[HN Gopher] Plans for a new city in the American desert
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Plans for a new city in the American desert
Author : daegloe
Score : 74 points
Date : 2021-09-06 15:17 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cnn.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cnn.com)
| boulos wrote:
| The auto caps for the title transformed BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group)
| => Big. But I think I'd also replace this archdaily post with the
| direct https://cityoftelosa.com/ .
| mastax wrote:
| Looks like that ridiculous city the Saudi Crown Prince is
| building. The difference is he has money to burn. Good luck
| finding investors for this.
| aero-glide2 wrote:
| New city in desert reminded me of Neom, not quite sure what
| happened to it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neom
| Animats wrote:
| Oh, no, he's been reading Henry George. Check out Fairhope,
| Alabama, which has George's single land tax system. "Everybody
| Works but the Vacant Lot".
|
| What are the big skeletal towers with a few plants hung on them
| supposed to do?
| larsiusprime wrote:
| Fairhope has experienced quite a bit of mission drift from it's
| original plan.
|
| A better example would be Houston in 1911:
| https://twitter.com/larsiusprime/status/1427107150053183505
|
| Or if you want a really good and thorough modern empirical
| study on the effects of land value tax, this paper from Denmark
| from 2017: https://www.zbw.eu/econis-
| archiv/bitstream/11159/1082/1/arbe...
| mrfusion wrote:
| What if we make an entire city in one giant building?
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| Ahw! Looksie! Iz got rainbows!
|
| [1]
| https://web.archive.org/web/20120825041721/http://www.shimz....
| spoonjim wrote:
| Why put this in the desert if you don't need proximity to
| anywhere? Why not in a place that has abundant water?
| DenverCode wrote:
| >purportedly drought-resistant water system
|
| I'd love to know more about this.
| avaldes wrote:
| Stillsuits obviously, so you won't lose more than a thimbleful
| of moisture a day
| TYPE_FASTER wrote:
| That was my first thought as well.
|
| Especially as we are continually learning more about our
| ability to estimate how much water is available to us:
|
| https://www.kuer.org/health-science-environment/2021-02-09/m...
| [deleted]
| pcurve wrote:
| "The cleanliness of Tokyo, the diversity of New York and the
| social services of Stockholm: Billionaire Marc Lore has outlined
| his vision for a 5-million-person "new city in America" and
| appointed a world-famous architect to design it"
|
| "The mission of Telosa is to create a more equitable and
| sustainable future. That's our North Star."
|
| I admire their ambition, but they are underestimating people's
| preference for inequity as long as they're on the right side of
| the graph. I don't know if they're asking the right questions and
| solving for the right problems... their web site hasn't moved
| beyond vaporware phase. https://cityoftelosa.com/
| Ekaros wrote:
| As someone living in small town on world scale. I wonder if
| even trying to aim at 5 million is doing things wrong... Might
| it be that real sweet spot is somewhere lower than that?
| mistrial9 wrote:
| > .. appointed a world-famous architect to design it"
|
| LOL - this is ignorant ! there are two common Master's tracks
| in the field, Architecture i.e. the design of buildings and
| interior spaces, and Urban Planning i.e. the design of multiple
| buildings in a functional way. Anyone would hire an Urban
| Planner to design urban spaces, not an Architect.
|
| source: 600 hours of working with Urban Planners in California
| kiba wrote:
| What would it take for the middle class homeowners of America
| to prioritize housing for everyone rather than the price of
| their home?
| catillac wrote:
| Framed like that it's hard to imagine choosing one or the
| other and the answer might be intractable. A more interesting
| question might be: What would it take to align policies
| around housing for everyone with policies around increasing
| the prices of homes such that the two things are strongly
| positively correlated?
| sokoloff wrote:
| Housing cannot simultaneously remain affordable and "be a
| good investment" (meaning increase at a rate faster than
| general inflation).
| Ekaros wrote:
| One might also question should land even be sold.
| Something like 20 or 30 year lease with re-evaluation of
| value at end might make more sense. Ofc, this would
| potentially lead to losing homes, but on other hand would
| allow redevelopment for increased density regularly.
| admax88qqq wrote:
| Probably both buying out their current homes, and providing a
| more reliable way for them to build equity over their
| lifetimes.
| ttul wrote:
| Maybe replacing income taxes largely with property taxes? If
| the home is not seen as a source of tax free imputed income,
| then other things become more attractive, like investing in
| startups. It's not a crazy idea. Switzerland taxes the
| imputed rental income on your own home.
|
| 1. https://www.credit-suisse.com/articles/private-
| banking/2018/...
| kiba wrote:
| It's better to replace income taxes with land value tax,
| which doesn't tax the property built on it.
|
| Anyway, your proposal still run into the issue of acquiring
| political will. It may work after it's implemented, but not
| before it.
| ttul wrote:
| Yeah, the problem of political will is paramount. When a
| majority of voters are homeowners, there isn't any will
| to reduce home values...
