[HN Gopher] How to build a small town in Texas
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How to build a small town in Texas
Author : haakon
Score : 153 points
Date : 2021-07-06 17:17 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (wrathofgnon.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (wrathofgnon.substack.com)
| burlesona wrote:
| This is a nice overview of historic urbanism, but it nearly
| completely misses the real question:
|
| How will you legally be allowed to build this car-free town?
|
| Even in Texas you can't just build whatever you want wherever you
| want. Every city and most counties have minimum lot sizes, road,
| sewer, power, and fire code requirements that would completely
| defeat any effort to build a medieval european village in the US.
|
| In terms of location, you need to be 5-7 miles away from any
| existing city to be outside of it's ETJ. Any closer and you're
| probably going to be subject to the zoning laws of that city.
|
| In theory you could pull this off if you could get a critical
| mass in an unincorporated area and then incorporate a town so
| that the new town sets the development laws to allow this pattern
| of development, but you normally need anywhere from 200 to 2000
| people to get that started, and until that time the county rules
| dictate.
|
| One potential hack is to build the town as a condominium complex,
| so the entire thing is considered one apartment/condo building,
| even though the design is nothing like a normal apartment/condo.
| Another is to treat it as a trailer park, but you probably have
| to do a phase of development where the buildings are small pier-
| and-beam structures that can pass as "not permanently attached"
| to the land.
|
| In short: At this point the design principles of historic and
| modern urbanism are generally well understood and not that
| interesting. The primary obstacle to these practices being
| brought back is that they're utterly illegal in North America,
| and the plausible routes around that illegality make the
| economics - which would already be challenging - substantially
| more difficult.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| I don't know how often new planned towns spring up in Texas but
| it's still common in Australia. See Ellenbrook as an example
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellenbrook,_Western_Australi...
|
| https://ellenbrook.com.au/
| ianbicking wrote:
| I sometimes wonder why there's not more people and growth in
| Northern Australia. It seems like there's a lot of space and
| resources up there but not many people...
| burlesona wrote:
| AFAIK The number of new planned towns in the US post 1950 is
| approximately 0. The closest equivalent is a "Master Planned
| Community," which is a large-scale suburban development that
| might include a mix of land uses. Those are relatively common,
| but they're build as attachments to a larger city, not as new
| cities.
| asciimov wrote:
| If the author wants to see the outcome of this kind of
| development they should read the history of the Llano
| Estacado[1].
|
| Lubbock and it's surrounding communities built up during the
| latter half of the 19th Century, with the small communities
| forming as the farmers and ranchers needed them.
|
| [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Llano_Estacado
| q_andrew wrote:
| This is funny because modern Lubbock is an exact antithesis of
| what the article praises as good city planning.
| asciimov wrote:
| Turns out vehicles are pretty important when you live in
| rural communities and don't have access to public
| transportation.
| fred_is_fred wrote:
| Has this person ever been to Texas? Texas is not a monoclimate,
| but if he's proposing that all the land is parched then he's
| thinking west Texas. Where is all his fireplace wood coming from
| - there are very few trees there. How does he expect people to
| live there without A/C? How will these rooftop gardens survive
| the near constant and drying winds? As someone who has been to
| Amarillo more times than I wanted to, I don't think this is in
| any way realistic. If instead we assume this town is say within
| an hour of Houston - there are different concerns, but being
| perpetually parched is not on of them.
| dharbin wrote:
| He's planning for Wifi, but not A/C. Best of luck to this
| fellow, but I'm not sure his priorities align with most folks
| in this part of the country.
| bradstewart wrote:
| He doesn't say "live there without A/C". He advocates for
| designs not being dependent upon it--a big difference.
|
| "All buildings must be useful and livable even with the power
| cut. Hence, natural ventilation, strategically designed windows
| that open, etc. is necessary. Obviously you can add AC (Air
| conditioner) on top of that, but in no way should the town be
| dependent on AC."
| freeone3000 wrote:
| Only way for the town to not be dependent on AC is to stick
| it somewhere other than Texas.
| davidw wrote:
| People lived in Texas before there was AC.
| ghaff wrote:
| And people lived in Texas (though far fewer) before there
| was indoor plumbing too.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| When it's 105 degrees out with the power cut, nobody is going
| to be indoors for an extended period of time because stagnant
| hot air is more miserable than moving hot air.
| bradstewart wrote:
| Which, to me, is exactly his point--design the buildings
| with natural air flow so you don't suffocate when the power
| goes out.
| Animats wrote:
| _" All homes will be equipped with fireplaces, wood stoves and
| chimneys."_
|
| In West Texas? Which has no trees? "Sustainable", right.
|
| What this guy is missing is that small towns were originally
| service centers for surrounding farms. When 60% of the population
| worked in agriculture, towns were needed as distribution points
| for goods and services. With under 2% of the US population
| working in agriculture, that function is gone. Plus, between
| WalMart and Amazon, distribution no longer requires a town.
| floren wrote:
| I think there's an underlying assumption that maybe, some
| people would like to work on a farm, and to buy things which
| don't come from Walmart or Amazon. The economics of all that,
| plus the realities of farm work which are not immediately
| apparent to your average computer programmer, are a separate
| issue.
| ianbicking wrote:
| And wood smoke is toxic! Wood is a terrible fuel, its only
| benefit is nostalgia and the appeal to pastoralists.
| oftenwrong wrote:
| This reminds me of another, similar blog post:
|
| _Let 's Build A Traditional City (And Make A Profit)_ (2013)
|
| https://www.andrewalexanderprice.com/blog20130330.php
|
| ...which was also discussed on the HN front page:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8111406
|
| There is also a sequel post:
|
| _Let 's Build A Village From A Parking Lot_ (2015)
|
| https://www.andrewalexanderprice.com/blog20151203.php
| burlesona wrote:
| Andrew Price is a really nice guy. I love his blog.
| asciimov wrote:
| As a Texan, who has spent a good chuck of their life in the
| Panhandle and west Texas:
|
| So far I have only made it through half of this, but it is clear
| this person has not ever spent any amount of time on a farm or a
| ranch or in any part of Texas (west or not).
|
| Food production is smelly and dirty. You don't want to live
| upwind of a gin or feed lot. In west Texas you don't build high
| because of wind. For such an arid place they sure are banking on
| having access to a shit ton of water.
|
| There is a huge aquifer that most of the places out on the High
| Plains of Texas pump from. It's use is contentious, but your not
| going to be surviving off of a 3 acre playa lake.
| huitzitziltzin wrote:
| I agree with you.
|
| Upon reaching the following line, I laughed out loud. This is
| utopian social planning at its least realistic:
|
| "There will be an urge to build each home optimized for air
| conditioning. Don't. All buildings must be useful and livable
| even with the power cut. Hence, natural ventilation,
| strategically designed windows that open, etc. is necessary.
| Obviously you can add AC (Air conditioner) on top of that, but
| in no way should the town be dependent on AC."
|
| Anyone who has never been to West Texas should check the
| weather today in some subset of {Amarillo, Lubbock, Midland,
| Pecos, San Angelo, El Paso, Alpine}. (Some are nice and some
| are not!) If you can work inside all day with your house that
| temperature... good for you, but I cannot. And nearly every
| house in all of those places is air conditioned.
|
| Better yet! Visit the Great State of Texas and take a walk of
| three blocks or more outside in a city during the heat of the
| day in June, July or August and report back on how much you
| liked it...
| asciimov wrote:
| I know of a few people that live in dugouts in west texas.
|
| One of them has had the property in their family for
| generations. They say that it stays relatively cool during
| the summertime and warm in the winter.
| criddell wrote:
| I'm in Austin and I one of the reasons public transportation
| struggles is that for several months every year, it's too hot
| to even sit at a bus stop, let alone walk to or from one
| unless you have a shower available at your destination.
