[HN Gopher] Le Corbusier's project Plan Voisin - a radical urban...
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       Le Corbusier's project Plan Voisin - a radical urban design for
       Paris from 1925
        
       Author : revolucien
       Score  : 73 points
       Date   : 2022-04-20 10:39 UTC (12 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.clemensgritl.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.clemensgritl.com)
        
       | bambax wrote:
       | The fact that one of the shots prominently features a statue
       | doing a facepalm [1] makes one question if this was intended to
       | attract or in fact deter?
       | 
       | [1] https://images.squarespace-
       | cdn.com/content/v1/58764f376a4963...
        
       | netfortius wrote:
       | Ceausescu (the Genius Architect of the Carpathians) "did"
       | (ordered others to) just that, in Romania - especially in
       | Bucharest - during his regime of [terror and] "reconstruction".
        
       | contingencies wrote:
       | The artist makes a good point but it's rather unfairly at the
       | expense of Corbusier who to be fair was capable of real art. Fond
       | memories of Paris myself - including _La Defense_ - but shocked
       | how similar the right-side vision is to the current feeling of
       | living _en Chine_.
        
       | twelvechairs wrote:
       | Tearing up Paris of course would have been an unmitigated
       | disaster. But all the same its important to realize how visionary
       | this (and the slightly earlier Ville Contemporaine) was in the
       | 1920s. Corbusier saw the city of the future far before others -
       | cars as the dominant mode of transport giving people freedom to
       | travel far, simply constructed skyscrapers with standardised
       | apartment types but also with sanitation and services for all (a
       | huge issue in Paris of that era).
       | 
       | Of course along with this he didn't see the big issues we know
       | now through bitter experience - car dominance destroying street
       | life, lack of human scale and beauty in mass-produced buildings,
       | poor safety/security, bleak open spaces, etc. Some perhaps are
       | unfair to blame on him as they are in our mind as a result of
       | poor/cheap implementation in other schemes. But we should at
       | least marvel at what Corbusier _did_ understand for his time and
       | how clearly he was able to express it.
        
       | mynameishere wrote:
       | What's radical about putting up a bunch of prisons? We did that.
        
       | dirtyid wrote:
       | Big fan of megablock living in east Asia. Radiant City plan
       | wouldn't have fared well in real life, but I imagine project if
       | built, would be remediated into nice high density mix use
       | neighbourhoods over time. Infill some street level retail,
       | updated cladding over time. Could have worked, and probably
       | better quality units for more people than constantly modernizing
       | Haussmann blocks.
        
       | birriel wrote:
       | 3-D Model of Plan Voisin:
       | 
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNBr6de7TD4
       | 
       | And the Pruitt-Igoe segment from Koyaanisqatsi:
       | 
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nq_SpRBXRmE
       | 
       | Just bad ideas.
        
       | everyone wrote:
       | I think of the 20th Century as being the century of quacks. Guys
       | like Corbusier and Freud proposing radical new ideas based on _no
       | data_ , _zero research_ , basically pulled out of their assholes.
       | And then somehow these ideas become widely accepted and
       | implemented. There was a lot of damage done then that we are
       | still dealing with the consequences of.
        
       | fennecfoxen wrote:
       | The big problem with Le Corb is not that his stuff is ugly. It's
       | that his designs are inhuman. No one with any choice wants to
       | live or work in that kind of development. It's striking! Bold!
       | Architects love the look! But form should follow function and Le
       | Corb's idea of function is "a machine for living" and there's not
       | too much room in that vision for things extraneous to living like
       | "dreaming" or "enjoying life," so you get all their space in
       | between that's hostile to you hanging out there, barren plazas
       | which don't function as a park and are strictly segregated from
       | any meaningful street retail...
       | 
       | It's like a NYC housing project. Just put the people into a
       | machine for living and call it a day.
        
         | pjc50 wrote:
         | Yes. There's a colossal failure of modernist architecture to
         | think about the "user experience". People don't like being
         | mechanized.
        
         | verisimi wrote:
         | But what's wrong with living in a tiny space stacked together
         | with everyone else like tinned sardines on the shelf?!
        
         | isolli wrote:
         | Agreed, but as a counterpoint, read this story on a very
         | interesting housing project in Montreal (1967).
         | 
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25940074
        
         | hef19898 wrote:
         | Well, thing is, despite he utter ugliness of his designs in
         | mass, _one_ of his high-rises, a tad smaller, could be a nice
         | piece of architecture. _One_ , not a whole city of those...
        