| nicoffeine wrote:
| I found a pretty interesting theory reading about Germany,
| since their property values are extremely stable:
|
| 'Local German officials, like local leaders everywhere, seek
| bigger budgets to provide more and better services to their
| constituents. What's different about Germany is that the way
| to get bigger budgets is to increase local populations. And,
| as Professor Buettner says, "Ultimately, to get people,
| municipalities will need to support housing."
|
| The result is a system of incentives that is the opposite of
| "fiscal zoning"--the US practice of zoning land in ways that
| maximize local governments' income and minimize their costs.
| In places with high sales taxes, such as Washington State,
| leaders zone more land for shopping centers. In places where
| residential property taxes are capped, such as California,
| they zone less land for homes and more for offices. In
| affluent suburbs, they often zone land for houses on large
| lots, excluding low-income people.
|
| Maximizing property values is such a central concern of local
| government in the United States that Dartmouth economist
| William Fischel developed the notion into an entire political
| theory. His "homevoter hypothesis" holds that local
| governments are almost single-mindedly focused on maximizing
| real estate values, because homeowners typically vote their
| home values in local elections. German jurisdictions gain
| financially by maximizing population, not house values, and
| because renters outnumber homeowners in the country,
| homevoters are not the dominant electoral force in local
| German elections. Renters are.'
|
| https://www.sightline.org/2021/05/27/yes-other-countries-
| do-...
| demadog wrote:
| Telosa is eerily similar to Tesla. Of course it's different but
| my brain makes the connection. Wonder if there's a future
| trademark lawsuit.
| secnono wrote:
| When I see Billionaires trying to "improve society" I spend my
| time trying to figure out the angle so that they not only don't
| spend any of their own money, but become far richer even if they
| fail spectacularly.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| Holy shit, Night City is becoming real.
| [deleted]
| GDC7 wrote:
| "Build it and they will come" is fascinating but hasn't even
| worked for Dubai, and the Emirates have poured into Dubai way
| more than 400B since they decided that they'd open themselves up
| to the world.
|
| Dubai development started in 1980s.
|
| Still today Dubai is made up of Westeners who made money in their
| home country and they relocated there blinded by the lights and
| the promise of an "endless summer" (matter of fact it gets chilly
| in winter and I hope you like 120F on the regular during the
| summer).
|
| A city spurs up, you can't just build it and hope that people
| will come, it's too big of a project.
|
| Me thinks this is a PR move to get his name out there and use as
| a hook to get some fundraising for some more sensible project.
| gremloni wrote:
| What are you on about? More than 50% of Dubai is Indians and
| Pakistanis and not in a second class citizen way you're
| imagining. Most businesses, LEO, administration are south
| Asians. Not sure why you're latching on to the small minority
| of westerners that live there.
| Bayart wrote:
| I feel every attempt at community-by-design bears within it the
| seed of inhumane horror. Forget about the energy equation of
| building a city in a desert, what's the on-boarding process for
| prospective inhabitants ? Putting the price of accommodation sky-
| high to make sure everybody's in the right tax-bracket (or even
| earns enough to not pay taxes) ? Going through an interview
| process to only take in people with the "right vibes" ? How do
| you get teachers, garbage collectors, plumbers, nurses, all sorts
| of manual workers ? Park them in a ghetto like in Dubai, make
| ideological adhesion rather than money the filter (good luck with
| funding) or try to automate them away ?
| lprubin wrote:
| One idea is an expansion of a law already on the books in many
| cities. When you create a new building / housing complex (which
| will be 100% in a new city), you require X% of units to be
| "affordable housing". I could see the city just increasing the
| required % and then giving tax credits to developers to offset
| the lost revenue to them. Given that this city would be built
| in stages, it will give them time to hone in on the desired
| percentage.
| ac29 wrote:
| The problem is "affordable housing" isnt actually affordable
| for many. I qualify for it in the city I live in, and despite
| working full time for significantly above minimum wage, the
| rent on a 1bd apartment through this program would be about
| 75% of my take-home income.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| kiba wrote:
| I don't think this work as this is just rent controlled
| housing. Better to cut the unnecessary red tape and let
| developers build more housing.
|
| Also, I think penalizing vacant properties would also be a
| good idea.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| In practice I don't think this works for an green field
| city. Filtering takes decades to occur. In the meantime new
| housing will always be more expensive than a low-income
| worker can afford. If the city wants service workers
| they're going to have to subsidize their initial housing.
| swiley wrote:
| One alternative is to pay workers enough to afford
| housing. It's surprising how rarely people mention that
| idea. It's very likely thee d of "worker+housing
| shortage" which is just a very roundabout way to say
| "massive inflation."
| lprubin wrote:
| I'm curious to hear why you think it doesn't work. I'm not
| necessarily disagreeing, just would like to know more.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| The point is that no matter how much housing you reserve
| to be "affordable housing", it will still be scarce and
| thus unaffordable to most. And this kind of well-
| intentioned red tape often ends up shrinking the supply
| of housing as a whole, which only makes it even less
| affordable.
| lprubin wrote:
| If you compensate the developers' losses in revenue with
| tax breaks, how does it shrink the supply?