| lastofthemojito wrote:
| How to make cheap West Texas land worth even less: Build homes on
| it, but don't include garages or driveways; instead tell
| prospective buyers that they need to keep their pickup trucks
| outside of town.
|
| EDIT (as I feel I was overly snarky): I don't think there's
| anything wrong with thought experiments like this, and I've
| wondered to myself what a brand-new city or town might look like.
| I do think the no-car thing would be an incredibly hard sell in
| rural Texas though. The reality is that most modern towns aren't
| self-sufficient. Maybe there's a dentist, or maybe you have to
| drive to the next town over for one. Maybe there's a used
| sporting goods store, or maybe you have to drive an hour to one
| when the kids grow out of their cleats, etc. I think something
| like this would stand a better chance if it were right outside of
| a city. Maybe an old farm in what is now the suburbs - you could
| build a dense, walkable town that also connects to the big city
| via mass transit.
| ghaff wrote:
| A 600 person town isn't remotely self-sufficient in the modern
| developed world. You could in principle build something
| walkable that, given sufficiently pleasant surroundings, some
| people would be willing to trade against walking to do most of
| their errands or hopping in a car to go anywhere.
|
| But you'd need the public transit links and I'm guessing many
| would still want to own a car on the outskirts (as in a
| college/corporate campus) and provide access of some sort for
| the disabled, etc.
| defen wrote:
| > Maybe there's a dentist, or maybe you have to drive to the
| next town over for one.
|
| As part of the plan he specifically says "save an excellent
| spot in the town center to offer at low cost to whomever
| decides to practice dentistry there"
| lastofthemojito wrote:
| Yep, that's why I included the dentist example. So maybe, if
| the town actually succeeds in attracting and retaining a
| dentist, people don't need to leave town for that service.
| But there are many other services people want or need, some
| of which won't be available locally. It's a big world out
| there, but cars have made it so much smaller. I'd imagine
| people in this town would still be constantly hopping in
| their cars to run to Costco, go on dates, take grandma to
| chemo, etc.
|
| There's a reason most car-less Americans live in NYC, DC, SF,
| etc. You can get everything you need there without a car.
| Small-town America does not offer the same and I doubt this
| idea would change that.
| taurath wrote:
| > There will be an urge to build each home optimized for air
| conditioning. Don't.
|
| In Texas. Everything sounded somewhat reasonable up to this'd
| topography non withstanding. Why not make sure to build near
| caves to store ice from the winter.
|
| And then it gets into batkeeping and eating pidgeons. When does a
| modern sustainable town end and a medieval fantasy begin.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| While Virginia is not Texas, it gets really hot and muggy in
| the summer. I lived there with no AC. On hot nights we'd sleep
| in the basement. It's definitely possible to make it in the
| south without AC.
| honksillet wrote:
| While this is an interesting exercise, it feels amateurish. Urban
| development is not a new field. Starting from a blank slate is a
| phenomenal opportunity but don't try to reinvent the wheel.
|
| Also, Texas is a big place. It spans multiple climate zones. The
| author seems to be describing West Texas but other parts of the
| state are completely different.
|
| My advice * It's hot! (And often very very humid depending on
| local. ) You need AC. * The worst part of Texas towns are 4 lane
| highways bisecting most of them. Avoid that... * But you still
| have to plan to allow people to use cars. That has to be
| incorporated into the design. As does pedestrian and cycling
| life. All need to be facilitated to some degree. * Sidewalks,
| please. I've lived in FL, OR and now TX in the past 5 years. Far
| to many residential streets in all these places completely lack
| sidewalks. It makes taking an evening stroll with the family
| stressful when you are sharing the space with cars. * Parks.
| Can't have enough of them.
| ardit33 wrote:
| He is not re-inventing the wheel, he doesn't have in mind what
| you are describing. The author is describing a typical european
| town, that you see in germany, italy, or england, (most were
| build during medieval times).
|
| You just described a typical suburban 'smart development',
| which is not dense at all by european standards, and really it
| is just like a typical strip mall area eveloved a bit, but
| still way behind.
| [deleted]
| hooplah wrote:
| He is, there's plenty of small towns in Texas inspired by
| what you see in Germany, the author just hasn't visited them.
| Texas has a massive Irish, Czech and German populations and
| culture. Dublin, TX is one of many examples (pop. 3,654).
| Like pretty much all Texas small towns it has a downtown you
| can walk end to end within 15 minutes. One main street going
| through it. Local coop and most things you need. What did I
| miss?
|
| Fredericksburg & New Braunfels have major German culture and
| German buildings from the 1800s, but they are larger cities
| now as they have expanded, but the downtown areas reflect
| what you guys want, but ya' know, connected to the world via
| roads.
|
| Most of Texas small towns have co-ops, communities of 3000
| give or take, and it's all walkable and drivable (usually one
| road going through them linking towns via backroads)
|
| Usually they are pretty self sufficient because they are
| isolated, but you still need roads to connect the outer farms
| and other towns for supplies to reach downtown, and when you
| want to travel to bigger cities for larger hospitals,
| cinemas, , family, clubs, etc. In West Texas you need it
| especially because good luck growing anything there.
|
| This author is just ignoring existing culture and trying to
| apply direct European culture ignoring the fact that
| immigrants from those cultures have already merged and
| influenced small towns across Texas.
|
| My advice, take a road trip through the backroads that
| connect Texas, you'll get a large dose of many cultures, nice
| people, great food, and massive highschool football games for
| entertainment on Friday nights.
| Nydhal wrote:
| "You need AC", "You need cars" ... I lived for 4+ years in
| Phoenix, Arizona and I tell you that humans can live without
| those two things with the right design. We're way too far into
| the modern way of thinking that we almost take these things for
| a given ... It's a huge blindspot. I grew plants here in the
| desert, I lived without AC, I never had a car and all of this
| when everything around me has been designed in what I think is
| the worst way possible ... People think in linear terms but
| forget that managing heat for example should be approached
| holistically as different element will augment each other ...
| etc. It can be done with low tech and there is research to back
| this up (look up "urban heat ASU").
| breischl wrote:
| >managing heat for example should be approached holistically
|
| Agreed. Also behaviorally. So many people would tell me I was
| crazy for living without A/C while they were standing in
| their house with the blinds open, windows closed, dishwasher
| and stove on in the middle of the day. If you make your home
| into a greenhouse with a heater in the middle, yeah it's
| gonna be hot - maybe don't do that.
|
| But I think my last phrase is the issue. People really hate
| having to not do what they want, when they want. Like not
| cooking or whatever until the cool part of the day, when the
| heat can be managed by ventilation.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| My house is well insulated, I keep the blinds on sun-facing
| windows closed during the day; I have 12' ceiling in my
| living room and I'm smart enough to not run the dishwasher
| or dryer during the day. The refrigerator I can't do
| anything about. However, I'm not crazy enough to think I
| can live without A/C in a Minnesota summer.
| JabavuAdams wrote:
| Very interesting article! The biggest problem I foresee is that
| all of this requires cooperation, community spirit, and a
| dialing-down of libertarian-fundamentalism. I don't think a
| heterogeneous group of Americans can cooperate like this anymore,
| though I'd like to be proved wrong.
| eschulz wrote:
| I can't help but imagine that Tournai and other towns during the
| late Middle Ages or early Renaissance years smelled of human
| waste, but I appreciate the lofty goal of filling modern
| communities with fresh air.
| TheBill wrote:
| Reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culdesac_Tempe Which
| seems to be making headway in getting built according to twitter.
| Ironically may drive out there this summer & check it out.
