You can't just plop down a fully-furnished city on some unpopulated plot of land and expect anyone to move there. China as you say is trying this, but some of these are basically ghost towns on arrival, despite the massive top-down planning and investment. [1]
Any realistic plan for urban development reform is going to have to work with what exists currently. If you want to create a "demonstration" city from scratch, much faster and cheaper to do it virtually and simulate it.
1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiTDU8MZRYw
Edit: wording
One of the problem with them is that the town itself wasn't compelling enough for people to stay when the primary industry dried up. I think any from-scratch city will need to be very well designed and balanced with features that actually make people want to live there, not just need to because of jobs.
This is where walkable streets, great mass transit, parks, and room for the types of businesses that people actively love (the smaller cafes, shops, venues, etc.) matter most.
At least one major university is critical too, and those can be ramped up rather quickly. UC Merced is only 15 years old with a student population of over 8000.
The lesson being that any city needs a healthy economic ecosystem representing multiple industries in order to sustainably survive, or else it will share Flint's fate.
On a more human side, I worked briefly with some of the people in Flint's startup community and was massively impressed with the optimism and attitude of the people there in the face of their economic situation. It was very inspiring, and I sincerely hope that the state of Michigan is able to manage that city better and leverage what strengths it has and will have in the future.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint,_Michigan 2: https://thumbwind.com/2018/12/07/saginaw-trail/
They are ghost towns on arrival for two reasons.
1. The employer base (say, government ministries) have not yet moved out of their current locations into the newly built cities. They are planned to in the future - and many former ghost cities are now bustling.
2. China has hundreds of millions of people who are trying to stop being subsistence farmers, and urbanize. It's an absolutely unprecedented demographic shift, anywhere in the world. This is a proactive solution for dealing with what would otherwise be the world's biggest housing crunch.
But the scale China works at is mind boggling and I couldn't hope to say I could "build a city" better.
Because you would probably never make the same trade-offs they do. In the USA we are a little cavalier about eminent domain. In China, the practices go beyond brutal and straight to the inhumane. They will happily displace entire villages to get the job done, and they don’t worry too much about the details of where people end up or how they get compensated.
They also make choices that would be baffling here in the west. For example, they frequently do absolutely nothing to maintain new developments, and often those developments are of unbelievably low quality. With in a year or two, many of them look like they have been crumbling for decades.
Source: Asian family, real estate investments in China.
Building the pyramids and the great wall and many other "wonders" took literally slave labor for multiple lifetimes and yet somehow people still admire these "achievements". (They have lasted however!)
They need a city, or ten. Not an outhouse. There is no way to build a city and make everyone happy. Do I think they do it best? No, obviously not.
But the Western world would be bogged down in NIMBYism while the chinese engineered cities are built and done.
As for quality... I saw a few things on my holiday trip to China many years ago so I don't doubt poor quality is a thing.
But here in Australia any high rise apartment building built in the past ten years in Sydney or Melbourne is now suspect due to dodgy building practices too. Maybe the building is fine. Maybe it isn't. But they are all tainted with suspicion.
So while I think the Western world still has the edge on China in quality, it is a slippery slope when "homes" are in a market to "make money" rather than "house people".
The planned cities in China are basically big buildings. Would you move into a building that is still in construction? No, you would not. Once it's finished you still need people to move in. That's not something that happens immediately. You have to wait a decade and then you'll see that those ghost towns are not ghost towns at all. It's a common misconception.
The real difference between China and the USA is that there are lots of rural migrants within China looking for an urban place to settle down.
I was really excited for Shenzen but it sadly got demoted from up and coming international center to... whatever it is in todays political climate.
When Boulder Dam was built, the government built Boulder City to house the workers. Being a government city, gambling wasn't allowed. But Vegas was just over the hill and filled that desire for the workers.
When the railroads switched to diesel and didn't need the water stop anymore, Vegas was already established as a gambling destination.
The spring still flows, and is part of a tiny state park in downtown Las Vegas.