| kiba wrote:
| If it doesn't encourage developers to build more houses,
| then it does nothing.
|
| We care more about the number of people housed, not
| merely just people who are housed who can afford their
| bills.
| lprubin wrote:
| The original question was "How do you get teachers,
| garbage collectors, plumbers, nurses, all sorts of manual
| workers ?" Those people all have some amount of money
| they can afford to pay their bills. Since a city needs
| some percentage of those workers, having housing they can
| afford is a big step towards attracting them.
| kiba wrote:
| If you want affordable housing, then build houses.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| But where is the line? Rampant development can completely
| alter the feel and culture of a neighborhood and city. It
| can take away from those things the existing residents
| enjoy. Sure more supply can accommodate more humans but
| they won't necessarily be the same humans if current
| residents leave, and it won't necessarily be the same
| place afterwards. Desirability (demand) creates scarcity
| but scarcity can also be desirable in itself for some
| things. At some threshold, the answer isn't build more
| but locate people elsewhere and build a more distributed
| economy rather than a few concentrated powerful cities or
| states.
| panarky wrote:
| > energy equation of building a city in a desert
|
| Solar and nuclear work great in deserts.
|
| I'd be more concerned about water.
| zer0tonin wrote:
| How do you cool a nuclear reactor without water?
| nanomonkey wrote:
| Night radiative cooling, the Cosmic Background radiation
| temperature is 4 degrees K.
| dave333 wrote:
| This can be great for houses as well see https://www.goog
| le.com/imgres?imgurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.solarm...
| fogof wrote:
| I guess you don't. That's why they're concerned.
| bgardell wrote:
| Sewage
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| Water is the biggest challenge. All the city's waste water
| will need to be recycled. That's doable, but to compensate
| for evaporation they might also need to pipe in water from
| coastal desalination plants if they cannot harvest enough
| rain. That's a lot harder.
| ginko wrote:
| What's more did any of these planned communities ever pan out?
| There were plenty projects started in the 20th century alone.
| Guess Walt Disney's Epcot is the most well known failure.
| dboreham wrote:
| Washington DC
| dougmwne wrote:
| Barcelona's Eixample comes to mind as a success with its 520
| uniform housing blocks and 260,000 residents.
| JoshuaDavid wrote:
| I'd say that Irvine, California panned out.
| pmyteh wrote:
| There are a bunch of planned new towns in the UK from the
| 20th century, as well as 'model' factory villages from the
| 19th. Some of them are really nice, some less so. Milton
| Keynes is the most interesting, I think. Well loved by the
| people who live there, mocked by those who don't, still
| successfully growing.
| jeffwass wrote:
| Savannah, Georgia is a pretty city, based on the Oglethorpe
| Plan back in 1733.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oglethorpe_Plan
| IdontRememberIt wrote:
| A better bet, would be to have a strong government building and
| planning efficient infrastructure (transportation, utilities,
| ecology, etc) so that private initiatives make economical and
| competitive sense.
| jeffbee wrote:
| That initial stage isn't very promising. 50000 people on 1500
| acres is only about 30 dwellings per acre, not very impressive.
| You can achieve that density with traditional row houses.
| sokoloff wrote:
| That's inhabitants per acre. Dwellings is probably just under
| half of that figure.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Right, how did I neglect that. It's positively suburban.
| spankalee wrote:
| It's exciting to see a new ambitious project like this. America
| definitely needs new cities to help with housing abd
| environmental problems. I have a few concerns though:
|
| Location: We need new cities in there north add climate change
| ramps up. Desert doesn't sound great. And new cities need to be
| built in low population states to balance out the Senate.
| Wyoming, Montana, the Dakotas, WV would be best. Otherwise the
| country continues to become more dysfunctional. Up north there's
| underutilized Amtrak lines too.
|
| Local Transportation: autonomous cars are cool, but are still
| space inefficient compare to mass transit. A new city is an
| amazing opportunity to build mass transit more cheaply with cut-
| and-cover tunnels. You can also plan for commercial
| transportation with delivery tunnels and below ground docks.
| These are the kinds of things you can't easily add to an existing
| city and should be the focus.
|
| Regional Transportation: Where's the airport and how does it
| connect to the city? Will there be a central train station? How
| do carless residents reach regional attractions like
| state/national parks and recreation areas?
|
| Parks: It's nearly impossible to add large parks to a new city,
| but they immensely improve quality of life. A new city should be
| designed around large central parks and neighborhood parks. You
| also need to have a green belt surrounding the city to prevent
| sprawl.
|
| Density: SF density isn't it. SF is mostly a suburb west of Van
| Ness. Shoot for Paris.
|
| Industry: People need jobs. Where are the light industrial areas
| and how do they integrate with the city so they're not blighted
| pollution centers? Will they be transit connected so people don't
| need cars?
| hakfoo wrote:
| Why not pick an old Rust Belt town, plane it smooth, and start
| over?
|
| If you boost density substantially, you might only need a
| portion of the current land area (simplifying the acquisition
| and clearing process).
|
| Maybe you can even use the existing population base to help
| bootstrap the economy. I could see making some sort of offer
| for people to sign over their land (with decrepit buildings and
| worn-out infrastructure) for highly subsidized or free units in
| the newly built city.
| bserge wrote:
| Why would anyone move there? You need work to attract workers.
| Why would any company move/start there?
|
| Middle of the desert smh. Why not build it underwater and get rid
| of all the pesky ethical/moral laws, allow any biotech research
| and free experimentation on humans?