| helen___keller wrote:
| I'm very invested in urbanist discourse (which is to say, all
| things that lend themselves to less cars and more people doing
| more walking/biking/transit). That said, the fantasy of building
| a human-scale town from scratch is, unfortunately, a fantasy.
|
| The author is half correct in saying that we've forgotten how to
| build towns. It's better to say, the creation of new towns have
| become economically obsolete. Their niche is gone. Historically,
| towns formed organically around sources of value, such as
| farmland or rivers or mines or whatever, where many people making
| a living in the same region benefited from being in walking
| proximity, which enabled commerce. That concern just doesn't
| exist today, due to cars.
|
| You don't need a town with an inn when the truckers stay at
| motels and rest stops. You don't need a town square when people
| shop at the big box store on the highway and local producers are
| part of a complex global supply chain.
| thebradbain wrote:
| I would argue that, for better or worse, Marfa, TX in West
| Texas is a real manifestation of this essay. It's only a town
| of about 5000, completely walkable, and homes that were selling
| for $20k before news got out that it was a secret artist
| enclave just 10 years ago are now going for north of $1 million
| (even more eye popping when the median single family home price
| in the most expensive metro areas of the state, Austin and
| Dallas, are around $500k). Outside the town is farmland and oil
| fields. Inside the town is a collection of bars, restaurants,
| hotels, museums, and high art, all from a once-dying/repurposed
| small town on a defunct train line.
|
| "A desirable place to live / visit" is its own economic engine.
| See (also mentioned in that article) Seaside, Florida.
|
| https://www.themanual.com/culture/marfa-texas/
|
| https://www.npr.org/2012/08/02/156980469/marfa-texas-an-unli...
| nonameiguess wrote:
| Marfa is a really weird and unique place. It was originally
| famous for UFO sightings and then somehow became that artists
| enclave and achieved some sort of cult status to the point
| that it was a prevalent pre-tinder dating app meme for women
| to have pictures in front of the fake Prada storefront art
| installation there. That made it a really hip place for
| anyone who knew it, and yeah, eventually word got out and now
| it's super expensive.
|
| But I don't see how that is repeatable. Trying to build a new
| town from scratch can't realistically have the plan of UFO
| sightings and cult-status house-size art installations to get
| people to want to live there.
| pram wrote:
| Not UFO sightings, the main tourist trap was the Marfa
| lights. That was the primary draw in the 80s/90s
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marfa_lights
| helen___keller wrote:
| There are plenty of small towns that can be managed and
| organized according to the principles of the article, and
| personally I think it's a great idea. I'm referring more to
| the idea of _building_ a small town, presumably starting from
| scratch, as if you were playing Sim City or Cities: Skylines.
|
| I've never heard of Marfa but wikipedia suggests it was
| originally built around the 1880s as a Railroad Water Stop.
| The analogue today would be a "town" around a highway rest
| stop, which is generally not going to be built at human scale
| or with pre-war zoning and architecture.
|
| > "A desirable place to live / visit" is its own economic
| engine
|
| Absolutely. The major issue here is that if you're building a
| small town from scratch, it's not a desirable place to live /
| visit until it is built. And it's not "built" until you have
| several hundred people, at least, living there. But those
| people aren't going to want to build houses and live there if
| it's not a desirable place to live. It's a chicken-and-egg
| problem.
| rmah wrote:
| The only reason the houses could possibly cost that much is
| if the town is restricting new construction. I.e. the old
| guard is _making_ real estate there expensive.
| qdog wrote:
| Marfa is in the middle of nowhere, the jobs seem to be of the
| landscaper/service industry type unless you are arriving with
| money from somewhere else.
|
| Sounds more like a touristy set of rich estates at this
| point, I expect the laborers live in the surrounding area and
| drive into town just like a large city. I did some labor
| during HS and in the summer it was driving 20-40 miles from
| our small town in nowhere Texas for the jobs we did.
|
| During the early 80's oil boom there were several small towns
| in Texas that kinda looked like OP's model, but once the boom
| went to bust they started dying and never recovered. Probably
| around the Austin area in the 60's a lot of places looked
| more idyllic (there were no stoplights between downtown
| Austin and I think Lampasas at that point), but it's all
| sprawled out and become a Metropolis at this point.
|
| Not clear that any sufficiently attractive area would not end
| up being encompassed in suburbia or a high-end enclave
| (Westlake by Austin comes to mind).
| thebradbain wrote:
| Eh, I don't know about that re: Marfa demographics. There's
| certainly been tension about property values forcing some
| out of town -- but the town is still majority Hispanic
| (67%) and the median household income is $39k. It's got
| attractiveness to tourists driving up property values, but
| it is very much still a real town with real people.
|
| https://datausa.io/profile/geo/marfa-tx/
| qdog wrote:
| I mean the people paying $150,000 for a lot in Marfa
| (looking at listing on Zillow) are probably not locals
| from those $39k income households. Perversely, the way
| property taxes in Texas work, this likely means that
| anyone under 65 is watching the property taxes climb
| faster than their income, increasing pressure to sell and
| move to a cheaper property.
|
| It's a real town, but the service folks are largely
| priced out at this point (although I'd expect this real
| estate bubble might not last as there might not be that
| many people willing to buy at Austin prices in Marfa).
| pram wrote:
| Marfa is hilarious to me. I'm from west Texas and I've driven
| highway 90 dozens of times, there is literally nothing out
| there. A complete wasteland. It's painfully boring. I don't
| believe anyone buying these properties are living there year
| round.
|
| Alpine is a much more scenic town and it's just up the road.
| I'd probably buy a house there instead.
| qdog wrote:
| Yeah, just the idea of getting to Marfa hurts me to think
| about. Made the drive from El Paso to Austin a few times,
| can't imagine regularly visiting that area for pleasure or
| wanting to live there.
| klyrs wrote:
| So... a secretive group of artists could build a town, live
| there 'til the word gets out, sell at 10x the price, and move
| on to the next secret location? This sounds like a fun way to
| live.
| closeparen wrote:
| Substitute "move into a dead urban neighborhood" for "build
| a town" and you have the gentrification cycle everyone's
| been talking about for decades.
| klyrs wrote:
| Right. If you build a new art-town, it's not
| gentrification.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Marfa isn't valuable because of a secretive bunch of
| artists, it is valuable because it has been exporting real
| estate appreciation from Manhattan for over fifty years.
| Judd, the artist who brought all the wealth to Marfa,
| bought the building at 101 Spring Street for nothing and
| throughout his life borrowed against its value to acquire
| property in Texas. Today the building is worth at least
| $100 million.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Marfa is the same population as advised in this article but
| it's ten times larger.
|
| There are plenty of recent examples of development on the
| scale that this article suggests. The area just to the west
| of Warm Springs BART station in Fremont, California is 90
| acres. The New Urbanist polestar of Hercules, California is
| about 150 acres.
| thebradbain wrote:
| It's true that it's legal geographic size is ~1.5 square
| miles. However if you look at Google Maps a good 30% of it
| is just empty/undeveloped land previously (still?) owned by
| the military.
|
| So yes, it's still bigger geographically, but it still only
| takes 15-20 minutes to walk from one end to the other; I've
| visited a few times. I'm not very familiar with either
| location you mentioned, but I would say for Marfa to be 3
| hours away from the next-largest town (El Paso), have no
| commercial airport or passenger train line, and still be a
| self-sustaining walkable town is impressive.
|
| I'm possibly mistaken, but the first example you pointed
| out looks to be an apartment complex next to a train
| station within a larger city and Hercules, CA is a 20
| square mile (maybe I'm looking at the wrong city?) suburb
| of SF; I don't think those are examples of what this
| article is saying?
| jeffbee wrote:
| The New Urbanist part of Hercules is very small and easy
| to overlook. It does not hit every point that the article
| mentions, but it is an example of some of them.