And Boulder City is still the only place in Nevada where gambling is illegal.
Just a guess.
I had a friend who studied geo economics (or something like that)
Basically: why do cities build around mountains, rivers etc and why do citizens s build "clusters" of expertise. Like a city full of indie developers.
To make it short: ylu just can't build planned cities.
If you want a dense city, you want green roofs - with access. Land in a city is too valuable to waste on solar - stick that stuff out in the desert where nobody wants to be.
> Cut-and-cover highway tunnels
Take an existing dense city like Manhattan and build a new platform above the roads. Existing ground floor becomes basement, new platforms become park/pavements/plazas rather than for cars and trucks. Cities rise anyway - look at down town Seatle for a high speed example, but if you go to old cities in the UK, say Cambridge, and look at buildings 1000 years old, they're a significant drop down from today's "ground level".
Or, if you’re someplace like 1850-1860s Chicago, you just lift the entire city up a few feet to create a new ground level. This too was for infrastructure reasons, but instead of transportation, it was for a sewer/drainage system.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_of_Chicago
This then repeated itself in Chicago (and elsewhere). In the twentieth century, buildings were constructed over existing (and working) rail lines. These are existing example of using air rights to hide infrastructure to make the rest of the city more livable.
https://www.chipublib.org/blogs/post/technology-that-changed...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_rights
Even more recently, capping a highway was proposed by Cincinnati in their bid for Amazon’s HQ2.
https://cincinnatiideas.com/2017/09/25/how-cincinnati-could-...
Thinking about what I've seen so far I doubt it. What is the meaning of "public access" here? Gated, guarded and "operated" spaces, where you need to be paying customer for some venue, or buying a ticket?
The places themselves fenced/glass walled in to discourage suicides, stupid people throwing things down from high up, even if "only" a coin?
I mean, look at anything which comes to your mind right now, where people can go high above anything else where other people are below them. It varies, but often it is heavily fenced/walled to protect the people below.
And lastly, think of "reckless youth", and how groups/gangs of them tend to ... err ... impose dominance over places they consider "theirs".
Would you want to be there?
I don't recognize this gang thing, maybe because I don't live in a dense city (and don't recognize the attraction of it)
The problem with the states you mention is that they're also very dry. Water will be the resource issue of the 21st century (it already is becoming so); the place you want to be looking is the Great Lakes area (and, probably, specifically within the drainage basin of the Great Lakes so you don't run afoul of the interstate water compact).
Actually, not so much. There's a lot of water in the lakes, but it's not being replaced quickly. Lake superior actually has a mean retention time of 191 years. If a lot of people start drawing water out, the lake will shrink.
Also, the water resources compact is international, not just between states, and even being in the states' area doesn't mean you can source water from the lakes.
This is only expected to get worse as sea levels rise and the lakes can't drain as effectively into the Saint Lawrence Seaway.
https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2020/07/17/g...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/28/hong-kong-prop...
[EDIT] and no, I don't have a link, I lost the URL years back and have repeatedly tried to find it again, failing every time.
Maybe "zone" them in ways which allows for many tiny oasis in the deserts of asphalt, concrete, steel and glass?
Like Brasilia:
http://tourplans.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/brasilia-cap...
https://brasiliaarch638.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/aerea200...
High-rises but tons of wasted space. If they'd just put in a normal allocation of space for parks & plazas and right-sized roads the whole city could be much smaller and everyone would be fairly close to the actual countryside, not just unpleasant strips of green between wide roads.
Once you start looking for it in concept-art type city plans, it's everywhere: way too much purposeless, empty space, mostly in the form of non-park green spaces and too-wide streets and sidewalks. And if you have all those problems, in a real city at least, then you need a ton more parking, because nothing's walkable and the buses are slow (because everything's so far apart), and that's even more wasted space.
Work in our city and get a $20,000 federal tax write off...?
California won't allow building a park bench there, much less a new major city.