         | rvieira wrote:
         | It seems he would really enjoy working in the 21st century.
         | 
         | Designing striking CGI buildings for movies without the
         | "downside" of humans actually having to live there :)
        
         | captainmuon wrote:
         | This. And the funny thing is Le Corbusier and other modernists
         | _intended_ to design for humans:
         | 
         | - They add large parks between the buildings
         | 
         | - You get the huge highrises and long boulevards because of
         | separation of function, because they want to put the living
         | quarters far away from the smelly factories
         | 
         | - They use a lot of concrete and prefab components to keep
         | everything affordable
         | 
         | - They design community areas into the buildings
         | 
         | and so on. But it fails spectacularly. The resulting cities are
         | completely inhumane. There is no space for natural development,
         | for "lucky accidents", no mixed zoning, no entertainment and
         | shopping close by to living quarters, the kind of stuff people
         | now want from an urban lifestyle. And you can't really walk
         | anywhere.
         | 
         | One thing I really hate in these kind of cities is that you
         | can't just go anywhere straight, you are 'channeled around'.
         | Whether you are on foot or in a car, you have to shut off your
         | brain and follow the signs. You can't follow your 'desire
         | path', and even if you would, you will walk for a long time
         | through 'non-places' where there is nothing.
         | 
         | I was trying to walk a couple of blocks in one of these cities
         | in the hot summer, and it was brutal (there are places like
         | this in the US, France, China, ...). Nothing is human scale,
         | and that is why it feels dehumanizing.
        
           | Bud wrote:
           | Le Corbusier just didn't have this figured out. But
           | Christopher Alexander did. See "A Pattern Language" and "The
           | Timeless Way of Building".
        
           | Sharlin wrote:
           | Quite so. And in reality those large parks would have (and
           | did!) turn into fields of asphalt and concrete, as automobile
           | infrastructure expanded to fill all available space (Le
           | Corbusier and his contemporaries didn't _quite_ get how
           | drastic the consequences of automobilization together with
           | separation of functions would be...)
        
             | jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
             | I think this is an under appreciated point. Something I
             | find striking in watching historical footage of urban areas
             | is just how empty the roads were. Just the other day I was
             | watching some restored footage of Paris in the 1920s, and
             | they drove the camera car through famous areas that today
             | would be a near parking lot most of the day, but back then
             | were wide open.
             | 
             | If you look at car centric infrastructure through this
             | lens, it's easier to understand how it all went so wrong.
             | The American dream as designed in say the 1950s was quite
             | pleasant if you could afford it. A nice modern house on
             | clean brand new wide open roads. Sure you have to drive
             | everywhere vs walk to the neighborhood main street for
             | errands but gas is cheap and those roads make it all so
             | fast and convenient.
             | 
             | Of course the problem is non of this scaled, but that
             | didn't stop us from trying, and ending up with the worst of
             | both in many ways.
        
         | jodrellblank wrote:
         | This "Not Just Bikes" video[1] recently on YouTube makes a
         | similar case for generic concrete business parks in the USA and
         | Canada compared to one in the Netherlands. That nobody with any
         | choice wants to live or work there, that they are full of
         | hostile in-between space and strictly segregated from housing
         | and shopping by 6-lane roads, and inhuman feeling. Designed
         | with car access as the priority and bus access as an
         | afterthought and without pedestrian or cycle access at all, as
         | if the only reasons to be 'outside' at all are driving or
         | parking.
         | 
         | The Netherlands one in the video has dedicated roads for busses
         | which get priority over cars at traffic lights, dedicated paths
         | for bikes and pedestrians which get priority over busses and
         | cars at traffic lights and are separate from the roads so
         | people aren't walking right by vehicles, and a train station.
         | It has narrow car lanes with both directions separated with an
         | easier pedestrian crossing experience, floodwater management
         | integrated as a nice looking canal feature rather than as a
         | storm drain by a road; pretty building design and path design
         | to make a more pleasant environment to walk in, and buildings
         | having large and accessible entrances for pedestrians without
         | forcing them to cross bits of mud or large expanses of car
         | park.
         | 
         | [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDXB0CY2tSQ
        
