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Cities of the Future


Ranxerox

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I recently saw the movie Aeon Flux and while I found the movie to just okay, I really liked the fictional city in which it is set, Bregna. Bregna is pretty much the exact opposite of the city from Blade Runner. It is clean, elegant and its technology, rather than being in your face, has made itself all but invisible.

 

Even though I thought Bregna was cool, it doesn't seem like a very realistic city of the future to me. It was too elegant. Elegance is something that people like to visit, not somewhere that they really want to live. Somehow, I don't see the the mere passage of 3 or 4 centuries changing that about us as a specie.

 

So, I'm posing the question, 'What will cities look like in three hundred years?'

 

Will the rise of virtual spaces diminish the need for people to congregate in actaul physical space so that large cities become less common, or will improvements in building technology and transportation herald in an age of megalopolii? Will humanity strive for elegance or continue to wallow in the tacky? And most importantly, what cool new gadgets and features will the cities of the future have?

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Re: Cities of the Future

 

Depends a lot on what technology you think will be available, and if you think we will be building new cities, rather than just continuing to occupy and modify existing ones.

 

I think that what a (new) city looks like is largely determined by how people, goods, and utilities get moved.

 

If your technology includes Cheap, safe teleportation and cheap, decentralized power generation, then cities have a good chance of becoming relics. People might still live in them, but only because they have been living in them.

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There are technological/architectural movements that aim at trying to improve the livability of cities. The New Urbanist movement is an example of one such movement. They are approaching the issue from a number of angles. Some are approaching in terms of esthetics, others are approaching in terms of technology. Interestingly enough, there is some convergence here and there.

 

One issue is that of skyscrapers. There's a number of folks who believe that skyscrapers should be mostly banned in cities, period. They blot out the sky, which doesn't do much good for mental health when you deprive people of sunlight. Not to mention living around supertall buildings can be psychologically uncomfortable as well. They tend to favor a four story limit for most buildings, with the occasional monument/platform such as the Space Needle. They hate the concrete canyons that a lot of cities have now.

 

Incidentally, they also tend to figure that it's better to keep to a minimum the number of buildings below four stories. The net result is a certain amount of compactification which is less dense than overcrowded modern cities but isn't quite as spread thin as modern suburbs.

 

Then there is the issue of cars and public transportation. Again there are folks converging on a common idea from opposing directions. From the esthetic side, a lot of people prefer the winding cobblestone streets of pre-industrial cities for esthetic reasons, and then there are those engineers who observe that a properly built intracity rail system (with freight as well as passenger lines) would do a lot to handle current problems of congestion in the transportation infrastructure.

 

Of course these folks also are aware that you can overload a transportation grid as well. The more advanced urban designers are trying to work out the upper limit to what a rail network "hub" can handle without congestion like you have on the Tokyo subways. The idea is that you break up major cities into smaller hubs and then link the hubs together by high speed express rail.

 

The result of these proposed renovations would be an interesting combination of pre-industrial and post-industrial cities. The scale of the buildings and the layout of the surface streets would be much more like that of pre-industrial cities. The transportation infrastructure, an underground rail network would be post-industrial, as well as a number of other infrastructures.

 

There are a lot of interesting things out there. In southeast asia, they're starting to deal with the problem of power brownouts caused by air conditioning by going to municipal air conditioning plants. Instead of everyone having their own air conditioner, they have a cooling plant located in the city that pumps out very cold water in underground pipes to major buildings, which use heat exchangers to cool off the buildings. All the power drainage and waste heat generated is in a single spot the city infrastructure can be adapted to. Economies of scale make it economical for the businesses as well.

 

On the subject of homes, incidentally, there is also an architectural movement that is a reaction to the excesses of modern home architecture. There are a number of architects who think that modern homes are oversized and in general badly designed. Rooms are too large and too many rooms are more or less dead space most of the time. The result is that people often feel like they're living in caverns. Also, though various rooms are often designed for various things, often the way that people use their space is totally at odds with the official design intention.

 

The response is a shift towards smaller homes with a view towards how people actually live. Rooms tend to be multifunctional, with an eye towards allowing different people to do different things in the same room, bringing a family together even if they're doing different activities. Things are smaller but more decorative. Instead of huge blank walls with the occasional rectangular window there are smaller walls with more decorative windows and so on.