California is a state. You might be thinking of Marin county, which surrounds only about 12 miles of the 101 freeway, so this is nonsense from multiple angles.
I'll repeat my answer with less sarcasm: Because building new cities there is not legally allowed. It's physically, but not regulatorily possible.
Any large construction needs to go an approval process, the article talks about the same thing. This article is about a giant project, the point isn't about any single place that would be more or less resistant. It is about the fact that large amounts of unused land with close proximity to major cities is common.
I think this is part of building to a larger initial scale and using partnerships to bootstrap the city.
If you think about what features a thriving major city has, and which of those might be seeds to populations, things like universities and community colleges, large corporate campuses (if those ever matter again), and transportation/logistics hubs could be very good draws. Plus you'll need housing for the construction workers, food and services for them, etc.
I would imagine that in the unlikely future of something like this happening, there would be major investors from philanthropists, corporations, that would help start the seed institutions as well.
It's been a while since a billionaire started a new prestigious university with their name on it. Maybe Bezos, Buffett, or Page is game.
Maybe Google or Amazon wants a new campus that's designed for a partial work-from-home employees and near suitable WFH housing with easy transportation to campus?
One thing to keep in mind is that the centrally-planned Chinese cities that were criticized as ghost towns are now populated. Housing is expensive, and if there's a place with available housing, it'll likely be filled.
Cynically, China could do it but not many places else have the ability, certainly not the US.
First step, don't build in the US nor any country with strong property rights nor a free citizenry. You need a place where control of the project is not going to get stuck in the courts of law or public opinion. This same place would need sufficient funds to pull it off and the desire to do so if it gained the leadership sufficient fame. As in, you need a China or similar.
I had a nice long reason for why it could never happen in the US but you can summarize it as, politicians and special interest groups would dictate every thing either directly, intimidation, or through the courts.
IDK how you keep such a city from dilapidating though.
Federal or state agencies could be an option.
And at some point the "others" (read: the rest of the country) will not want to pay to fund the cool new city.
But the city is not for free. UBI is just enough to pay for a basic life. If you want to eat great food, have a nice house or want to impress your friends or send your kids to a good school, money is needed. Money, that comes from taxable activities.
The advantage of UBI is that there are no homeless people, no beggars, no petty crimes, no robberies. There is no excuse for robbing somebody because it clearly is a move to get luxuries. Punishment can be harsh, including expulsion from the city.
Thus you have a friendly city where people can create value the most efficient way.
All the people who don't create taxable value still create value. They create the network effect of the city and they manage the focus of the production processes. Somebody has to be an early adopter of a new restaurant or a new service. Who is better suited than somebody who has an entire day to spend?
After all, money that is spent in the city is not lost. The only problem is spending money on external goods which can be managed by taxing imports.
But you need the import (of money, specifically) to run the city for the people who live there on UBI. I don't believe that UBI will ever be self-sustaining, but I'd love to see an experiment that tries to prove me wrong. For now, they're all like "free energy machines" that are plugged into a wall socket: outside funding paying for the UBI. But that doesn't help, because you need self-sustainability, or you'll need an external work-force slaving away for your luxury not to work. And I'm pretty sure that external work-force won't be too happy about that.
The premise of UBI is that it creates a more productive society. If there is no possibility to be self-sustained, why implement it? However, if there is the possibility, then funding is possible because you can sell future surpluses for external current currencies and get the city going.
As far as I know, there have been ancient UBI societies, like Persia and Egypt where everybody received free grain.
Don't forget that luxury is the tool of kings to show their power. On one hand, kings live in luxury, but they still keep working. On the other hand, not working stops being a status symbol and a luxury if common people do it by default in a UBI society.
UBI is like heat pumps: you don't use the energy of the wall socket to create heat or cold, but you use it to move energy from one area to another. That way, you create a net surplus. With UBI, people stop worrying. All that mental energy is used to create value. The insight needed for a UBI city is the ability to tax it.