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| Building human-comfortable areas in a desert is quite
| environmentally friendly, given a source of water (and I don't
| want to brush this one under the rug; it's actually fairly
| difficult).
|
| Things about a desert that make energy use lower:
|
| - Evaporative cooling can decrease cooling needs. Using a fan
| or an evaporative cooler is much more feasible in dry
| environments.
|
| - Hot days and cool nights mean it's fairly simple to store
| thermal energy and use that for cooking, water heating, area
| heating, and/or clothes drying (if you want to actively heat
| your clothes) at night
|
| - Lots of sun, so solar energy is highly viable. That means
| lighting can be done through solar energy.
|
| - If the area is windy, fairly easy to ventilate homes just
| through outdoor wind and maybe an E/HRV if necessary
|
| High humidity areas are really difficult to cool because after
| a certain Relative Humidity level in the air, fans just stop
| being effective due to evaporative cooling being insufficient.
| ACs were originally invented as a method of dehumidification.
| That said, growing crops in these environments can be a
| challenge (you can certainly grow aeroponically in greenhouses,
| but that's energy use, so the numbers need to be crunched) and
| using transport to fetch water and crops could make the whole
| project non-viable. There is potential for using solar to
| desalinate but the water itself needs to come from somewhere.
| Ekaros wrote:
| What is viability of storing thermal energy for cooking? Out-
| side very few specific scenarios like sous-vide proteins, the
| temperatures generally used are too high for efficient energy
| transfer.
| gremloni wrote:
| Speak for yourself. Middle of the desert is amazing given there
| is a source of water (aquifer, desalination plant etc.).
| Deserts are clean, nice and hot year round, not humid and
| extremely conducive to solar energy.
| pcmoney wrote:
| Overall like the 15 minute focus but feel it is best achieved
| organically. Planned cities rarely work and they almost always
| feel weird.
|
| Look at Brasilia for example. I dont see the desert aspect, with
| what water?
| nemo44x wrote:
| The cognitive dissonance in their descriptions of how things will
| work and how things will be is amazing. Everything is "inclusive"
| and "equitisim" and the community has a direct voice in every
| decision (that will scale to 5 million people!). But yet all this
| is being dictated by what I assume is the authority over
| everything in this make-believe place. Everything on their
| website states as a matter of fact how "things will be". This
| isn't how things work and it's written like it was created from
| the most upvoted posts on Reddit. Teachers will "be paid well" -
| what does that mean? Who decides what "paid well" means? What if
| they unionize, for example?
|
| What if the people that move there decide they don't want any of
| these things? What if the first settlers decide to vote for
| individual property ownership?
|
| This place sounds more like a utopian commune than a realistic
| place.
| kyleee wrote:
| Yep, it feels like it could be satire. The project will likely
| be a boondoggle, assuming it even gets off the ground
| yongjik wrote:
| This doesn't sound like a serious business proposal. Just
| consider one example:
|
| > The building features elevated water storage, aeroponic farms
| and an energy-producing photovoltaic roof that allow it to "share
| and distribute all it produces."
|
| In other words, this building is going to be freaking expensive:
| (1) Upper floors of a skyscraper is probably the most expensive
| place you could store water in. (2) There's a reason why we're
| not buying cabbages and avocados from aeroponic farms now -
| they're much more expensive than traditional farming. (3) If you
| have a city in the middle of a desert, why would you put solar
| panels on top of a building, instead of right next to the city?
|
| Also, there's no mention on what kind of industry and jobs the
| city could attract - which isn't surprising given the tone of the
| article.
| tadfisher wrote:
| Basically all water storage in NYC is rooftop storage. The
| water system needs to maintain a pressure gradient, and
| converting cheap electricity to potential energy is much more
| economical than running twice the number of pumps to meet
| instantaneous demand.
| jcranmer wrote:
| > (1) Upper floors of a skyscraper is probably the most
| expensive place you could store water in.
|
| Water pipes are pressurized using gravity (there's a reason
| tanks for water distribution systems are commonly referred to
| as "water towers"); indeed, water systems frequently measure
| pressure using the height above sea level it can reach without
| pumps rather than more natural units of pressure. If the city's
| water mains aren't capable of pushing it to every floor of your
| building (which is going to be true for a skyscraper), then
| you'll have to naturally pressurize it yourself by keeping the
| main water tank high.
|
| If you don't do that, your options are either to pump the main
| water main anyways (just without a natural tank on the top),
| with lots of pressure regulators for the lower flows; several
| vertical water mains to service different vertical pressure
| zones; or one water main with lots and lots of smaller (and
| hence less efficient overall) pumps to keep the pressure
| reasonable at different altitudes. Keeping the water tank high
| instead lowers the amount of infrastructure you need, lowers
| the costs of regulating pressure, and has better fail-safe
| conditions if the power cuts out for a while.
