. When I told people why I moved, I would say "Montreal has old buildings, a mountain, bilingualism, and....narrow streets". No one ever got the streets, and I never had seen much discussion, so I couldn't convey why that mattered. This drives it home. It's the human scale. I now live in the plateau Mont Royal. It was a neighborhood made possible by transit, but most of the streets are narrow and meant for the use of inhabitants. I am in the middle of a square grid; on a quiet street. A three minute walk north, east, south or west sends me to a different, bustling commercial district, each with their own distinct flavour. Side streets in other directions have their own shops, and there are residential streets extending ten blocks in any direction. I spend 90% of my time within a 5 minute walk of my house, and yet have a world of options to choose from. And almost every bit of it is human scale. Not accidently, rents are highest in this part of town, and this is where the tourist come to experience "charming, European Montreal". Some people talk about increasing density by building high rises in the plateau. I wonder why they don't talk about building more plateaus. (Note: Rents are actually quite low across the board in Montreal. A one bedroom can be had for less than $700 per month in the plateau.)

peter_l_downs 12y ago
Have you seen Waydowntown [0]? It's a movie about the malaise of living entirely indoors in a non-human-scale city (Calgary.) You might like it if you haven't already seen it! [0]: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0219405/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0219405/
butchler 12y ago
I actually just stayed at a little hotel in the plateau Mont Royal while on vacation in Canada a couple of weeks ago! It was amazing and I seriously think I might move to Montreal someday. Another thing that Montreal has that they don't have where I live is tons of Summer festivals. While we were there was some kind of festival put on by a clown school and we got to see basically a mini, outdoor Cirque du Soleil performance for free. I don't even usually like things like that very much, but it definitely helped give the experience of a "charming, European" city =P

gipp 12y ago

I'm not sure that going back to the exact sort of city we had pre-modernity is quite viable or desirable -- but I do think (or rather, hope) that something more "human-scale" is in our future, even if it isn't exactly this. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that self-driving cars are the catalyst. Car services -> Lower car ownership & drastically reduced need for colocated parking -> More easily hidden away infrastructure -> More livable cities.

heydenberk 12y ago

>> Chicago is over two centuries old, and has street widths that rival those of any modern highway Chicago wasn't incorporated as a city until 1837. It was the 10th biggest city in the US two decades later, but still, it's much younger than the east coast big cities.

istjohn 12y ago

It was interesting to read this with another HN post in mind from a month ago, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7965077 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7965077, a Wired article about the observation that increased road capacity paradoxically does nothing to decrease congestion as people just use the roads more. Road building has a coercive effect in that many of its costs are born by everyone, and there is no way to opt out of those costs if you live in the city. Everything is more diffuse and less pedestrian friendly and moving about the city is more expensive. If you opt out of car ownership, you bear the expenses without enjoying the dividends. People who can't afford to drive suffer a sort of regressive tax. They do not drive but nevertheless live in a sprawling city built for cars with dangerous roads, ungainly parking lots, sprawling commercial districts, and inadequate public transportation. Roads are terrific for creating distance to separate rich from poor. Those with means can hunker down in their gated community in the suburbs with a spacious private back yard and drive their air conditioned SUV to the parking garage downtown without even suffering a whiff of the common people on the street. Walkways and public transportation democratize the city. Everyone enjoys the fruit of public investment, and everyone rubs shoulders on the subway or railcar. Common areas create a public forum where an inclusive community can form. The streets and sidewalks and alleys are used by everyone, not just those who cannot afford to drive past them. So it is in everyone's interest to make the city streets a safe and healthy place to be.

sdotty 12y ago

"The only thing you have to do to build a traditional city - an environment where people naturally want to walk - is to build Really Narrow Streets; " Then pictures of several architectures of buildings are shown along very narrow streets, but nothing more than 4 stories high. My first thought when I read this was, the narrow streets constricts the heights of the buildings possible because if the buildings are taller than a few stories, the windows will not get light and there will be lack of wind, fresh air and sense of openness. When every building has to be short, how can you meet the demand for housing? Perhaps I'm biased because I live in Jersey City, across from NYC with its own share of residential high rises. Where are you going to house all the people who cannot afford to have a place to stay, due to high cost of housing, due to low supply, due to short buildings?

michaelochurch 12y ago
This is something the OP doesn't discuss well. The "traditional city" provides a sense of beauty and "place" for the tourist, but it's an annoyance for people who live there. Housing gets expensive, quality goes down over time, and building up becomes impossible. Living without a dishwasher, as one might have to do in old housing that can't be economically upgraded, gets old really quick. That's not to say that "traditional city" equals "no dishwasher"; I'm only pointing out that there are some serious hassles (noise, expense) to that way of living. The driver-centric planning of the US is pretty terrible, because cutting your urban land with ribbons that are dangerous to cross, unpleasant to look at and hear, and utter non-places turns out to have catastrophic effects on urban life, even in objectively great cities like Chicago and New York. I will agree with that. I don't think that four-story buildings and narrow streets are a workable solution. That will just make everywhere decent unaffordable, so you'll need transit or large towers nearby anyway to keep the local economy from falling to shit in bad times. What we've learned about the car is that it scales horribly. Robert Moses re-designed cities for the car because he was an elitist asshole. At that time, most working class people didn't have cars. "Parkways" were thus named because he intended them as actual motoring parks (for rich people). In the 1940s, cars became affordable to average people and promised to "disrupt" urban landlords-- a hard thing to oppose, as anyone who's lived in New York or London will agree-- by making previously useless land livable. However, we found out that when everyone drives, the result is congestion, misery, pollution, and actually surprisingly expensive. Between insurance and gas and maintenance and parking-- and the suburbs actually failing to be affordable except far away from urban centers and jobs-- the car became the new landlord in suburbia. I agree fully with OP that suburbia is ill-planned (who doesn't?) and that car-centric cities are a mistake. But the 21st century is going to call for something new and transit will have to be a big part of it. Personally, I think we should tax the tits off of landlords and real estate owners (beyond one house, owner-inhabited) and use the money to build a first-rate rapid transit system. Since their wealth comes directly from inefficiency of geography, we should tax them to pay to fix that inefficiency. It's only fair that those who benefit from a bad situation be called upon to pay to fix it.