|
| https://www.google.com/maps/@38.0160237,-122.2779782,3a,7
| 5y,...
| pryelluw wrote:
| I decided to browse available properties and it's ridiculous:
| https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-
| detail/307-S-Dean...
| oblio wrote:
| 0.5 baths???
| zinckiwi wrote:
| You clean your top half, then flip around and clean your
| bottom half.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| Clearly that is for the half-acre lot, but still, I bet
| those bricks are probably worth more than the house.
| Reclaimed clay bricks are a thing:
|
| https://www.reclaimedbrick.com/
| thebradbain wrote:
| Lot size is funny in Texas -- not even 2 miles away from
| that listing you can get 5 acres for less. Of course,
| then you're not "in the town"
|
| https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/Antelope-Hills-
| Rd-40-Marf...
| [deleted]
| zip1234 wrote:
| I take this more as a thought experiment on how building a town
| without the primary nuisances of 'modern' places. Cars have
| enabled many things but they are not unequivocally good. I
| understand the positives, but they produce a LOT of negative
| externalities and there is significant cost to spacing things
| further apart.
| helen___keller wrote:
| > Cars have enabled many things but they are not
| unequivocally good. I understand the positives, but they
| produce a LOT of negative externalities and there is
| significant cost to spacing things further apart.
|
| Believe me, you're preaching to the choir here. My comment is
| really just to offer a counterpoint to the justifiable desire
| to create a "new world" without the troubles of the old one -
| most people aren't shopping for new lives, so these sorts of
| plans don't emerge organically in the way that towns did
| originally. And when "start over" towns built around some
| ideological principle do arise, they often fail comically[0].
|
| [0] A fun read https://www.vox.com/policy-and-
| politics/21534416/free-state-...
| zip1234 wrote:
| That was indeed an interesting read. To be fair that sounds
| more anarchist/hippy commune than what the article today
| was about.
| helen___keller wrote:
| > To be fair that sounds more anarchist/hippy commune
| than what the article today was about
|
| To be more precise, Grafton was an attempt to "create" a
| new town governed by the ideas of Libertarianism, while
| the OP article is describing how to create a new town
| governed by the ideas of New Urbanism (roughly). The
| shared problem is that if you're founding a town on the
| basis of an ideology, you have a town full of ideologues,
| which isn't a very organic state and hence is prone to
| many unexpected issues
| nyanpasu64 wrote:
| > What they needed was a town that was small enough that
| they could come up and elbow the existing citizenry,
| someplace where land was cheap, where they could come in
| and buy up a bunch of land and kind of host their incoming
| colonists. And they wanted a place that had no zoning,
| because they wanted to be able to live in nontraditional
| housing situations and not have to go through the
| rigamarole of building or buying expensive homes or
| preexisting homes.
|
| Is this the kind of bad scenario that NIMBY activists
| organize to prevent (despite the issues created _by_ their
| zoning policies not letting people move in)?
| mulcahey wrote:
| "College Towns" are about the only non-obselete instance I can
| think of ... at least until college itself is considered
| obsolete by/for enough people.
| 7thaccount wrote:
| I really miss Ruston LA for this. Small town, but a lot on
| campus and enough within walking distance. Pretty safe.
| Pretty campus for Louisiana and it's actually walkable unlike
| LSU, which is an absolute nightmare.
| handmodel wrote:
| The other example is towns on lakes/oceans by some tourist
| attraction. You need a variety of people to work all the
| hotels/rentals/building etc. Like college towns - you also
| have a good percent of people who can pay a lot in taxes +
| consume a lot of services to benefit the whole towns.
|
| I think as income has become more concentrated in certain
| industries it hurts. Even if your agricultural town had very
| little poor people - if is has virtually no one making about
| 70k then it is going to be tricky to build and maintain.
| andrewnicolalde wrote:
| Could that be because not as many people have cars?
| ghaff wrote:
| There are still plenty of cars around college campuses and
| parking is a perpetual issue. Certainly faculty and staff
| (and some students) drive in and park daily. And even a
| town built around a relatively small college like Hanover
| NH still has a population of over 10K people.
|
| ADDED: But, as others have noted, once you drive somewhere
| at least relatively close to where you're going, at least
| small to mid-sized campuses and associated towns are
| generally designed to let you walk to
| stores/restaurants/etc. fairly easily.
| simpixelated wrote:
| That's probably part of it, but I think the root is that a
| college campus is designed for people to use it without
| cars. Food, stores, classrooms, places to sit and meet are
| all built in and connected via walkways. Cars become
| unnecessary once you get to campus
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| That's likely a consideration, as are the concentrated
| sources of value that are classrooms and labs with face-to-
| face instruction, as well as interaction (both social and
| educational) among students. Online education is reducing
| the edge of the former, though the latter is still hard to
| replicate outside of a college town.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| A college campus is its own sustainable self-perpetuating
| institution. Or at least has been for much of the past
| century in the US (and elsewhere) as 1) an increasingly
| technological world has increased the need for an educated
| populace and 2) funding for college education has been
| readily available.
|
| You've _also_ got a town structure which is based on a
| single identifiable economic centre, which _doesn 't_
| generally rely on heavy industry or ag within that centre
| (information, knowledge, and people, as well as the support
| strucutures for them), and so your principle transportation
| problem is how to move a fair-to-middlin' mostly younger
| and healthier population around. Bikes and walking fit this
| mode well, the small population of elderly and disabled can
| be accomodated as edge cases.
|
| Keep in mind that in many small college towns, there's
| _still_ a sizable commuter population. Some of that are
| students priced out of local housing, though the workforce
| is a much larger component, and may have commute patterns
| comparable to that of a large city (driving in from an hour
| or more away). The centralised nature of employment makes
| even rural mass transit or commuter shuttles viable.
| nradov wrote:
| Disney built a human-scale "town" from scratch as Celebration,
| Florida. Some people seem to like it. The basic formula could
| probably be repeated elsewhere.
| adolph wrote:
| Another is Seaside Florida.
|
| _Seaside is an unincorporated master-planned community on
| the Florida Panhandle in Walton County, between Panama City
| Beach and Destin.[2] One of the first communities in America
| designed on the principles of New Urbanism, the town has
| become the topic of slide lectures in architectural schools
| and in housing-industry magazines, and is visited by design
| professionals from all over the United States. The town rose
| to global fame as being the main filming location of the
| movie The Truman Show. On April 18, 2012, the American
| Institute of Architects 's Florida Chapter placed the
| community on its list of Florida Architecture: 100 Years. 100
| Places as the Seaside - New Urbanism Township._
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seaside%2C_Florida
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Truman_Show
| taurath wrote:
| Strangest bit of trivia is that the Truman Show was filmed
| there, and the house that the titular character lived in is
| owned by Matt Gaetz, the extreme right wing congressperson
| under investigation for sex trafficking.
| swiley wrote:
| I live in an artificial town that was constructed 10 or so
| years ago near a light rail station to the larger city to the
| north (and other similar "towns") so it's totally doable, it's
| just not for everyone.
| helen___keller wrote:
| I'd love to read more about it. My impression is that this
| sort of "greenfield" doesn't exist because most established
| cities have surrounded themselves with low density suburbs.
| What's the name of the town/region?
| dvdkon wrote:
| Vienna's Seestadt Aspern fits that description and seems to
| me like a very good attempt at building a "new town" with
| its own centre and infrastructure.
|
| It's only a short train ride away from Vienna's center, but
| so are many other small towns and those are decidedly
| separate.
| swiley wrote:
| I'm actually posting from Reston Town center but yeah
| there are lots of examples around here.
