Re:Let's Build a Traditional City and Make a Profit
by bane on Thursday July 31, 2014 @09:34AM
(#8113923)
Old cities are kind of like trees, rings after rings after rings. If you look at one from far away, you can make some solid guesses as to when each "ring" of the city was built because the roads get wider and tend to get better organized as they optimize for logistics costs.
Look at Barcelona. It's a Roman colonial town so it's old. Can you guess which part was built first? How about which parts were built in the 18th 19th and 20th centuries?
As nice as the medieval quarter is for shopping, nobody really wanted to continue on with that kind of plan. By the 19th century (before cars) you ended up with a grid of broad roads and open boulevards. These things didn't happen to accommodate cars, they happened because medieval city plans scale poorly. It turns out cars fit really nicely within this plan.
Look at London. With 1/3rd the population density of Barcelona, it's cramped, and tight everywhere. Basic logistics costs are high because getting goods into and out of the city is difficult and time consuming. It's one of those weird cities that developed right along the traditional medieval plan like what's being advocated here and it's an expensive cramped and often unpleasant place to live. Even if London suddenly started building up and increasing density, the city road system couldn't handle it. It has to spread out because this kind of city plan scales poorly.
In some very old towns, ones that never really continued to develop, so they're left with the medieval "bones". Getting things like groceries to the shops is a circus of people physically moving hand trucks throughout the city. What's more expensive? 50 trips back and forth throughout the city with handtrucks? Or backing a truck up to a loading dock and spending 15 minutes unloading a few palettes of goods?
Other than tourists, this is why nobody likes to live in Venice, despite it being one of the specific examples given here as a model city. In the slow seasons, Venice is one of the most beautiful, walkable cities in the world. It's perfectly human scale. But it's a terrible, expensive place to live because every item in your local grocer had to be hand carried there.
> If it were, I would assume that living in one of those places would be cheaper than living in other places
Expense isn't just because of popularity. There are fixed costs to existing in places. Just like it's very expensive to live on an island, despite there being relatively few people there. These kinds of city plans are inherently expensive, they create almost an island in a way.
However, cities have other benefits, mostly in terms of job availability, and that attracts people to them. Because earning money can outweigh almost any other downside.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Barcelona,+Spain/@41.39479...
Look at Barcelona. It's a Roman colonial town so it's old. Can you guess which part was built first? How about which parts were built in the 18th 19th and 20th centuries?
As nice as the medieval quarter is for shopping, nobody really wanted to continue on with that kind of plan. By the 19th century (before cars) you ended up with a grid of broad roads and open boulevards. These things didn't happen to accommodate cars, they happened because medieval city plans scale poorly. It turns out cars fit really nicely within this plan.
Look at London. With 1/3rd the population density of Barcelona, it's cramped, and tight everywhere. Basic logistics costs are high because getting goods into and out of the city is difficult and time consuming. It's one of those weird cities that developed right along the traditional medieval plan like what's being advocated here and it's an expensive cramped and often unpleasant place to live. Even if London suddenly started building up and increasing density, the city road system couldn't handle it. It has to spread out because this kind of city plan scales poorly.
In some very old towns, ones that never really continued to develop, so they're left with the medieval "bones". Getting things like groceries to the shops is a circus of people physically moving hand trucks throughout the city. What's more expensive? 50 trips back and forth throughout the city with handtrucks? Or backing a truck up to a loading dock and spending 15 minutes unloading a few palettes of goods?
Other than tourists, this is why nobody likes to live in Venice, despite it being one of the specific examples given here as a model city. In the slow seasons, Venice is one of the most beautiful, walkable cities in the world. It's perfectly human scale. But it's a terrible, expensive place to live because every item in your local grocer had to be hand carried there.
> If it were, I would assume that living in one of those places would be cheaper than living in other places
Expense isn't just because of popularity. There are fixed costs to existing in places. Just like it's very expensive to live on an island, despite there being relatively few people there. These kinds of city plans are inherently expensive, they create almost an island in a way.
However, cities have other benefits, mostly in terms of job availability, and that attracts people to them. Because earning money can outweigh almost any other downside.