rdl 12y ago

I'd rather go completely the other direction -- maybe some tiny clusters of 50-100k square feet of living/work space shared with voluntarily self-selecting people, like a modern farm or industrial park with some nearby housing, but tens of kilometers separating these clusters.

zephjc 12y ago
we'll call them "tah-oons"

legulere 12y ago

Those narrow streets are illegal because it's a problem for the fire department. I have lots of old cities here in my region that stayed small (<10k inhabitants) and only few of the streets are narrow Another problem is that you're pretty limited in city size if you can only walk: people don't want to commute for more than 1 hour daily

pouetpouet 12y ago
European 'traditional' cities don't burn down all the time. They just have smaller engines, and because they are less sprawling, the fire truck come from a closer place and can afford to negotiate the streets a little bit slower.

twelvechairs 12y ago

This is my field. I trained as an architect and work as an urban designer (somewhere between an architect, landscape architect and planner). This article hits on some good points but misses a lot of others. Some dot points to keep it short: * People (especially those with children) often prefer to live in houses with space which are more private rather than in narrow apartments (required if you want low building heights and for everyone to walk everyhwere) on top of their neighbours. Do you really want to hear 3 screaming babies next door every night. Because that's how it works. * Modern business don't work in low desnity environments like this. You simply need to be as accessible as you can to as wide a market (of workers and other businesses you work with) as possible. Maybe once we are all working on the internet it will shift this way - but it hasn't gone far yet. * Even the 'traditional cities' shown will have outskirts with houses which are a pain to walk to rather than just apartments in a centre. * There is no single 'traditional city'. There are differences even across Europe. England has its widened-road market squares. Italy has its hill towns. Places like Japan usually built out of timber (which doesn't last) rather than stone. Etc. * There are plenty of examples of tower cities with bustling urban environments and low car ownership. Like Hong Kong. Dehumanising? Perhaps. It depends on your definition. * Most 'traditional cities' couldn't be built for anywhere near the same cost as a modern development. Overall though, this is pushing in the right direction, just not quite thought through as thoroughly as it might be. [edit] Perhaps the most successful attempt at building in this vein in the west recently has been Poundbury, England. It was Prince Charles' pet project. It has done some things well (like managing to break the highways codes) but in the end perhaps still isn't as nice as a traditional town or as attractive a location for modern living as other places being built. You can see it in streetview here: https://www.google.com/maps/@50.712904,-2.463939,3a,75y,145.8h,79.11t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sP_ymofrDtmlmk2aW3jaL5w!2e0 https://www.google.com/maps/@50.712904,-2.463939,3a,75y,145....

lliwta 12y ago
> * Most 'traditional cities' couldn't be built for anywhere near the same cost as a modern development. Why is this? E.g. The author points out that narrow streets should be cheaper to build and maintain. I grew up in suburbia, lived in a typical American city, and now live in a traditional city abroad. My best guesses as to why building a traditional city is more expensive are 1) construction might be more expensive because of the constrained space; 2) lots of roads are cobble stone rather than pavement; 3) maybe infrastructure (e.g. fire hydrants etc) Are there other more important reasons? I really can't figure it out.

archagon 12y ago

I guess this is a divisive topic, but I agree completely. Every time I visited one of these cities in Europe, it Felt Right in a way living in the US never did. "Human scale" is a great way to put it, and I think it's actually a two-way street (so to speak). I feel much more content being a living cell in an ancient, twisted, organic city rather than a replaceable tenant in some downtown highrise or suburban townhouse. You can see it in the decor: the narrow streets of traditional cities take on the attributes of their owners, whereas you'd be lucky to see an occasional window poster in a big US city. In addition to the traits mentioned in the article, there's one other feature that my ideal traditional city would have: proximity to nature. I want my home to be close to water, to have hills in view, to be littered with trees and greenery. This necessarily limits the size of the city, but I'm OK with that. Smaller cities have the additional advantage of having a tighter community and having better access to things like street markets, which are notoriously absent in the US. Tangentially, I really enjoy artistic representations of what happens when the two styles mix: http://www.agraart.pl/pics/dziela/091_yerka.jpg http://www.agraart.pl/pics/dziela/091_yerka.jpg. See also Imperial Boy.

VLM 12y ago

Only one pix was taken during winter. No pix of commuters during precipitation. No pix were taken in hot weather (at least the majority in pants not shorts). For the 1% or so of the worlds surface that never goes below 40F or above 70F and only rains at night, walkable architecture sounds pretty appealing. For the other 99% of the worlds surface, as soon as economically possible for to own a car, they're going to want a car to get out of the weather. I say this as a guy who considers hiking/backpacking and walking the neighborhood to be "recreational". I wouldn't want my livelihood and lifestyle to depend on walking in a heat wave, a cold snap, a snow storm, a thunderstorm. Its fun for recreation but not serious stuff, like living.

VLM 12y ago

Serious book idea: A treatment of new urbanism as an authoritarian conspiracy theory.