Money is a placeholder for value, not just paper. Like the "free energy machine" that's plugged into the wall socket: the power that flows from the wall socket is what drives it.
> The premise of UBI is that it creates a more productive society. If there is no possibility to be self-sustained, why implement it?
There is a possibility, there's a possibility for humans evolving telepathy. It's just not a certainty, and the probability isn't too high. But it's easy to test: get a bunch of people together that believe in it, make an agreement to pool some amount of resources and then pay out a UBI to each person. If it raises productivity, it's a big win for anyone involved.
If "free grain" is a "UBI society", then we're far beyond UBI already. In most of Europe, you'll receive an apartment, food, clothes, utilities, transportation, tv etc. That's 2020 reality. As far as I understand, the point of UBI is to go beyond that because these basics are seen as limiting.
> With UBI, people stop worrying.
Primarily, they stop working. We already have too many who are quite alright with the welfare they receive and prefer not to work. I really don't want to expand the number, because it just increases the work load for the rest.
Where can you live that life without being an outcast? People in need get Basic Income, but it is not Universal. You have to trick the system if you want to get it indefinitely.
>As far as I understand, the point of UBI is to go beyond that because these basics are seen as limiting.
Of course they are limiting. That's why UBI works. As you have analysed correctly, you would have to enslave other people if you want more.
Thus, people don't stop working, because there is always something that isn't covered by UBI.
>Primarily, they stop working. We already have too many who are quite alright with the welfare they receive and prefer not to work. I really don't want to expand the number, because it just increases the work load for the rest.
Don't forget that you need people to decide who is eligible for welfare and who isn't. In an UBI society, those people could do something else and reduce the work load for everybody else. Basic resources are cheap and get cheaper with more automation. At one point, you will be able feed the entire world from the work of a few persons.
Germany, for example. Yeah, sure, on paper you have to be "looking for work", but it's really on paper only.
> In an UBI society, those people could do something else and reduce the work load for everybody else.
They won't though. I live in a mixed income apartment complex, including lots of people on perpetual welfare with no desire to change their situation.
I keep reading about UBI from well-meaning people who explain how it will totally work and I believe that they actually believe that. I also believe that they have no experience with the people that live off of government transfers not because of necessity but because of laziness. It's enough for a nice apartment (50+ square meters for one person), a flat screen TV, an X-Box, a smart phone, internet, food, cigarettes and the occasional alcoholic beverage, healthcare etc included obviously. And that's enough for quite a significant amount of people. They won't "make the world better" if you give them more money, they'll just buy a bigger TV and throw more parties.
> At one point, you will be able feed the entire world from the work of a few persons.
Possibly. Let's talk about UBI when we're there. We're not, we're not close, and we won't be for decades, unless you're talking about 4 square meters per person and 2500 calories of nutrious slime with no extras. And nobody is talking about that.
Drop UBI and replace it with a job guarantee and you'll have my attention. That gets you essentially the same: everybody has enough, but it doesn't come with the moral hazards. On the other hand, it also doesn't reward the lazy.
>>In an UBI society, those people could do something else
I meant that the administrative layer could be used for other processes than managing welfare.
Why bother how many people don't work? There are 9 billions on this world. Even if 8 billions don't work, you can still run societies with 1 billion.
>we're not close,
Check how many people have to work on farms to create food. We are at a point where providing basic stuff is possible.
>unless you're talking about 4 square meters per person and 2500 calories of nutrious slime with no extras.
Why not? It doesn't have to be slime. Fast food, cereals, sweets, people actually crave cheap food. On the other hand, offering healthy cheap slime with all nutritions, if you look at soylent, that's something people are actually paying for.
Likewise, 50 square meters don't have to be expensive.
With UBI, you cannot make scarce resources affordable to everybody. On the other hand, you can make UBI affordable by reducing the costs of basic goods. If people can live on $100 a month, in a society with an average pre-tax income of $3000, then one working person can take care of 10 non-working citizens.
