Re:The Case for 'Dumb' Cities
by hyperion2010 on Wednesday July 17, 2019 @01:37AM
(#20456780)
I agree completely. Planned communities (top down?) have failed repeatedly (for a variety of reasons). The kind of planning and design I am talking about is the design of local rules (bottom up?), such as the order in which you put cars, parked cars, bycicles (and friends), and peds. Another example would be about the zoning around university campuses and how they interact, or don't with public transportation. The difference between US vs EU for these two cases and the results of the differences is quite revealing.
in other words, designing a smart city is actually just as much top-down as any planned community. and what we really need is for each community to decide for themselves which technology they pick to improve their lives
Re:The Case for 'Dumb' Cities
by notfromhere on Wednesday July 17, 2019 @04:46PM
(#20463817)
desire paths, but for urban planning. Plus, the whole development model since post-ww2 has basically been a veiled ponzi scheme
The history of city planning is littered with failed examples. In America, freeing everyone from the vapors by separating them in the free, open countryside mostly led to people being trapped in their cars in traffic because they had to drive to get anywhere. Demolishing slums and shoving everyone into spacious housing projects mostly led to isolation and ghettoisation. And even the mere act of requiring parking has separated everything with inhospitable parking lots, making it a requirement to drive to do anything.
Arguably the most successful large cities did very well with low amounts of planning; Manhattan's famous grid was literally imaginary roads plotted onto a map, without a care for what would fill in the gaps. Planned cities are like the manicured lawn; they look pretty but they don't really support any actual life. The wilderness is chaotic and messy but it supports incredible biodiversity.