| jppope wrote:
| I'd have to argue against the notion that towns/ European style
| cities are "economically obsolete". Yes, they are virtually
| impossible to build from scratch at the moment (zoning,
| building codes, developers, etc), but the economic value of
| walkable cities has never been higher. If you cross reference
| walkscore against our metropolitan areas in the US walkable
| cities (that are in warm climates) are our most valuable real
| estate... not to mention that they are the location for most of
| our companies participating in the "information economy"
| (military-industrial complex aside).
|
| Basically most Americans want to live in a walkable city with
| charm and community, but the way we built America post 1950
| makes it very difficult.
| helen___keller wrote:
| Just to be clear: existing towns are not economically
| obsolete. The economic conditions that led to the founding of
| small towns no longer exist, and in this sense the idea of
| "building a new small town" is obsolete (with some
| exceptions: eccentric millionaire building a planned
| community, an ideological sect with hundreds of people
| willing to uproot their lives to build somewhere that is not
| yet livable, "theme park" style for-profit destination towns
| like your disneylands or The Villages in Florida).
|
| This isn't a matter of zoning, building codes and developers
| (thats mostly a problem for existing towns/cities), this is a
| matter of economics. It takes impetus to create a new
| town/city, and in the modern economy that impetus almost
| always involves automobiles.
|
| Edit: updated my wording in the above post to make clear that
| existing towns aren't obsolete, just the creation of new ones
| sjg007 wrote:
| I live in a thriving small town.
| judge2020 wrote:
| This was basically Walt Disney's idea of E.P.C.O.T. before
| his passing, and specifically focused on commuting via
| 'peoplemovers' and walking instead of cars.
| https://youtu.be/tKYEXjMlKKQ
| majormajor wrote:
| > If you cross reference walkscore against our metropolitan
| areas in the US walkable cities (that are in warm climates)
| are our most valuable real estate... not to mention that they
| are the location for most of our companies participating in
| the "information economy" (military-industrial complex
| aside).
|
| > Basically most Americans want to live in a walkable city
| with charm and community, but the way we built America post
| 1950 makes it very difficult.
|
| How do you know that this means Americans want to live in
| that style, versus that high concentration fosters today's
| thriving companies and job markets, and so the people follow
| the jobs at the expense of cheaper and more desirable
| housing? Single family homes reduce walkability for everyone
| else, but are more valuable than a condo next door in those
| thriving American cities. The ultimate desire is to have your
| cake and eat it too.
|
| And that economic value and company presence aspect argues
| against forming new small towns - the $$$ shows that all the
| desire and demand is in bigger metro areas, right now.
| bserge wrote:
| It's pretty funny how "people follow the jobs" and on the
| employer side "business follows the people". Hence the
| modern city hellscapes.
| yodelshady wrote:
| I live in a UK town a hundred times that size, and still have
| reasonable access to proper green space. This does require:
|
| -modern multi-storey buildings; -public transit. Which requires
| similar infra to cars.
|
| Economically, a town this size supports a train station to
| other towns, which is... _huge_. I 've gone to after-work
| drinks in a different, similar-sized town. So has my partner.
|
| And environmentally, there's no real objection to building up a
| bit (it might be a net positive, by shoring up aforementioned
| train station). Adding a whole new town anywhere in the region
| would be a nightmare. And frankly, for all the current
| (deserved) bad press on flats and the romanticism of single-
| family homes, an awful lot of the latter are _terrible_.
| Leaking, creaking, cold, subsiding, dangerous wiring and
| something else rhyming.
|
| I'm not meaningfully further from nature, either.
| williamsmj wrote:
| Fun fact: you need not just a town, but a legally incorporated
| city, if you want a liquor store. A trailer park with a
| population of 188 is the densest incorporated city in Texas
| (and one of the 100 densest cities in America) for precisely
| this reason:
| https://twitter.com/DanKeshet/status/1350633707036663809,
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_City,_Texas.
| ghaff wrote:
| Something like Wengen in Switzerland is probably about as close
| as you get to something like this:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wengen
|
| But obviously a mountain resort town has to be somewhere that
| outsiders want to vacation in and everyone who lives there is
| either in or supporting in some way the tourist industry.
| analyte123 wrote:
| > The newest building on the block should look like the oldest.
| In the case of Texas, this means the town will be built to a
| Mission, Spanish-colonial, or German-colonial style
|
| Pretty amusing to leave whatever the correct word for "Anglo-
| American-colonial" is out of this list.
|
| > It should look like it was founded and laid down in 1667 or
| 1746, not 2022.
|
| Large parts of West Texas were not settled until after the Civil
| War (with gridded streets of course), making "historical
| authenticity" a bit of a challenge. But building a "new" horse-
| compatible late 19th century Texas town with wide streets and big
| lots would be hard enough already, so I definitely respect the
| gusto here.
| finiteseries wrote:
| Is there an Anglo-American colonial style in Texas outside
| maybe Galveston? Genuinely interested and would love to visit
| any remnants we still have.
|
| Empresarios and land grants seem to have led to different
| settlement patterns at the start for the Anglos than the rigid
| early Spanish or hilariously insular hill country Germans.
|
| "Spanish colonists came organized once the missions and
| presidios were already built, Anglos posted up stick houses by
| themselves on land they ostensibly owned and tried not to get
| slaughtered by comanche" is the vibe I usually get.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Keep in mind this is a hypothetical scenario in response to a
| real question from real people, so when the author talks about
| the arid climate of Texas, they may know exactly where the real
| estate in question is while not wanting to reveal it.
|
| It's kind of a mix of general ideas floating around urbanist
| circles and specific suggestions for this question asked of them
| with specific proposed parameters. In some cases, I can kind of
| see the logic and see that it was just not really explained. In
| other cases, I think it's basically fantasy, as a lot of such
| proposals tend to be.
|
| Some of the talking points are rooted in the reality that water
| is a big issue in the world and getting worse, climate change is
| a big issue, there was a really major power outage in Texas not
| hugely long ago, some of our global problems are rooted in being
| too car dependent and too dependent on food imports, etc.
|
| The actual situation: Four guys have purchased real estate
| somewhere in Texas and want to build a town. This piece likely
| will fail to serve them well as a recipe for developing a town.
|
| "Build it and they will come" has a long history of failing.
| _Planned towns_ have a long history of failing. See Fordlandia
| and California City as historic examples of planned cities that
| failed.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fordl%C3%A2ndia
|
| https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/california-city-unbuilt-...
|
| A notable exception to this general rule is the unincorporated
| community of Hershey, Pennsylvania which was built as a company
| town to provide homes and amenities for workers at the Hershey
| factory that was built there, iirc. It currently has about 14k
| residents.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hershey,_Pennsylvania
|
| This is Texas and the author seems to not know much about the
| state. It has a lot of quirks that set it apart from other
| states.
|
| You don't need a public school system for your planned community.
| Texas has the most liberal homeschooling laws of any state. If I
| were a paid consultant working on this town, I would put together
| some information on online education, homeschooling, where the
| nearest physical college is, etc. I would target childless
| couples, retirees, etc and make it clear that "if you have
| children, you should plan to homeschool and here are some
| resources to help support that."
|
| I would target remote workers and make sure the town had
| excellent internet. This would be a hack to get around the fact
| that the real estate these four guys bought was probably not
| bought with an economic purpose in mind -- eg the development of
| a local mine. Towns tends to spring up where geography fosters
| economic development and the modern world can get around some of
| the historic constraints that forced towns into specific locales,
| but no one can get around the need for the town to be
| economically sustainable. If you want a real town to happen here,
| you need to answer the question of "How will people support
| themselves?" and you have three basic options: It's a retirement
| community or enclave of independently wealthy jet setters bored
| with jet setting for some reason; you can develop a local
| business there that somehow is related to that physical place
| because of the resources that exist there; you can plan for
| remote workers as your hack for not defaulting to trying to
| attract people so rich they can live anywhere (so why would they
| live there?) or developing a significant business on the ground
| to attract workers to live in the town.