       | rich_sasha wrote:
       | It should probably be pointed out that Paris has a history of
       | "knocking it all down" to make space for the New. Haussman did
       | that. Notre Dame de Paris Cathedral, one of the most iconic
       | sacral buildings of the world (?) sits on the rubble of its
       | Christian predecessors (as well as an ancient pagan temple, oh
       | well, zeitgeist).
       | 
       | The difference was that Le Corbusier's stuff is, as most of this
       | thread attests, ghastly, maybe except some Platonic space. The
       | earlier rebuilds worked out, mostly because the esthetics stood
       | the test of time, which Le Corbusier's ideas didn't.
       | 
       | By contrast, after the Great Fire of London in 1666, it was
       | proposed to rebuild the city on a grand, modern design, but in
       | the end that was turned out, and the city was rebuilt much as it
       | was before (except with greater fire safety regulation). This
       | explains why even to this day, City of London, now the main
       | business/finance district, has such a weird layout, with tiny
       | backstreets and anachronistic street names.
        
         | cm2187 wrote:
         | I think the cutoff is the invention of photography. The only
         | way painters could remain relevant is by doing something
         | original rather than beautiful. Then the other arts followed.
         | Modern classical music is impossible to listen to most ears.
         | And architects followed too, more interested in creating an
         | original shape of glass or concrete rather than building
         | anything beautiful and pleasing. There is hardly any piece of
         | modern architecture that will resist the test of time (and the
         | materials used won't anyway).
         | 
         | For a long list of examples, I defer to the twitter account
         | architects against humanity.
        
           | inglor_cz wrote:
           | It does not seem to be the case to me. At least I cannot see
           | the correlation.
           | 
           | Art Deco buildings are very beautiful, and that happened a
           | long time after photography was invented.
           | 
           | In fact, the soulless style of architecture only started to
           | visibly dominate after WWII.
        
           | febeling wrote:
           | One problem was that people started believing that there's no
           | such thing as beauty. How do you build a beautiful building,
           | if you think beauty is an illusion anyway?
           | 
           | I have the idea that it's related to atheism. Once you
           | believe all of life and all of nature is ultimately some
           | brute atoms buzzing back and forth anyway, then what your
           | imagination creates is likely to look pretty brutalist. If
           | you believe it's angels and God's creation all the way down
           | you will place meaning and symbols into the large elements
           | and every tiny bit. Anyone else can see this connection?
        
             | davidivadavid wrote:
             | Nah.
             | 
             | First, I don't think any major aesthetic theory claims
             | there's no such thing as beauty. At best, they question the
             | definition of beauty and the classical canons of beauty.
             | 
             | Second, you can put meaning and symbols into atoms buzzing
             | back and forth (atoms buzzing back and forth are more or
             | less a symbol, anyway).
        
               | AnimalMuppet wrote:
               | From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_(Duchamp):
               | 
               | > _Fountain_ is a readymade sculpture by Marcel Duchamp
               | in 1917, consisting of a porcelain urinal signed  "R.
               | Mutt". In April 1917, an ordinary piece of plumbing
               | chosen by Duchamp was submitted for an exhibition of the
               | Society of Independent Artists, the inaugural exhibition
               | by the Society to be staged at The Grand Central Palace
               | in New York. When explaining the purpose of his Readymade
               | sculpture, Duchamp stated they are "everyday objects
               | raised to the dignity of a work of art by the artist's
               | act of choice."...
               | 
               | > The work is regarded by art historians and theorists of
               | the avant-garde as a major landmark in 20th-century art.
               | 
               | So here's a major artist, saying that a urinal can be a
               | work of art, needing only the artist's choice to make
               | them so. And here's a major art movement agreeing that
               | that "art" piece is a major landmark.
               | 
               | That doesn't quite claim "there's no such thing as
               | beauty", but it pretty much says there's no such thing as
               | _art_ , other than an artist saying so. But then, who is
               | an artist? Whoever says they are?
               | 
               | And if all it takes is the artist saying so, then a
               | urinal is just as much art as the _Mona Lisa_.
               | 
               | But I think this does somewhat trace back to febeling's
               | point. If nature is all there is, and nature is
               | deterministic, then art is just what deterministic people
               | do. It's not intrinsically different from non-art. And
               | when people believe that, they act like what they do is
               | just the same as the _Mona Lisa_ , when we can look at it
               | and tell that no, it's not.
        