 

Most of the above is a general outgrowth of ergonomics and breaking away from simple "bigger is better" ideas. Yes, you can build mile-high buildings, but is it what people really want? The idea is to build homes and buildings and even cities that are esthetically attractive and psychologically comfortable for people, eliminating a lot of infrastructure problems that current cities currently have.

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Re: Cities of the Future

 

Unfortunately all the prime locations already have cities built on them, so unless someone could afford to buy (and then demolish!) an entire city so they could rebuild it "perfectly" it will never happen. Unless a city is almost tottally destroyed by earthquake, war, flood, etc... Then you could, possibily, rebuild it with diferent building codes and laws making it "better."

 

I, personally, like skyscrapers. They make for very cool skylines and they can house a large amount of people on a small amount of land. Much, much better then urban sprawl which just keeps spreading and spreading like cancer across the land and environment.

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Unfortunately all the prime locations already have cities built on them, so unless someone could afford to buy (and then demolish!) an entire city so they could rebuild it "perfectly" it will never happen. Unless a city is almost tottally destroyed by earthquake, war, flood, etc... Then you could, possibily, rebuild it with diferent building codes and laws making it "better."

 

I, personally, like skyscrapers. They make for very cool skylines and they can house a large amount of people on a small amount of land. Much, much better then urban sprawl which just keeps spreading and spreading like cancer across the land and environment.

I have to agree with this. It seems to me that the people who don't like living in cities are the people who have never lived in big cities or never will. So restricting urban planning to only 4 story buildings just to satisfy these people (who I in general I consider ascetic/urban ludites) does seem rather limiting in general. I'd say 8-10 stories would be a better use, restrict the first 2 stories to retail, 3-4 floor to white collar offices, and the rest for residential (depending on the needs of the area, having an entire building for one company would of course be nessesary).

 

I do understand the practical problems of having buildings being too tall. I remember some architect saying that buildings over 80 stories end up being almost impossible to be profitable due to the amount of floor space taken up by elevators/stairwells needed to efficiently move people about in such large buildings.

 

This of course raises the question: Is this a hard and fast rule or have we just not developed the proper traffic flow models to design buildings that are efficient on these scales?

 

I figure if you enlarged the scale horizontally sufficently you could have multiple cities stacked on top of each other, and restrict vertical movement between say 40 floor sectors to particular central areas of these mega buildings (spanning 4-9 city blocks maybe?), so as to reduce elevator requirements overall in the building.

 

I'd agree with the general problems of residential houses getting too big for big's sake. My father's house is enormous, but for all the space, it basically comes down to being that size for it's own sake. Do you really need private baths for each bedroom in a residential home? Seriously, teach you children to timeshare and be courtious to eachother.

 

I'd rather see square footage to stabilize, but have better use of the space. Multiple storied houses with finished basements should be encouraged. I find building everything on one story and not having a basement or attic is a prime reason so many people end up having to rent outside storage areas. Have smaller rooms in the house, but add a few rooms, things like offices, media room (a room for home theater experiences), libraries, etc.. Instead of 4+ baths and 500ft^2 children's bedrooms.

 

TB

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Re: Cities of the Future

 

Depends a lot on what technology you think will be available, and if you think we will be building new cities, rather than just continuing to occupy and modify existing ones.

 

I think that what a (new) city looks like is largely determined by how people, goods, and utilities get moved.

 

If your technology includes Cheap, safe teleportation and cheap, decentralized power generation, then cities have a good chance of becoming relics. People might still live in them, but only because they have been living in them.

 

Well, of course what the form the cities take will depend on social and economic variables. Part of what I'm asking for is that you take your best guesses concerning those variables.

 

Also, I'm asking you guys to play philospher. What would constitute an ideal human city (if cities can be ideal and not just a functionality of the moment), and how much closer or further away from this ideal do you suspect humanity to be in 300 years.

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Re: Cities of the Future

 

There are technological/architectural movements that aim at trying to improve the livability of cities. The New Urbanist movement is an example of one such movement. They are approaching the issue from a number of angles. Some are approaching in terms of esthetics' date=' others are approaching in terms of technology. Interestingly enough, there is some convergence here and there.[/quote']

 

Thank you for your highly informative overview of the New Urbanist movement. Assuming these views become popular (and they sound good to me), I could see them be extremely influential in the city design during the next century. As such they could provide a guide to 'Old Town' districts in cities 300 years from now.