| eloff wrote:
| Every apartment building I've lived in over 20 stories puts
| their water reservoir on the roof. The reason is to let gravity
| distribute it when a tap is opened.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I'm very curious, have there _ever_ been any "cities from the
| ground up" projects that don't turn out to be total shit that end
| up just reflecting the urban planning fallacies of the day?
| (Looking at you, Brasilia)
|
| I mean, all of the cities that are most "livable" in my mind are
| old cities that were designed before the car and thus have enough
| density and public transportation to make things both close and
| also the kind of place where it's fun to just walk around.
|
| These "master planned cities" always end up like houses that are
| designed with all these pretty rooms that nobody actually uses.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Dubai? Not really something to emulate though. Hong Kong,
| Singapore, and Taipei also kind of fit.
| IdontRememberIt wrote:
| These are not private initiatives. They were the will of
| powerful, bright and respected people.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Private people can't be powerful, bright, and respected?
| Plus their example was Brasilia, not a private initiative
| either.
|
| >They were the will of powerful, bright and respected
| people.
|
| Not the first adjectives I'd use to describe imperialists,
| colonialists and warlords personally.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _Dubai?_
|
| I have heard that Dubai does not have street names, so giving
| directions and arranging deliveries can be... challenging. Is
| this statement accurate?
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I think "missing street names" is probably #2879 on the
| prioritized list of things that make Dubai the best example
| of a complete modern dystopia.
| spoonjim wrote:
| Daybreak in Utah is really good.
| seattle_spring wrote:
| Daybreak [1] is just a big suburb. It's a far cry from a
| self-sufficient city built from the ground up.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daybreak_(community)
| xerxes777 wrote:
| Saint Petersburg
| energybar wrote:
| Reston, Virginia ?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reston,_Virginia#Planning_and_...
| lprubin wrote:
| Wikipedia has a really interesting world list of "Planned
| Cities" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_community)
|
| It also has a decent rundown of modern American ones (https://e
| n.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_community#Modern_plann...).
|
| You'll have to use your own judgement on a case by case basis
| if they were successful or not and if they meet your personal
| definition of master planned.
|
| But I found the lists a very interesting read.
| dave333 wrote:
| Figure out the best location for a hyperloop hub and put it there
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| Given how zoning and urban design tend to have been done in US
| cities -- that is, very badly -- I'm not opposed to this. It even
| sounds intriguing, but I have a hard time personally finding a
| city in a desert to be attractive, even if the urban design is
| great.
| yourapostasy wrote:
| Deserts can be great for living in once you manage the heat
| through shading and wind management. Desert sand is very
| amenable to conversion into rich loamy soil through taking in
| lots of organic matter in surprisingly few years. Living in
| such a climate can be made attractive. The challenge is clean,
| potable water, which is really embodied energy. The evaporation
| of such water happens at a ferocious rate out in the open.
| There are also daunting challenges around long-term high-
| density human impacts upon the desert ecosystem, which serve
| important functions that are still not well-understood [1].
|
| [1] https://www.environmentalscience.org/deserts-ecosystems
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| > There are also daunting challenges around long-term high-
| density human impacts upon the desert ecosystem, which serve
| important functions that are still not well-understood [1].
|
| That's a rather odd way of framing it. For one thing, having
| higher density seems like a rather obvious environmental
| good, since it means less total natural area disrupted. If
| you refuse high density in some area, the people who would've
| lived there don't just disappear; they go live in some other
| area, probably lower density, in a way that hurts the
| environment even more.
|
| And while there's obviously life in desert ecosystems,
| there's substantially less of it compared to most other
| ecosystems -- you could say the same thing you said of
| grasslands or forest or what have you, except it'd be much
| more true.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| Shenzhen and Dubai are key port cities, making them global
| hotspots for the flow of wealth and goods long before they became
| the modern cities of today. A city in the desert has none of
| those foundational benefits.
| jmugan wrote:
| Reminds me of The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi.
| human wrote:
| One more news story that makes me feel like we live in Black
| Mirror.
| recursivedoubts wrote:
| Henry George is a forgotten hero of american history, swept under
| the rug by today's corporate conservative-v-liberal punch and
| judy show:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_George
|
| When he died 100,000 people showed up at his funeral:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_George#Death_and_funeral
|
| Can you imagine anyone showing up at an economists funeral today,
| except to heckle?
|
| It's unfortunate that this project mixes Georgism w/ dehumanized
| modern architecture. Most people want to live in traditional,
| walkable neighborhoods, as prices suggest.
| larsiusprime wrote:
| Yeah as a Georgist I find this super-city plan pretty
| confusing. I mean if you're going to build a super-city go
| ahead and implement LVT, but it feels a bit quixotic to me. You
| could take all that money and put it into training the next
| generation of assessors to fix problems of chronically under-
| assessing land and you'd do much more immediate good for the
| world and spur much more development.