             | Zababa wrote:
             | I'm not sure about that, I'm an atheist myself and I still
             | find religious building beautiful. Even if there is no god
             | there, and even if the buildings were ugly, they are filled
             | with the feelings of lots of people. That is beautiful in
             | itself. Just like I'm not really into sports, but the
             | energy of a stadium is something beautiful to see, and very
             | real. There's something special happening in those places.
             | Same thing with an old house. Many people lived there.
             | That's powerful.
        
           | car_analogy wrote:
           | > I think the cutoff is the invention of photography. The
           | only way painters could remain relevant is by doing something
           | original rather than beautiful.
           | 
           | You are letting them off too easy. Have you ever seen a
           | photograph that looks like https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ICilJlD
           | 5nhA/ThQQ_v2LKzI/AAAAAAAAA... ?
           | 
           | Or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Abbey_in_the_Oakwood#/me
           | di... ?
           | 
           | Or https://i.pinimg.com/originals/11/9f/2a/119f2ac0958cb42610
           | 15... ?
           | 
           | The modern styles void of any aesthetic appeal are by far not
           | the only ones photography has not supplanted. The layperson
           | may be excused for thinking art's only goal was photorealism,
           | but when coming from experts, that is a deliberate _lie_ ,
           | used to ridicule anyone that dares complain how beauty was
           | excised from the modern art world.
        
             | [deleted]
        
           | bsedlm wrote:
           | I don't think that the musicians have responded yet to the
           | reccording technology in a comparable way to painters
           | responding to photographic technology with impressionism and
           | other non-realistic painting techniques (which do seem to
           | have sprung up when photography became widespread)
        
         | pembrook wrote:
         | While everybody loves Haussman's Paris today, at the time, it
         | was extremely controversial and he was eventually ousted. Paris
         | used to be like the cramped medieval old towns you see
         | throughout the rest of Europe. Here's a classic quote from one
         | of Haussman's most powerful critics:
         | 
         |  _" We weep with our eyes full of tears for the old Paris, the
         | Paris of Voltaire, of Desmoulins, the Paris of 1830 and 1848,
         | when we see the grand and intolerable new buildings, the costly
         | confusion, the triumphant vulgarity, the awful materialism,
         | that we are going to pass on to our descendants."_
         | 
         | Fast forward 100+ years and suddenly that quote sounds
         | hilariously wrong. Makes you wonder what possibilities we're
         | missing out on today by clinging to an aesthetic past.
         | 
         | Just because Corbusier's dystopian prison ideas missed the
         | mark, doesn't mean there isn't a better vision out there for a
         | livable city just waiting to be implemented.
        
           | ambrozk wrote:
           | I don't like Paris' broad boulevards. In my opinion they're
           | the least interesting part of the city. The best places to
           | congregate are always off the main line of commerce, away
           | from cars and trucks. Obviously, proper waste disposal and
           | lamps are good, but I don't know why we're taking it for
           | granted that criticism of Hausmann's aesthetics is
           | "hilariously wrong."
        
             | dopidopHN wrote:
             | Those grand boulevards also had a security / social goal :
             | to make sure police keep access and make it hard to
             | barricade entire blocks. ( as opposed to narrow street that
             | are easier to close down)
        
           | agumonkey wrote:
           | Not far from the outcry around when the eiffel tower was
           | erected.
        
           | eadmund wrote:
           | > Fast forward 100+ years and suddenly that quote sounds
           | hilariously wrong.
           | 
           | Does it? I prefer those 'cramped mediaeval old towns' to
           | Paris.
        
             | andi999 wrote:
             | Which cramped mediaeval town are you comparing it to?
        
           | rst wrote:
           | Le Corbusier-style tower blocks never happened in Paris, but
           | they were built all over the US as part of "urban renewal"
           | projects, and there have since been multiple generations
           | growing up in those structures, to become nostalgic for them
           | if it were ever going to happen. It hasn't happened yet.
        