 

Of course todays New Urbanist will be suplanted in time in time be some other group of Young Turk architects and city planners. Maybe this new school will call itself New Ruralist, UltraUrbanist, or Subjective Experimentalist. Still, by the year 2300, the views of New Urbanist might be once again in vogue.

 

What is your best guess on this matter, Mutant for Hire?

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Re: Cities of the Future

 

I figure if you enlarged the scale horizontally sufficently you could have multiple cities stacked on top of each other, and restrict vertical movement between say 40 floor sectors to particular central areas of these mega buildings (spanning 4-9 city blocks maybe?), so as to reduce elevator requirements overall in the building.

 

TB

 

This notion is definitely cool to visualize, but what sort of light do people in the bottom cities get?

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Re: Cities of the Future

 

The big problem with packing people in high densities into small areas is the fact that your transportation grid has to be able to handle those flows of people and goods. Tokyo employs people to literally pack the rush hour subway traints to the gills. Higher densities of people mean that you're placing more and more stress on your transportation grid.

 

Again, there are reasons why there are urban engineers who work on this sort of thing focus on hub-and-spoke rail systems with a distinct upper limit to the total area supported by a single hub in order to keep the transportation grid from choking due to overload.

 

And yes, while skyscrapers form an impressive skyline from the distance, there are studies that indicate that they are not necessarily healthy to live in. Remember that a high percentage of the population suffers from the lack of sunlight in winter, and a set of skyscrapers all around can produce that effect year around. The fact is that a massive metropolis can be psychologically oppressive to live in, and why most of the depictions of dystopias tend to focus on massive monolithic buildings for that reason.

 

As for the elimination of skyscrapers producing urban sprawl, there are two answers. First off, most of these urban planners are in fact against large numbers of buildings under three stories, much less two. They prefer mostly four story buildings everywhere. So when you eliminate the skyscrapers but also eliminate the one and two story buildings, it has a tendnecy to even out, if not shrink.

 

And if you go to a car-free city, the sprawl shrinks even further. As it turns out, automobile-transportation infrastructure is incredibly wasteful of real estate. When you factor in the two lane roads, the parking spaces, and other elements associated with automobile infrastructure, that turns out to be a significant percentage of the city real estate. By eliminating automobiles in favor of underground rail, you can compress the city real estate a great deal and shrink the size of the cities.

 

There are a number of concepts of twentieth century cities that are now being reexamined. For example, single use zoning is something that was invented late in the nineteenth century (or very early twentieth). It made for conceptually neater zoning. Now there are some urban planners who are wondering if it isn't better to allow mixed use neighborhoods which make it possible for folks to actually live very close to where they work and reduce the traffic burdens. Obviously, some things like factories and heavy industry aren't good places to live near, but for white collar buildings, that's another story entirely.

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Re: Cities of the Future

 

This notion is definitely cool to visualize' date=' but what sort of light do people in the bottom cities get?[/quote']Possibly you could have airy open areas that use new types of light bulbs to properly simulate the light spectra of the sun. These could be parks of a sort for the large building dwellers.

 

Also, there is nothing preventing the municipal urban planners from having Central Parkesque forested areas in parts of the city. Open air markets, etc... to provide sunny areas for city dwellers.

 

There are many things that'll need to go into designing efficient and livable urban areas in the future, I don't think any single school of thought will be the silver bullet for it.

 

Personally, I don't think modern architects put enough effort in making their buildings

 

1) Beautiful (too boxy and lacking in artistic accents. Functional is too much the overriding design goal),

 

2) Durability, (too often the buildings end up being torn down, rather than renovated. When buildings get to be the size of small urban areas in themselve, you will not be able to destroy the entire building. It'd cost too much in both money and trouble to uproot possibly thousands if not tens of thousands of residents to completely rebuild these megastructures. These future buildings will have to be explicitely designed to take into account infrastructure upgrading without needing to destroy the entire building to do it), EDIT: I'm not really speaking of modern skyscrapers here, mainly retail stores (I saw a huge retail space completely demolited and replaced with another huge retail space, most likely because the previous building didn't match corporate store layout requirements, I find this wasteful in the extreme ) I can't think of an example of a 50+ story building be deliberately demolitied just to build another 50+ story building (unless the replacement was significantly larger) can any of you think of one?