| adventured wrote:
| You can't have the cleaniless of Tokyo in a US city unless you're
| willing to harshly punish people - Singapore style - for
| transgressions. That won't stand up legally in terms of civil
| rights. You have to entirely remake the culture to get that
| outcome, and that's not going to happen. Urban US culture is
| largely mediocre. The last thing the US needs is another Las
| Vegas, building another major US city in the desert is moronic.
|
| In general the US does not need more cities. The US can't operate
| its existing cities properly. It's embarrassing how disgusting
| and violent most US cities are. Culturally the US should figure
| out how to run the cities it has before building new ones. To say
| nothing of the fact that the US has no need of new mega cities
| from a practical standpoint, we're facing population decline or
| stagnation, not a population boom.
|
| Cities are cultural extensions of the nations they reside in,
| along with regional influences. It's highly predictable what
| you'll get out of another city built in the US. Let's focus $400
| billion on public transportation improvements for our existing
| cities, including rail and a lot more electric buses.
| refurb wrote:
| Singapore doesn't harshly punish to maintain its level of
| cleanliness. There is plenty of littering. They just have a
| massive army of cheap foreign labor to constantly clean.
| nicoburns wrote:
| Yeah, when you start thinking about what you could do for
| infrastructure in existing cities for $400B then you start
| realising what a bad idea this project is.
| Proven wrote:
| > Although planners are still scouting for locations, possible
| targets include Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Arizona, Texas and the
| Appalachian region
|
| Although the project quotes problems with capitalism, they intend
| to maintain safe distance from socialist states.
| aufhebung wrote:
| This is somewhat off topic from the article, but why did the web
| designers for this site choose such an awful font for the title?
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| It's reminiscent of Arcosanti in it's aim of transforming a harsh
| environment into somewhere livable, instead of just picking
| somewhere livable in the first place. Maybe it's just pragmatic
| since arid land is the cheapest land, but it has a nice principal
| to it, of taking land and improving it instead of draining and
| farming everything out of it.
|
| I think Arcosanti has a second design advantage tho, it started
| with a small but livable urban core, so even with 50 residents
| the city is functional (given enough tourists) but the plans
| include expansions for 500 and then 5,000 residents. To grow the
| city as people show up seems like a better move then spending
| billions of dollars before you open the gates.
| eCa wrote:
| > will be built from scratch on a desert [...] with lush
| landscapes
|
| Will be interesting to see how sustainable that is.
| HeckFeck wrote:
| Maybe they're working on terraforming technology.
| tpmx wrote:
| They're not planning anything beyond fancy renders.
| yourapostasy wrote:
| Same concerns with THE LINE [1] in Saudi Arabia.
|
| I'm guessing that the energy harvesting from the geography and
| leveraging the locale's low humidity for evaporative cooling,
| along with the generally ultra-low cost of acquiring the dirt,
| are pretty attractive for moonshot projects like these. I've
| yet to see any of these types of projects start with
| fundamentals like better-than-PassivHaus insulation standards,
| or NetZero standards, or make form follow function by
| performing and designing around an energy flow analysis, or
| learn from the lessons that Strong Towns extracted from the
| population density factors, and so on, so these projects are
| likely run into many of the same foundational challenges that
| many nations and cities struggle with today. I think coming up
| with a framework that allows organic evolution towards
| integrating these many different factors continuously over the
| long-term is all we can really hope to accomplish for practical
| success; we likely simply don't have the sufficient analytical
| tools to design-up-front except in the most basic,
| infrastructural ways.
|
| [1] https://www.neom.com/en-us/whatistheline
| webmobdev wrote:
| There are already so many dying or dead towns / cities in the US
| that building a new city in a desert sounds like thoughtless,
| careless waste (not to mention the ecological disaster of
| displacing / destroying the ecosystem of the desert). When there
| are so many habitable locations, why build a city in an
| inhospitable environment - so much energy resource is going to be
| wasted to make it habitable ...
|
| - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ghost_towns_in_the_Uni...
|
| - https://www.businessinsider.com/10-american-cities-that-are-...
| zenonu wrote:
| This new city most likely depends on getting necessary
| regulatory and code approvals that would be impossible
| elsewhere. There's also a reason why towns become ghost towns,
| and the investors putting in $400B in funding probably don't
| want to start with one foot in the metaphorical grave.
| stephen_g wrote:
| From the sound of it, he's still looking for all of the
| "investors putting in $400B of funding" at this point. For
| now, it seems he's just doing PR and paying an architecture
| firm to make 3D renders.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| To me the set of issues that come with building up a pre-
| existing city/town are similar to those faced by companies
| and municipalities looking to lay fiberoptic cable for
| internet service: endless political hurdles and
| obstructionism coming from the numerous groups and
| individuals involved, slowing development to a crawl or
| stopping it altogether.
|
| It's no wonder why this project is pursuing a "clean slate"
| approach.
| Gimpei wrote:
| According to the article Appalachia is also under
| consideration, which I guess would alleviate the water
| concerns. The only justification I can think of for a project
| like this is BANANAs making the reformation of current cities
| impossible. But I share your skepticism. But it's always nice
| to see cool architectural mockups!