|
| Even in dry West Texas, average rainfall is plenty adequate to
| support off-grid, self-sustaining homes if that's your thing, eg
| Earth Ships, which can work with as little as 10 inches of
| rainfall annually.
|
| This piece is correct that reducing the energy load for some of
| the big things, like heating and cooling, is an essential first
| step in designing a community that has energy independence and
| energy security. Passive Solar design can go a long way, even in
| West Texas weather, towards reducing energy needs while keeping
| people comfortable. You could readily borrow ideas from Middle
| Eastern desert cultures as well, a source of wisdom largely
| overlooked these days.
|
| Local character is not something you need to inject. It's
| something you need to allow. Historically, it was rooted in
| vernacular architecture and that is generally speaking local
| building styles made with local materials and designed to
| accommodate local weather.
|
| Articles like this typically focus on the built environment. This
| article tries to tell you how to build a town and there are
| cities across China and in other places that are modern ghost
| towns because someone with money and power built the buildings
| and the people never showed up, or at least not in large enough
| numbers. It may not be completely empty, but there are multiple
| cities today where they built it and the people did not come.
|
| A real town is a place where people live and articles of this
| sort almost never address the question of "Why would anyone move
| there? Who do you want to attract and how will you get them
| there?"
|
| And you would, really, need to sit down with the four men who
| bought this real estate and have a serious heart-to-heart with
| them about what kind of people they are, what activities they
| like, what kind of people do they like to hang with, how do they
| live their lives and what kind of social connections they
| currently have. This is not being addressed in this piece and the
| author seems unlikely to address it.
|
| Placemaking is not just about the physical place. It's about the
| people who live there as well and the biggest challenge a planned
| town has is "How do you get people to move there? Why would they
| want to?" It's a question that tends to be given short shrift
| while people imagine some perfect built environment that lacks
| all the things they find aggravating in the world today and then
| don't think about the actual purpose of built environments, which
| is to serve the needs of the local population.
|
| It was an interesting read with a lot of familiar ideas, but it's
| not very grounded. This is not a recipe for these four people to
| start a town. It's a thought experiment for the entertainment of
| the author, basically, which is fine but don't get confused. This
| is not a real recipe for how to develop a real town.
|
| Edit: The footnote says part 2 will address the question of
| People. (crosses fingers)
|
| Edit 2: I will add if the place gets big enough, sure, public
| school is a good thing to have and may be a necessity. But this
| piece is essentially aimed at attracting the first 100 residents
| and I think for that purpose, you don't need a school system nor
| any real plans to create one.
| chomp wrote:
| They keep saying things like "arid, parched" which leads me to
| believe they are looking at land in West Texas (it is very cheap
| land). These things do not apply to South East Texas, which is
| mostly subtropical. However, even in the South East we've had
| issues with subsidence due to over pumping (which we've mostly
| weaned off from), so the point of being self sustaining on
| surface water still applies.
|
| East Texas has a huge logging and tree farming industry, so if
| you're building in East Texas, you'll probably want to leverage
| the natural resources; rammed earth doesn't quite make sense
| there.
|
| Also, and this is my personal opinion, I do not believe it is
| possible to create a successful, large town without vehicles or
| air conditioning here, it isn't practical, and it isn't in the
| culture. If you look at the history of success of Texas towns,
| many further West and South/South East did not become successful
| until the advent of the vehicle and the air conditioner. The idea
| of lugging groceries for even a 150m walk in this weather sounds
| miserable. I recommend the author looks more local to find out
| what makes Texas towns tick rather than global, because while
| there's great ideas from around the world that could be imported,
| you shouldn't discount the local maxima.
| psychometry wrote:
| The usual attitude of regressive red-state governments towards
| cities pursuing left-leaning ideas (raising the local minimum
| wage, relaxing zoning, building municipal broadband
| infrastructure, etc.) is to make it illegal for cities to do
| those things. So I find it odd that Texas is the location for
| this thought experiment. If these plans were put into action,
| the state of TX would probably pass laws and regulations
| requiring things like minimum amounts of street parking.
| thebradbain wrote:
| It's true that the right-leaning government will override
| local control when it comes to most controversial issues in
| the blue cities, but when it comes to land use, Texas leaves
| cities alone. I grew up in Dallas, now own a home in Los
| Angeles. Aside from the local zoning ordinances (Dallas is
| "zoned", but compared to Los Angeles, no it's not; and
| Houston doesn't have any formal zoning at all), California
| has _way_ more state-level codes than Texas when it comes to
| land development.
|
| Also, I would argue that, for better or worse, Marfa, TX in
| West Texas is a real manifestation of this essay. It's only a
| town of about 5000, completely walkable, and homes that were
| selling for $20k when news got out it was a secret artist
| enclave just 10 years ago are now going for north of $1
| million. And, to assuage your concern: yes, it's blue (not
| enough to turn the rest of the rural county blue, but close
| enough to make the vote of the county 48% Biden - 52% Trump,
| almost exactly mirroring the overall result in the state).
| Marfa even disbanded its entire police department in 2009,
| and the red state government still left it alone.
|
| https://www.themanual.com/culture/marfa-texas/
|
| https://www.npr.org/2012/08/02/156980469/marfa-texas-an-
| unli...
| hindsightbias wrote:
| As long as it had a gun range and shop, they'd probably let
| it pass on cars.
|
| Could sell it as an old west town, horses allowed. Maybe wild
| west recreations on weekends for tourists.
| chomp wrote:
| I mean, Texas is home to the largest unzoned city in the
| country. It's also the most successful red state in the
| country, so it's favorable amongst some groups, especially
| those with business leanings. I don't think they'd enforce
| parking minimums, but we do have municipal broadband
| restrictions.
|
| As a resident, I also found it an odd choice. I'd build an
| experiment city (especially one that wants to be walkable
| with less reliance on a/c) somewhere with more amenable
| weather. Water is also more of an issue. West Texas land
| isn't just cheap because it's flat and brown, it also is a
| crapshoot if your wells pull up brine vs fresh water, or if
| you have to dig absurdly deep wells that you have to replace
| every 5 years.
| jeffbee wrote:
| West Texas has some kind of fatal attraction for a certain
| type of person, like the Ron Paul followers who tried to
| establish Paulville in Hudspeth County. Wrath of Gnon, much
| as I enjoy certain of their tweets, has that "reject
| modernity, embrace tradition" vibe that is also very
| closely aligned in several dimensions with libertarians and
| separatists. Compound that with the fact that land in most
| parts of far west Texas is incredibly cheap (because it is
| useless) and you can see how people fall into that trap.
|
| I think people should just remember that if they see some
| incredibly cheap Texas land advertised for sale online, it
| was probably used at some point to spread New Jersey sewage
| imported by rail.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/1998/09/02/us/for-some-texas-town-
| is...
| taurath wrote:
| I consider it the "western frontier" type person, and it
| goes thru Texas, Utah, Nevada and up to Idaho the Dakotas
| and Montana, with smatterings of eastern Washington,
| Oregon and California. Which makes some sense just from a
| hereditary standpoint since much of it's only been
| started to get settled (by non natives) for a hundred
| years. Nomadland as a movie does a good job of getting
| the mood right.
| bertmuthalaly wrote:
| A 150m walk on a bald Texas street does indeed sound miserable.
|
| A tree-lined one, though, can be quite nice:
| https://twitter.com/brent_bellamy/status/1411133447062441990
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Yes, it's definitely better, but like all of these zero-
| energy "alternatives" to air conditioning, it feels like a
| 20% substitute being sold as an 80% substitute.