 

3)Efficient in land use: I hate hate modern civil engineering/planning. Suburban Sprawl and big box stores, IMO, are the biggest single societal obstacles to ever reducing our dependance on personal vehicles and consequently being able to design efficient Urban centers that will attract the middle class back to them.

 

They just permit the corporations do what is in their best interest instead of what is in the best interest of the municipal infrastructure.

 

TB

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Re: Cities of the Future

 

As for the elimination of skyscrapers producing urban sprawl' date=' there are two answers. First off, most of these urban planners are in fact against large numbers of buildings under three stories, much less two. They prefer mostly four story buildings everywhere. So when you eliminate the skyscrapers but also eliminate the one and two story buildings, it has a tendnecy to even out, if not shrink.[/quote']

 

But the public has to surrender their freedom to build a) skyscrapers and B) single-family homes for this scheme to work. No thanks.

 

And if you go to a car-free city, the sprawl shrinks even further. As it turns out, automobile-transportation infrastructure is incredibly wasteful of real estate. When you factor in the two lane roads, the parking spaces, and other elements associated with automobile infrastructure, that turns out to be a significant percentage of the city real estate. By eliminating automobiles in favor of underground rail, you can compress the city real estate a great deal and shrink the size of the cities.

 

The city of Portland, OR (my home) is big on planning. They keep building light rail lines despite the fact that when actually given a chance to vote, the public usually votes them down. But the planners/developers/government iron triangle of fanatics/greedheads/bureaucrats who want something they can point to and say "I did that!" go ahead and build them anyhow. Never mind that the light rail lines do not even carry as many people as the bus lines that were eliminated, or the highway lanes they've displaced. Never mind that every such project fails to meet projected use and exceeds its projected budget.

 

You know what the ultimate public transportation system is? The private automobile. It goes where you want to go when you want to go there, by whatever route you choose, with any stops--of any duration--you care to make. It doesn't require you to adhere to a bus or train schedule, or wait out in the cold or heat or rain or snow for a bus or train to appear...assuming it's on time. And isn't already full. You can go shopping with a car and put your purchases in the trunk and/or back seat. You can carry more than two handsful or a single big armload of stuff. You can keep clothing, emergency supplies, etc. in your vehicle without having toe schlep them everywhere you go. I could go on, but I trust my point is clear.

 

The private automobile represents freedom--a freedom that most people are unwilling to surrender, and rightfully so. Which is not to say that automobiles and roadways and traffic systems can't be improved--but improving them would consist of, well, improving them, not replacing them.

 

There are a number of concepts of twentieth century cities that are now being reexamined. For example, single use zoning is something that was invented late in the nineteenth century (or very early twentieth). It made for conceptually neater zoning. Now there are some urban planners who are wondering if it isn't better to allow mixed use neighborhoods which make it possible for folks to actually live very close to where they work and reduce the traffic burdens. Obviously, some things like factories and heavy industry aren't good places to live near, but for white collar buildings, that's another story entirely.

 

This is hardly a new thought. Jane Jacobs wrote about this half a century ago. Mixed use neighborhoods--residential and commercial buildings, and both old and new building (older buildings charge lower rents, making it easier for small businesses to be started or sustained)--work better than single-use zones that result in bedroom suburbs and commercial districts that become ghost towns at night.

 

The thing is...single use zoning was The Wave Of The Future way back when. What makes you think the new crowd of "forward-thinking planners" will do any better?

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Re: Cities of the Future

 

Bear in mind that there are a goodly number of towns and cities that have zoning laws against skyscrapers. The "sacrifice of freedom" is really nothing more than a shift in zoning laws stating what sort of buildings can be built in different areas. We've never had perfect freedom to build what we like where we like. It's always been at the mercy of municipal planning.

 

As for the automobile, yes, it provides the greatest amount of personal freedom. The problem is that the automobile is a highly inefficient form of transportation, especially the way it is used by most people. It takes a couple of tons of steel to move a single individual around. Then there is the infrastructure overhead of minimum two lane roads, and usually it's two lanes plus bike and/or parking lanes, not to mention traffic signals and usually you've got more than two lane roads and you need real estate to park all those automobiles as well. Think about all the transportation capacity that spends most of its time sitting around unused.