           | bobthechef wrote:
           | I reject the notion that aesthetics is arbitrary. It is not.
           | I also reject the mystification and the dismissive
           | progressive fallacy that the only reason anyone might oppose
           | change is because they're crusty old reactionary humbugs (of
           | course, if aesthetics is arbitrary, "progress" has no
           | meaning). Le Corbusier's Paris is _objectively_ hideous. It
           | is objectively a nightmare. It would objectively be immoral
           | to inflict something like that on Parisians. It would
           | objectively harm the common good. A nihilistic misanthrope
           | consumed with hatred for humanity, and himself, could do no
           | better. For this reason, I detest language like  "clinging to
           | an aesthetic past". It is a hollow comment that begins from
           | faulty assumptions about aesthetics.
           | 
           | Of course, we often make aesthetic judgements in a relative
           | fashion. People visiting Paris today might say Paris is
           | beautiful, but what they mean is more beautiful than some
           | other point of reference. Spend enough time in a beautiful
           | city and your standards will shift such that you will be
           | disappointed by aesthetically inferior cities you had
           | previously thought were beautiful when you revisit them. This
           | is good. Let our tastes become more refined so that we may
           | make the world a more beautiful place. Let us resist
           | mediocrity and ugliness.
           | 
           | So perhaps those critics of Haussmanian Paris were making
           | such a comparison. I certainly don't think Paris is the
           | _most_ beautiful city, but if you had grown up in a Corbusian
           | nightmare or some aesthetically lesser locale, then it would
           | certainly be an upgrade and perceived as such. Still,
           | Haussmanian Paris is at least built according to classical
           | _principles_ and that is the most important factor.
           | 
           | Of course, I am not opposed to development in the realm of
           | art and architecture and so on, but modernist travesties like
           | the ones pictured are not an authentic development, but a
           | barbaric revolt against the past rooted in hubris, madness,
           | or some other defect.
        
           | zukzuk wrote:
           | The parts of Paris that were most affected by Haussmann's
           | renovation are arguably still kind of awful.
           | 
           | The Champs-Elysees for example is a horrible place to
           | actually spend time in, and is currently undergoing major
           | redevelopment to make it a bit more livable.
        
           | Bayart wrote:
           | > Fast forward 100+ years and suddenly that quote sounds
           | hilariously wrong.
           | 
           | Only if you don't care about history and conservancy. Every
           | medievalist is still frothing at the mouth, for good reasons.
        
       | richliss wrote:
       | As someone who grew up in a city that did this, it was a terrible
       | idea then and remains so. Town planners who like brutalism and
       | everything modern are insane. Just look at Birmingham, England -
       | they knocked down beautiful buildings to put up brutalist
       | eyesores to then knock down brutalist eyesores and replace them
       | with a different type of modern architecture that will look awful
       | in 20 years.
       | 
       | There's a reason that people want to live in Bath.
        
         | bregma wrote:
         | They should tear it down and rewrite it all in Rust.
        
           | shoo wrote:
           | give the people who will live and work in the space ability
           | to locally control the design, as espoused by Christopher
           | Alexander.
           | 
           | that means getting the end users out in the field and
           | teaching them how to build or customise the system to meet
           | their needs using simpler and cheaper traditional materials.
           | maybe perl, javascript, wordpress. maybe excel. maybe bash &
           | cron. smother those high modernist RSI-inducing SaaS user
           | interfaces with a layer of malleable user-written robotic
           | process automation.
        
         | maborowsky wrote:
         | I think it's less about the specific architectural style and
         | more about if the building itself is designed well. There are
         | both good and bad "modern" buildings. For example, I think the
         | Seagram building is beautiful, but I don't like a lot of the
         | buildings that ripped off its style. Most buildings I see
         | attributed to a "modernist" style are actually just cheap ugly
         | buildings.
         | 
         | Furthermore, when we see old buildings there is a lot of
         | survival bias going on.
        
         | DocTomoe wrote:
         | Turns out that people who dislike brutalist living silos are
         | often also the same people who think we have a housing crisis.
         | You can't have everyone live in Bath unless you demolish it and
         | put Pruitt-Igoe 2.0 onto it. And as you've correctly pointed
         | out: what then would be the attraction of any desirable place?
        
           | swayvil wrote:
           | The problem is too many people.
           | 
           | The question is, what horrible dystopian method are we gonna
           | use for those who insist on breeding like rats?
           | 
           | Forced sterilization? Containment ghettos? Euthanasia
           | squads?...
           | 
           | Yes, scary. But so are megablocks.
        
             | btbuildem wrote:
             | Education of girls and young women. That's it. That's the
             | biggest ROI.
        
             | beecafe wrote:
             | You should take the first step and kill yourself. Then we
             | can talk about what others should do.
        