>Drop UBI and replace it with a job guarantee and you'll have my attention.
There is no way that a government can create meaningful jobs. How cruel is a society where 90% of people only earn the money to buy nutrious slime after having worked on a meaningless job for 8 hours? Allow those people to stay at home and come up with better ways to spend their time. Even if they just play video games, that's less corrupting for the entire society than forcing them to shovel gravel from one ditch into another. They are essentially prisoners and a society is best judged by the way it treats its prisoners.
Life will be better for everybody because the people who work, they know that it is their choice.
- instead of cars, have a car cabin with standardised externals. Like a tiny shipping container with windows and aircon.
- self driving and loading vehicles and railways take your cabin where you want to go and park it when you get there.
- your cabin is treated like a packet on the transport network
I don't have an issue with unwashed masses. But many people do so I would absolutely see that as a benefit. Especially apparent during COVID times.
But the idea is to see beyond "self driving cars".
If you jump in a car and just wait for your arrival, why not jump into a car-like cabin and let the transport network figure out the most efficient way to get you from A-B. Including use of rail where that works. Why not flights too?
Obviously this is fantasy stuff, but we're talking about fantasy cities here of which transport is a big part.
Once you have "transport as a service" that is as good as cars(door-to-door), you can then design cities with more walking spaces in mind too. For those inclined to mingle with the unwashed masses. :-P
Instead of train stations you have railgun station funnels and personal "coffin gliders":
- Railgun shoots you to your destination.
- The coffin/glider employs "smart bomb" like guidance
- Similar "railgun like" device to capture the energy when you land.(Think regenerative braking like in cars).
New suburb developed? No requirement for laying track or organising trains or schedules. Just program the new longitude/latitude/altitude coordinates and shoot 'em there!
But my idea doesn't keep you young. I love your solution being the answer to "I am wasting my life in commute"!
I came to the realization that to build something this large you need to be a billionaire to start with. Problem is, most billionaires probably don't have a good idea of why or how to do this in the first place.
Today, many years later, I most certainly would not want to live in a place like that.
Do a google for the concept of "arcologies".
Think: if you didn't have to worry about work or money, and could live 'anywhere' - where would it be? Almost all of the aspirational places are not 'planned'. They're generally made before cars and therefore 'human sized'.
Do you fantasise about living in the suburbs (ie generally more planned?) probably not. People live there because of space, lower prices, but not because they're otherwise idyllic.
Some 'nice things' we get from 'planning' (more consistent rooftop solar) would be overwhelmed by all the inhuman artefacts.
Most places in W. Europe offer 'good living standards' - beautiful and 'postcard idyllic' situations that go on and on and on. (The jobs are lacking, but not civic beauty).
If we can somehow figure out transport without cars, and get a lot of the ugly infrastructure 'out of the way' - that would be nice. But otherwise, we already know how to make 'human sized' places.
Edit: I should add, nobody wants to move to such planned cities, unless they are implored by their condition to seek opportunity, i.e. jobs. People in happy situations don't seek this out.
If people already know how to make 'human sized places' wouldn't that imply planning?
No, it's what arises from a lack of planning when you let individual or small groups of humans build structures that fit their needs without too much meddling. A shop owner builds a shop the way he wants it to be. The apartment building next door is built the way that apartment building owner wants it to be.
There's no central committee forcing them to adhere to a grand central plan that makes everything look alike. That's how you end up with varied, idiosyncratic architecture that has personality instead of the vast, lifeless spaces that were designed by committee to be all things to all people and end up being nothing to no one.
There does have to be some central coordination to help mediate disputes and ensure one person doesn't infringe too much on others, but it should be minimal.
Your comment seems to be about aesthetics, but it makes no sense. Do you think shop owners usually build the buildings they inhabit? No one mentioned a uniform look and it has nothing to do with anything. It is completely orthogonal.
There's a lot of space in Montana, Wyoming, the Dakaotas, and we'll need more space for population there as we have to migrate north.