 

And it only supports a certain density of people moving at certain rates of speed and has a tendency to clog up during peak usage. Urban planners have been trying to solve the problem of gridlock for decades now and they're not making a huge amount of headway there. A fundamental problem is that automobiles are inefficient in certain ways and those inefficiencies, the waste of space and other logistical issues end up choking you in an urban environment with population/transportation densities.

 

Inside of a city, it makes a lot more sense to ban almost all automobiles and to invest in a rail-centric approach. You see, that's the problem with Portland and with most public transportation systems designed and built after the 1930's. In the end, you have to design a city around your primary transport infrastructure and any other incompatible infrastructures tend to suffer in comparison. A well designed rail system and the city designed around the assumption that everyone will use the rail system can be a very convenient system of transportation.

 

Now the main problem with rail is that it is wasted out in the countryside. Where you have low population densities, it makes a lot more sense to shift to an automobile-based approach, where the inefficiencies of the automobile don't matter and the efficiencies of the automobile do play. It's just that in the city the car is very wasteful of space and when you pack too many of them together you end up with ugly gridlock issues.

 

Incidentally, there are other conveniences than being able to set out at once. Often you know your starting time but you don't know your destination time. In a well maintained rail system you can calculate travel times very precisely. You don't have to worry about road construction, car accidents and so on. And if you're travelling at rush hour you might well find that whatever time you lose waiting for the train to show up is more than compensated for by the time you don't spend clogged up in traffic. And time spent on a train can be spent more productively than trying to stay out of automobile accidents.

 

I respect the automobile but every transportation system is a series of tradeoffs, and I don't think that the automobile is well suited as the dominant transportation system in urban environments. Note that I am not against all vehicles, for example emergency vehicles logically should be allowed on city streets and certain other municipal vehicles, but as a dominant transportation system for the bulk of people and freight there are more efficient systems.

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Re: Cities of the Future

 

Bear in mind that there are a goodly number of towns and cities that have zoning laws against skyscrapers. The "sacrifice of freedom" is really nothing more than a shift in zoning laws stating what sort of buildings can be built in different areas. We've never had perfect freedom to build what we like where we like. It's always been at the mercy of municipal planning.

 

Yeah, but what you're talking about is a vision of a world where nothing over four stories--or under four stories--is allowed in most cases. One size does not fit all, no matter how "efficient" planners may think it is.

 

As for the automobile, yes, it provides the greatest amount of personal freedom. The problem is that the automobile is a highly inefficient form of transportation, especially the way it is used by most people. It takes a couple of tons of steel to move a single individual around. Then there is the infrastructure overhead of minimum two lane roads, and usually it's two lanes plus bike and/or parking lanes, not to mention traffic signals and usually you've got more than two lane roads and you need real estate to park all those automobiles as well. Think about all the transportation capacity that spends most of its time sitting around unused.

 

And yet urban rail has the same failings. It requires a massive investment in land and material. It's also rigid. Roads can be added to a system far more quickly, easily and cheaply than rail lines can be. From what I've seen, most rail systems are hideously expensive and don't even move as many people as the bus lines or traffic lanes they displace. That's certainly the case here in Portland, despite the rosy predictions of the planners.

 

If you want to have public transit, buses--running on the roads that already exist--are far better investment. You can change routes, eliminate routes or add routes as necessary for special events or changing pattersn of travel/habitation in and around a city. Try that with light rail.

 

And it only supports a certain density of people moving at certain rates of speed and has a tendency to clog up during peak usage. Urban planners have been trying to solve the problem of gridlock for decades now and they're not making a huge amount of headway there. A fundamental problem is that automobiles are inefficient in certain ways and those inefficiencies, the waste of space and other logistical issues end up choking you in an urban environment with population/transportation densities.

 

And public transit is highly inefficient in different ways, but still highly inefficient. The proponents of public transit tend to point at the ways it is (supposedly) superior to private automobiles, while ignoring the many and profound drawbacks (expense, rigidity, and lack of freedom it imposes as costs on the users).

 

Inside of a city, it makes a lot more sense to ban almost all automobiles and to invest in a rail-centric approach.

 

Makes sense in what context?