| [deleted]
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| How is this an alternative to air conditioning? It's an
| idea to make being outside in the heat mor bearable, not
| inside. Good shade provides more like an alternative to
| depending on a car to get around on hot days.
| coryrc wrote:
| I'm more comfortable walking through Marrakech's old town
| at 35degC than the sidewalk next to an asphalt road in
| Seattle at 25degC.
| hindsightbias wrote:
| Villages in Spain and elsewhere use light wall colors, roof
| overhangs and narrow streets/walkways to keep paths shaded and
| cool. Also can orient for wind. Can make it a bit more
| manageable. For really oppressive days, you put low flow
| misters along paths.
|
| In a village, you don't go to HEB once every two weeks and get
| $400 in groceries. You walk to the market every day or two and
| shop. One tote bag. You send the kid to the butcher, fishmonger
| or for something you forgot. Completely different from
| sub/exurb lifestyle.
|
| Smaller hand trucks/carts would also be a norm, very common to
| see those in Europe with the elderly, delivery or tradesfolks.
|
| One aspect of the covid era was that many stopped walking to
| urban stores every day and made it a weekly thing or got
| delivieries. Kind of eye opening to see a city like SF return
| to crowded markets.
| sbierwagen wrote:
| >Villages in Spain and elsewhere use light wall colors, roof
| overhangs and narrow streets/walkways to keep paths shaded
| and cool.
|
| Spain also had 12,963 excess deaths in the 2003 heatwave.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_European_heat_wave#Spain
|
| You can absolutely have a city without air conditioning.
| Humans have done it for thousands of years. The well-known
| tradeoff is that you are going to lose some elderly people
| during the summer.
| olah_1 wrote:
| What is especially exciting about the idea, is the opportunity to
| incorporate modern internet into the town from the start.
|
| The article mentions solar panels and wifi technicians.
| Naturally, the town would be equipped with a kind of mesh net for
| local communication in cases of outages, etc.
|
| But also, the town librarian could maintain something like
| community resources hosted on the mesh network. Design documents,
| etc.
|
| Of course, the town would provide a Pleroma or Matrix server to
| all residents too :)
| wyager wrote:
| Mesh networks don't actually scale well compared to traditional
| fiber topologies. If you have the opportunity to bury fiber
| from the get-go, that's a much better option for most
| optimization criteria (latency & bandwidth, for starters).
| dontbeabill wrote:
| maybe instead of hipster dotcom moving everywhere in hoards, they
| could just use their smug talents, intelligence and rsu wealth to
| start building their own towns?
|
| i mean, how many googlers and facebook engineers would it take to
| build a small, cool, hip town, with $20 grilled cheese and
| artisan everything?
| lifefeed wrote:
| This reads the second-system effect applied to urban planning,
| which is a field that does not lack for ego-driven projects of
| planning-over-natural-growth. (e.g. Seeing Like A State, and the
| career of Robert Moses.)
|
| I don't know whether to be relieved or disappointed that we'll
| never learn all the fun, new problems that his grand plan would
| introduce.
| Schweigi wrote:
| Does anyone have insights on the legal part of creating a town?
| The articles doesn't seem to address that. Would one just start
| with un-incorperated land? Buy land from an existing city and try
| to split it off?
|
| Are there any legal requirements from the State of Texas which
| need to be followed?
| jppope wrote:
| Seaside, Florida is an example of building at "human scale" in
| the states
| midhhhthrow wrote:
| I like the idea of starting a new town, something that's in great
| need with so many cities oberpopulating
|
| Why no AC? He says they can't produce enough power. But all it
| takes is one powerwall and 4K or 8k solar panel per house.
| whatshisface wrote:
| I think the author is an urban professional dreaming about
| people doing what he never has in a place he's never lived.
|
| There's nothing wrong with doing that, although if you really
| wanted to design a realistically successful small town, you'd
| start by asking "where will we put the chemical plant/oil
| refinery/paper mill?"
| ghaff wrote:
| And 600 people. (Supposedly growing to 3000.) I doubt you
| support a school system with 600 people unless it's some
| communal everyone pitches in sort of thing. You're not going
| to support much in the way of stores--which I suppose can be
| built along the outside of the town. And you're not going to
| supply the town, get people to doctors, have emergency
| services, etc. without some degree of car access. The fire
| department isn't going to arrive by train. And I assume most
| people will be working remotely?
| lastofthemojito wrote:
| I cringe thinking about the dating pool in an isolated
| community of 600 people. Just one more reason this sort of
| experiment might accidentally push people to their cars
| instead of away from them.
| zip1234 wrote:
| I didn't read this as 'completely isolated community'--
| the author writes about a rail station. Also if it is as
| idyllic as described it would be swamped by tourists.
| wyager wrote:
| 600 people is a larger social group than most humans have
| had for our species' entire existence. No, app-based
| hookups won't work well in this environment. So what?
| valarauko wrote:
| As a queer person of color, I have enough trouble dating
| in larger cities.
| wyager wrote:
| Ok, so don't live in a small town. Not every conceivable
| urban plan will work for everyone.
| valarauko wrote:
| I don't intend to. I'm simply highlighting the point that
| dating in a smaller pool is a lot harder for some people
| in ways that may not be immediately apparent.
| lastofthemojito wrote:
| That may be true, I don't really know. I tend to make my
| choices based on what's available to me currently, rather
| than the standards of the past. Even if a nice tent is
| better shelter than most humans have had for our species'
| entire existence, I'm still going to choose to live in a
| house.
| wyager wrote:
| Creating a K-12 for like 100-600 kids seems pretty feasible
| to me. If for some reason that didn't work, I'm not going
| to mourn the loss of modern industrial schools.
| ghaff wrote:
| That's 600 total population.
|
| My town has something like K-8 with a 7K population and
| has a regional system with 2 other towns for high school.
| And that's about 60-70% of our property tax spend.
| wyager wrote:
| The target is 3k people. 20% in k-12 is what I roughly
| expect for this sort of community.
|
| I went to a few K-12s with fewer than 400 people. They
| were great.
|
| American public schools are notoriously inefficient.
| Spending tons of property tax revenue is not _necessary_
| , just politically challenging to undo. You might be able
| to pull it off in a project like this. Or just say there
| are no public schools and outsource education to
| parochial schools or something. It doesn't really matter
| - education has minimal impact on life outcomes until
| high school/college. It would not be my first concern
| with this kind of experiment.
| IncRnd wrote:
| With 600 people paying $1,000 in taxes per month, the city
| would only net $7 million/year. This is less a plan and
| more a pipe dream.
|
| Cities are built where there are demands for cities to be
| built. They grow around nexus points of travel, gold
| rushes, or other places that invite entrepreneurs to build
| them.
|
| Entrepreneurs might create the need for the city, but there
| has to be some means of sustenance for the city not to
| become what is called a "Ghost Town".
| wyager wrote:
| There's certainly demand for living in a place like this.
| IncRnd wrote:
| Then, lets look back in a year and see whether this city
| had been created.
| ipaddr wrote:
| 7 million a year can hire a doctor, and a variety of
| other services.
| ghaff wrote:
| Modern medicine isn't "a" doctor. You're going to
| Houston, Dallas, or Austin for more than a casual annual
| physical.
| IncRnd wrote:
| I think if you were to create a city budget of
| infrastructure, emergency services, courts, and so forth
| you would run out of money before your list of unfunded
| services got completed.
|
| Of course, people who stick-with-it can get anything
| done. The village I live in has a budget of $48 million,
| so it is possible $7 million would be enough (after
| taxing everyone 1k/month). Let's look back on this in a
| year.
| justusthane wrote:
| Maybe it was edited after it was posted, but it doesn't say no
| AC--it said the town should be designed to function without AC
| in case of power outages and use as much passive cooling as
| possible, but that AC can be added in as needed.