               | swayvil wrote:
               | The first step is to practice a little self-restraint
               | with the baby-making, obviously.
        
               | yywwbbn wrote:
               | Name a single developed country where to high birth rates
               | are an issue? What? You can't?
        
               | swayvil wrote:
               | Well usa is getting pretty packed. Visit any big city and
               | it's all giant concrete hives and special roads so we can
               | crawl over each other.
        
               | snapcaster wrote:
               | From your comments I think I understand your feelings on
               | this issue, but please understand that you're ignoring
               | reality and getting upset about something that isn't even
               | happening. The population is dropping in many developed
               | countries and fertility rates are plummeting. The world
               | with fewer humans you seem to seek is already happening.
        
               | vidarh wrote:
               | The US is 185th of 248th on Wikipedia's list of countries
               | and dependencies by population density [1], and the US'
               | fertility rate is _well below replacement_ at less than
               | 1.8 [2] (replacement is ca. 2.1), and hasn 't exceeded
               | replacement since 1972, which would imply US population
               | growth is down to immigration.
               | 
               | Your statement is also pretty nonsensical. If you visit
               | the highest density spots in a country, then it's
               | naturally going to be high density, and that tells you
               | absolutely nothing about the overall density of the
               | country.
               | 
               | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_d
               | ependen...
               | 
               | [2] https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-
               | states/fert...
        
               | vidarh wrote:
               | Just telling people to exercise self-restraint as a means
               | to reduce fertility rates has historically never worked
               | anywhere.
        
             | hikingsimulator wrote:
             | Bravo, you'll make Malthus and eugenics peddlers proud...
        
               | swayvil wrote:
               | Then offer a better solution.
               | 
               | Because humans stacked 1000 per acre emitting rivers of
               | sewage is pretty bad too. If it wasn't so normal it would
               | be hellish.
        
               | hikingsimulator wrote:
               | Why would I offer a solution to a problem that is non-
               | existent. The world will have less population by the end
               | of the century.
               | 
               | You would make a more cogent point if instead you were
               | asking about policies improving the quality of life of
               | future people instead of defending genocidal ideas. Sadly
               | you don't.
        
               | swayvil wrote:
               | First you tell me that my horrible solutions are
               | horrible. Then you tell me that there isn't a problem.
               | Your end seems to be the unreasonable one.
        
               | 8note wrote:
               | Your solutions are bad because they are trying to solve
               | problems that don't exist.
               | 
               | Before you start on a solution, understand your
               | requirements and existing state of the art
        
             | vidarh wrote:
             | The question is rather, what (possibly horrible, dystopian)
             | methods will we use to prevent a demographic crisis _as
             | fertility rates are plummeting most places in the world_ ,
             | as most projections now suggest population decline will
             | start within a century.
             | 
             | Turns out the method that have worked the best against
             | "those who insist on breeding like rats" is to treat them
             | humanely, reduce childhood mortality, increase education
             | and provide a more stable economic environment - do that
             | and fertility rates plummet - with or without additional
             | pressure like China's infamous one-child policy.
             | 
             | As it stands, China is set to face decline within a decade
             | or two despite having dropped their previous draconian
             | measures to reduce fertility rates - their fertility rates
             | are now slowly increasing, but they're still far below
             | replacement. India is set to see decline ~3-4 decades later
             | - they're now about at replacement, with fertility still
             | dropping, but there's a lag of a few of decades from the
             | decrease in fertility to population decline. Sub-saharan
             | Africa will likely be last, but even those countries are
             | seeing declining birth rates (e.g. even Niger, which has
             | one of, if not the, highest fertility rates in the world is
             | at around 6.6 births per woman now, but the rate peaked at
             | 7.9 in 1983 and has been declining consistently since,
             | currently at a rate of about 1.3% a year; UN projections
             | suggest they'll reach ~4 by 2050, and around ~2.3, slightly
             | above replacement, around year 2100)
             | 
             | As a result, expect countries to start competing for
             | immigrants, and to start increasingly desperate attempts to
             | get people to have more children. E.g. China has gone from
             | it's one-child policy to allowing three [1] in an attempt
             | to stem the coming decline, with only little effect so far,
             | and you can expect China will see additional policy changes
             | to try to drive the fertility rates back up.
             | 
             | [1] https://www.eastasiaforum.org/2021/06/07/chinas-
             | declining-po...
        