| yuppie_scum wrote:
| If they tried to rebuild a functional modern city in an
| existing dying city it would be called gentrification and
| vilified by the current occupants.
| njarboe wrote:
| Because trying out new political structures that is the reason
| for building the new city. Nevada has passed a law recently
| that allows for basically the creation of new counties within
| existing ones. The county level is where quite a bit of
| political power lies, even though that level of government is
| often forgotten. Who knows what might come out of it, but I
| would like to see someone give it a try.
| ThePadawan wrote:
| I don't know who I would rather have design a city from scratch:
|
| - A billionaire "with a vision"
|
| - Someone who has spent more than 10k hours playing Cities:
| Skylines
| tracerbulletx wrote:
| If they're considering the Appalachians it's not so much they
| want to build a city in the desert, as a city anywhere they can
| get cheap land and government to leave them alone.
| IdontRememberIt wrote:
| Eco-friendly in the desert and away from oceans... A sure way to
| have low fix and variable costs. Is this a remake of Ghost towns
| in China?
| smitty1e wrote:
| Hopefully the Southwest is ruled out.
|
| That region is wildly over-populated for the amount of water
| available.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| There's still plenty of water in the SW for residential
| purposes. At least 70% of the water use is for commercial
| agriculture, an idea hatched in the early 20th century after
| two of the wettest decades in the last 1200 years. People
| living in this part of the world is not so much of an issue;
| growing lots of crops (especially high-water-use ones like
| alfalfa, rice, almonds) is.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| I believe for the most part the water is owned by the folks
| using it. Is there even a way for them to sell their water to
| a new city?
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.is/fC5U0
|
| Longer article:
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-09-01/how-diape...
|
| http://web.archive.org/web/20210905140905/https://www.bloomb...
|
| https://archive.is/5j0tJ
| webwielder2 wrote:
| Place it at the intersection of Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming to
| undo some of the Senate/EC slant.
| KyleBrandt wrote:
| Emphasis on "plans":
|
| "Now, he just needs somewhere to build it -- and $400 billion in
| funding"
| mindvirus wrote:
| I love the ambition. One thing I've been really amazed about
| China has been the willingness to tackle big infrastructure
| projects - building cities like Shenzhen in a few decades and all
| of the infrastructure projects in the Pearl River Delta in
| general. I think we need more of that in the west. So I wish them
| luck - I hope real estate speculation doesn't ruin it.
|
| One thing I've noticed with US politics is that things tend to be
| viewed as local issues instead of national ones. For example,
| NYC's public transit is a key part of the US's financial engine,
| but still chronically underfunded and mismanaged, and New York's
| problem to deal with. So I hope people see projects like this as
| points of national pride, even if they don't live there.
| wolfretcrap wrote:
| It's mind blowing how much land the US has. I live in India and
| here finding farmland is not easy to say least, while I see lot
| of cheap land available in the US all time with much more
| facilities than a small city in India would have.
|
| I've always wondered why America has not built many more cities
| with all that available land.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Most of that cheap land you are seeing available in the US is
| not close to what you'd consider farmland.
|
| Consider the location of the 100th meridian as it somewhat
| bisects the continent. West of that line, you cannot really
| grow anything without irrigation. East of that line, and to
| some extent there's enough rainfall that stuff will grow on
| its own, albeit not optimally.
|
| Most the cheap available land you will find in the US is west
| of the 100th meridian, and is dry largely inorganic dirt.
|
| As for the cities, you may not be aware of this, but the
| southwest (and perhaps western) US is in year 21 of a drought
| that rivals the worst of the last 1200 years, and there is no
| sign that the situation is likely to improve in the next
| century or so.
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| This. The western half of the US is going to become useless
| for farming in the next 50 years because all the aquifers
| are drying up and they take tens of thousands of years to
| recharge. Which is another way of saying that farming in
| the western US has only been possible because it harvested
| fossil water that's now almost gone.
| hirundo wrote:
| This is the basis of the plot of The Sea of Grass, a
| classic Spencer Tracy / Katherine Hepburn movie. Tracy is a
| rancher trying to make this argument to some optimistic
| farmers. They see it as self-serving, which they are right
| about, but so is Tracy. Tragedy ensues.
| kiba wrote:
| Our problem is more about in-fill development then taking up
| land. Why would we want to make more cities? Better preserves
| the wilderness.
| nine_zeros wrote:
| The path to building a city involves first building a small
| town with some kind of economic activity. Because of a lack
| of people (especially young people), it's hard to create a
| brand new city with a vibrant economy. Most of the existing
| young people in America move to existing big cities. Small
| cities are becoming bigger.
|
| This is unlike China where cities were built en masse to
| house migrants from rural areas. America just doesn't have
| the same volume of workers.
|
| America is still pretty empty.