| freeone3000 wrote:
| So, constantly. It's Texas. 40C summers are normal. The state
| was sparsely populated, even by 19th century standards, until
| air conditioning became a common fixture. It's a necessity.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| In _west_ Texas, assuming you have access to water (by no
| means a guarantee), the option for water-based cooling
| (evaporative or indirect cooling) is present. "Swamp
| coolers" have a deservedly bad rap in humid climates,
| they're far more tolerable in dry ones.
|
| Forms of evaporative + stored thermal mass cooling (rooftop
| sprinkler systems, perhaps combined with a rooftop garden
| and an underground irrigation + cooling mass water system)
| could provide the basis for an indirect cooling system that
| isn't reliant on electrical power, though it would still
| have fairly high evaporative losses.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Cities and towns exist largely as economic, occasionally cultural
| or educational totems. Lacking a fundamental economic basis will
| doom any planned city.
|
| There's a history of "intentional communities". Many are thought
| of as utopian communities, and as largely (though not entirely)
| failed, though this misses some notable successes lurcking in
| plain view. There are a number of successful intentional
| community models.
|
| The first is religious communities which _have_ sustained
| themselves. In the US, notably Menonite, Amish, and Mormon
| communities, though there are numerous others. In the case of the
| Mormons, the community is the size of a state (and strongly
| influences most of its neighbours).
|
| The second is the college town. For the past century colleges and
| universities, even comparably small ones, have proved robust
| self-perpetuating instutions, as both demand for an educated
| population and funding for education (and research, and sport)
| have been generous. That tide may be shifting, along with a
| potential trend to decentralised or remote education, though I
| suspect it's got life in it yet.
|
| Several commercial motivations have proved workable at least in
| instances, notably tourist, retirement, vacation, and (as noted,
| viz Marfa, TX), art colonies. Odds may be longer here, though
| opportunities also more numerous. The key problem is that fads
| and fashions are fickle. Retirement populations, as with college
| students, tend to move on after a few years, if to different
| prospects. Many of the advantages of a student population: youth,
| health, vitality, openness to experience, credulity, are lacking
| in the older set.
|
| Government projects are another option, with some outposts (Los
| Alamos National Laboratory and its impact on Santa Fe, NM,
| Macdonald Observatory and Ft. Davis, TX, Cape Canaveral and the
| Florida coast) having a profound local impact.
|
| Otherwise, a town is generally reliant on what's at hand for
| economic initiative. In what I presume is West Texas, that's some
| highway travel, a current boomlette of oil and gas activity,
| cattle ranching, a few notable cultural outposts, and some degree
| of border activity. There's also wind and solar development in
| the area (there's a notable solar technician training centre
| across the stateline near Clovis, NM), as well as possible other
| activity I'm unaware.
|
| But lacking that, "build it and they will come" seems rather
| unlikely. The remaining possibility is that the vision Wrath Of
| Gnon espouses will appeal to the specific niche they hope to
| attract, in which case there is limited likelihood of success.
|
| That said: expressing the plan in terms of goal, economic basis,
| architecture, and design principles would help. The economic base
| element is conspicuously missing.
|
| Regulatory, governance, and conflict-resolution elements should
| also be explored.
| zip1234 wrote:
| A refreshing read. Most 'modern' towns are loud mainly because of
| vehicles and lawn care. It is interesting to think about a town
| built around not needing those things.
| rel2thr wrote:
| Aren't new towns and villages built all the time? Definitely not
| with all the aesthetics this author is looking for, but not fair
| to say we as a society have forgotten how to do this.
|
| I can think of several examples in Texas, the mueller
| neighborhood in austin. Steiner ranch outside of austin ( built
| on an old ranch ) . The woodlands outside of Houston built up in
| the 80s and 90s by an oil baron
| rgrieselhuber wrote:
| I think we're going to see a rise in private towns.
| IncRnd wrote:
| Most towns get started that way.
| davidw wrote:
| Some of these "traditional European architecture" accounts have a
| darker side to them: https://www.newstatesman.com/science-
| tech/social-media/2018/...
| akarma wrote:
| This is quite a bit of misinformation. From the article:
|
| > The account has also shown a preference for cultural
| conservatives in its "likes", which these include ... Roger
| Scruton, a man known for making a career out of his prejudice;
| and Leon Krier, a disciple of Hitler's chief architect Albert
| Speer.
|
| Roger Scruton was knighted for his contributions to public
| education [0] and helped establish an underground academic
| network in Soviet-occupied Europe. He was also one of the best
| contributors to the New Statesman which I suppose is now
| cancelling him?
|
| Leon Krier was in no way a disciple of Albert Speer. Speer's
| only mentioned in the footnotes of Krier's Wikipedia article
| [1] because Krier wrote a book about Speer where he asked, "Can
| a war criminal be a great artist?" [2]
|
| It seems that the problem to this writer is conservatism as a
| whole, and _of course_ these accounts are conservative! The
| whole point of the Twitter accounts is pro-conservation!
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Scruton [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9on_Krier [2]
| https://www.monacellipress.com/book/albert-speer/
| siavosh wrote:
| A couple years ago during a period of existential levity, I
| thought to myself: what's the most ambitious thing I could do
| with my life? The idea of creating a city for some reason popped
| into my head. Perhaps it was born out of my frustrations with
| finding affordable housing and the obsolete nature of the work
| commute (prescient pre-covid), that I started a blog and started
| reading about urban economics and sharing some thoughts and notes
| etc.
|
| Of course going through the process of trying to get a permit for
| a small home remodel will destroy any enthusiasm one would have
| to work with any bureaucracy made me quickly forget of the
| ambition. During that brief period though, I did learn about
| different efforts out there (some now defunct, ex Google's) of
| re-imaging the modern city. I do hope some desolate plots of land
| now become economically viable post-covid and become experimental
| zones for new ideas and small communities.
| _Microft wrote:
| "Wrath of Gnon" is also on Twitter. Their tweets are a welcome
| change in a mostly tech-themed Twitter feed.
|
| https://twitter.com/wrathofgnon/
| jppope wrote:
| Wrath of Gnon is one of my favorites.
| eastbayjake wrote:
| This was an interesting thought experiment, but required some
| mental gymnastics to go along with the premise that the town
| should be entirely self-sufficient. (Especially trying to grow
| all of your community's food in West Texas!) But to the extent
| I'm interested in how you would build a _community_ more than how
| you 'd build a _town_ , there are some interesting thoughts here
| about how you'd go about an intentional community if you didn't
| mind some reliance on modern industrial society (which is also
| true of the Amish farmers the author touts throughout)
| hollerith wrote:
| >all homes will be equipped with fireplaces, wood stoves and
| chimneys.
|
| Great: the burning of solid fuels (coal in the past, but nowadays
| mostly wood at least in the US) is the source of one of the most
| damaging forms of pollution (particulate) these years, which is
| the reason that for example fireplaces and wood stoves have been
| banned in new construction in the Bay Area since 2005.
| wyager wrote:
| Probably not a problem with only a few thousand people. You
| could also require catalytic stoves or some other kind of stove
| with lower particulate emissions.
| hollerith wrote:
| I regularly find a single household burning wood to be
| obnoxious to me in certain atmospheric conditions (which are
| present about .6 of the time in my part of the Bay Area).
|
| Vehicles in countries with good air quality simply avoid
| producing carbon-rich particles (the kind of pollution
| produced by burning wood or coal) in the first place: their
| catalytic converters are for other types of pollution
| (gases).
| breischl wrote:
| I did find it weird to assert that you can't use wood for
| construction materials because it wouldn't fit, but then
| require it for fuel. If you can't find enough wood to build out
| of, then it seems even harder to find enough to cook & heat
| with, even in a relatively warm climate like Texas.
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