             | somewhereoutth wrote:
             | This is a solved problem - provide education and
             | empowerment for women. This is why advanced societies are
             | seeing flat birth rates (indeed often declining).
        
           | orthoxerox wrote:
           | Why not build more Baths next to the old one instead?
        
             | burlesona wrote:
             | I don't know about building codes in Britain, but in almost
             | all of the US it would be illegal to build a carbon copy of
             | the beloved older cities we have, because huge roads,
             | parking lots, and setbacks are all mandatory.
        
               | julz_hk wrote:
               | And of course, these short-sighted car-centric ideas are
               | all part of the problem.
               | 
               | In North America there are planners and activists trying
               | to change this[1] & world-wide, planners can achieve
               | walkable, people-centric urban planning [2].
               | 
               | [1] - https://www.strongtowns.org
               | 
               | [2] - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0intLFzLaudFG-
               | xAvUEO-A
        
             | DocTomoe wrote:
             | The Chinese did that. They ended up with still-overcrowded
             | megacities and completely empty "new towns", which often
             | featured fake, "beautifully" old architecture. It turns out
             | that people don't just want affordable housing or nice
             | surroundings, they also want pre-existing culture,
             | something banlieus often lack.
             | 
             | See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Under-
             | occupied_developments_in...
        
           | [deleted]
        
         | api wrote:
         | High modernists are like the somewhat narcissistic recluse
         | programmer who thinks everything is crap. They shut themselves
         | in and rewrite everything in their own superior paradigm
         | without bothering to look at any real world use case or ask
         | anyone anything. Then they're surprised that nobody uses what
         | they built.
        
           | a-dub wrote:
           | "dude. i know that's not what it's supposed to do, but
           | actually it's better. it's a feature, not a bug. no, no. it's
           | not shitty, and no i'm not refactoring it and neither are
           | you. it works better and they'll never be able to fire us.
           | it's like jane jacobs and shit. leave it alone. the bits are
           | happy."
        
             | snapcaster wrote:
             | haha, great comment. This whole thread is full of people
             | who enjoyed Seeing Like a State loving the discussion
        
             | shoo wrote:
             | this module is a thriving, multi-use community of
             | interacting concerns and responsibilities. yes, it would be
             | more legible to central administrators like us if we
             | evicted all the requirements and implementation details,
             | paved it over, then redeveloped it into a high modernist
             | Corbusian hexagonal microservices architecture. but truly,
             | who would want to live or work inside such a bleak module
             | structure, where instead of simply nipping downstairs to
             | share surplus resources with unrelated business logic in
             | the parent stack frame, you would have to traverse through
             | endless tiers of serialization, transit, deserialization &
             | be subjected to endless authoritarian checkpoints for
             | authorisation by central authorities?
        
           | Oarch wrote:
           | As a (software) developer and (building) architect I like
           | this analogy a lot.
        
       | Linda703 wrote:
        
       | nemo44x wrote:
       | Even the Nazis weren't this ambitious once they took Paris.
       | Yikes.
        
         | DocTomoe wrote:
         | In fact, the Nazis tried to not damage Paris too much because
         | Hitler liked the architecture.
         | 
         | (Yes, when the Americans came, the plan was to demolish the
         | city. But that was much later).
        
       | a-dub wrote:
       | it's kinda like the silver towers at stuyvesant town scale with
       | freeway revolt era transit.
       | 
       | interesting to read that freewayifying the urban cores wasn't
       | just an american obsession (although this seems to predate the
       | american phenomenon by about 30 years).
       | 
       | i wonder how far it got? was there a french cognate to the
       | freeway revolt? iirc, paris already has some of the highest
       | housing density in the world.
        
       | lelag wrote:
       | I love how even the statue facepalm at the end...
        
       | OpieCunningham wrote:
       | Le Corbusier, a pioneer of YIMBYism.
       | 
       | To be fair, housing costs in Paris would be much more reasonable,
       | both due to such a glut of housing and the subsequent decreased
       | interest in living there.
        
         | adolph wrote:
         | Destroy the village in order to save it
         | 
         | http://www.thisdayinquotes.com/2010/02/it-became-necessary-t...
        
         | wardedVibe wrote:
         | What? No, advocating for destroying the old world and remaking
         | it according to a"scientific" vision isn't particularly yimby.
         | Ymimby is about not banning people from doing what they want
         | with their property.
        
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