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| The goal isn't to pack people on the planet like sardines.
| dradtke wrote:
| Probably because America has only about a quarter of the
| population that India has? Also, the ideal of the American
| homestead or even suburban home is one that doesn't place a
| high value on sharing space or being close to your neighbors.
| camjohnson26 wrote:
| I just finished reading The Devil in the White City, which is
| about the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago and intercuts the story
| with serial killer H. H. Holmes' crimes. What struck me most
| was how the event's success was far from guaranteed, and it
| took a mix of national/civic pride, hubris, ambition, and luck
| to pull it off. We tend to think of massive engineering
| projects as guaranteed successes and scaling to fill their
| need, but I think we underestimate how much influence
| individual people have in pulling these projects off.
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Devil_in_the_White_City
| throwawaysea wrote:
| I think with NYC it is the mismanaged part more so than
| underfunded. Limiting cities (and people) by having them live
| within their means forces better management. When that doesn't
| work I feel the solution isn't to pump more money in but rather
| to seek out alternatives. The market does that automatically -
| people will choose to live elsewhere to avoid ever higher local
| and state taxes, or to avoid an inadequate subway system. The
| country addresses the problem by decentralizing away from NYC,
| in your example. Of course in reality it doesn't quite play out
| in a perfect idealistic way. The alternative is that the nation
| pump money in but also control NYC. Shenzhen may be a partially
| planned city but it isn't also independent in the way American
| cities are.
| kiba wrote:
| We already have lot of infrastructure projects here in America.
| It's called roads. Endless ceaseless expansion of roads.
|
| I think we need to stop mindlessly expand roads, and reconsider
| our infrastructure priority before we can start doing massive
| megaprojects.
| finnh wrote:
| Isn't a new city an example of priority reconsideration? I
| don't follow your argument.
| simonh wrote:
| The thing is we don't have the best part of a billion people
| living in a desolate backward, almost jobless countryside that
| needed to be funnelled into economically productive occupations
| over the last 30 years, as China has. Most of our populations
| are already urbanised. The majority of the people who would
| live in this city already live in cities.
|
| We do have urban housing shortages and all sorts of demographic
| problems, I'm not saying a project like this is by necessity
| flawed, but the motivating dynamics for us are very different
| from what has been happening in China and SE Asia.
| dheera wrote:
| In my experience growing up (in Asia) almost every city that
| created by a government saying "let's build a new shiny city in
| the middle of nowhere" was an utter flop at getting people to
| move in.
|
| People have families, livelihoods, businesses, kids that need
| schools, grandparents that need care, friends, and emotional
| attachments to cultural things like food. "Shiny new buildings"
| are great to look for an hour but it gets old quickly. After
| that you start missing that noodle shack at the end of the
| street, the park the kids play in, and the sights and sounds of
| a bustling street market. Homes being 3X the price just because
| they are newly built, and a lack of jobs for _both_ parents,
| doesn 't help make people want to move, either.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I have a coworker who cries about everything the government
| spends money on because it doesn't directly put cash in his
| pocket.
|
| How do you explain that things like this are still beneficial
| to him? That a rising tide lifts all boats?
| aaron695 wrote:
| This truly looks like a dystopian nightmare.
|
| Fucking glass.
|
| And roads with grass? Will there be robots making sure you
| neither walk or have drones on the grass? I guess they'd control
| the vehicle's to keep it pretty but how do they control you?
|
| I don't get the scam here, but it's also a grid city -
| https://newatlas.com/architecture/telosa-city-bjarke-ingels-...
|
| WTF is with a grid city?
|
| I get all the awful stuff in the photos that make it look pretty,
| but surely people hate grids both in photos and real life.
|
| Is this some sort of propaganda thing? Grids are allegedly bad
| for cars, so we self flagellate by creating awful grid cities to
| hurt the 'car'
|
| If I think about places in every city I've visited or places I
| loved as a child, being on a grid is not place's I go too. It'll
| be short cuts and hidden parks in loops and random alleyways. I'm
| pretty sure psychology also confirms people like living in curved
| planning mentally.
| oneplane wrote:
| You would think that anywhere that is not an extreme would be a
| better choice to build a project from scratch that is supposed to
| be 'the most' sustainable but also attractive.
|
| Perhaps this is a side-effect due to the state or country chosen,
| where there are no realistic alternatives? Even going to a more
| moderate location slightly farther away from the equator doesn't
| seem all that difficult vs. really sticking with a desert.
| mrfusion wrote:
| How would they handle homelessness and truancy?
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I am not really educated about how things are going now, but,
| when I was attending school, they used Brasilia[0], as an example
| of a "great idea that never made it." I have also read about the
| giant Chinese "ghost cities."
|
| I think that having a reason to be there, is 99% of the incentive
| to build a city.
|
| There's a reason that almost every city is on a body of water.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bras%C3%ADlia
| simonh wrote:
| The Chinese ghost city stories were largely unfounded. There
| was a supposed 'ghost city' near my wife's hometown in China,
| but it's now a thriving city full of people. The thing is
| building and kickstarting something like that takes time. The
| facades and roads go up first, but it takes months to get all
| the homes made liveable and get the basic utilities up and
| running, then ramp up the population.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Cool. Thanks for setting the record straight.
|
| That makes perfect sense.
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