 

You see, that's the problem with Portland and with most public transportation systems designed and built after the 1930's. In the end, you have to design a city around your primary transport infrastructure and any other incompatible infrastructures tend to suffer in comparison. A well designed rail system and the city designed around the assumption that everyone will use the rail system can be a very convenient system of transportation.

 

In other words, the context is "in cities that don't exist and never will barring an unimaginable investment in tearing down what exists and replacing it with this utopian fantasy." This approach may work great in SimCity2005, when you're starting from scratch...but in the real world that isn't an option.

 

I respect the automobile but every transportation system is a series of tradeoffs

 

So explain all the tradeoffs in this idealized public transit system. There must be a lot. What are they? And why should I choose those tradeoffs over the tradeoffs of the existing system?

 

Note that I am not against all vehicles, for example emergency vehicles logically should be allowed on city streets and certain other municipal vehicles

 

[Edit: Sentence redacted to avoid unnecessary offense.] Do you hear yourself? It's this sort of unthinking arrogance that makes me--and others--want to tell would-be city planners to kiss our collective shiny metal ***, and that they'll take my car when they pry the steering wheel from my cold, dead fingers.

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Re: Cities of the Future

 

One thing that people forget in urban planning is everything is really based around a mostly arbitrary 8-5 Workday. Traffic patterns, transportation patterns and parking patterns all work inside this mold which then influences how things are built.

 

And there's no reason we can't shift to a fully 24 hours system, or even 18 hours system where shifts are staggered. Bankers Hours are stupid and allow for nothing to get done, mostly in traffic. Of course - the shift to get society to stagger itself around would be nothing short of miraculous.

 

Think about a business model where 1/3 of your people are at work at any given moment, allow of some overlap and your business doesn't have to "stop" for two thirds of a day or so. While some people are at work they have removed themselves from the Transportation Grid (elevators, walkways, buses, subways and cars) thus reducing the load.

 

And ditch the "everyone gets Saturday and Sunday off" - it's just begging for causing even more stress on the 'weekend'

 

If you focus urban planning around keeping active 18-20 hours a day you open the system up much wider. Just some thoughts on a non-architectual level.

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Re: Cities of the Future

 

If you want to have public transit' date=' buses--running on the roads that already exist--are far better investment. You can change routes, eliminate routes or add routes as necessary for special events or changing pattersn of travel/habitation in and around a city. Try that with light rail.[/quote']

One thing I've noticed is the further west one goes in this country the worse the Public Transportation gets. And the less people want to use it (both because it sucks and because of some perceived 'freedom' a car brings).

 

Given what cars cost - if I could ditch mine I would. Innefecient to my budget.

 

Lightrails can works WONDERS. Problem is cities I've seen use them don't place them along major commercial routes - like a main street set up that is mostly shop fronts with residential a block or so behind it. They put them along big roads from a point A to point B mentality (people want to get to Downtown from here-ish, put in a rail!) and of course people REALLY want to get to the major shopping centers most of the time.

 

Here in Denver our Lightrail traverses only one route that is useful for repeated stops - everything else is more like an express train across town - bad planning, it'll fail.

 

I say kill a traffic lane, or put it underground, and place it through the center of the city stopping every five blocks for people to actually access the city. And of course a lot of people's mentality has to change on how to use PT. Like I said, the further west you go the less people like it on principle.

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Re: Cities of the Future

 

I do understand the practical problems of having buildings being too tall. I remember some architect saying that buildings over 80 stories end up being almost impossible to be profitable due to the amount of floor space taken up by elevators/stairwells needed to efficiently move people about in such large buildings.

 

This of course raises the question: Is this a hard and fast rule or have we just not developed the proper traffic flow models to design buildings that are efficient on these scales?

It's cables. With the current technology, elevator cables have enough "stretch" that the elevator bounces a little when it stops. Above 80 floors this "bounce" becomes noticible and people complain of motion sickness. This leads to "sky lobbies" where you change elevators for buildings taller than the Empire State building. You don't have this problem with pistons or verticle tracks, but elevators using them are slower than the ones with cables.

 

When the materials technology is available to make less elastic cables, elevators can become more effecent.

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Re: Cities of the Future

 

This is a Star Hero forum... instead of imagining that The Evil Oppressor is going to come and tear down people's homes, rob them of their cars, and make them live in a communist distopia, how about we focus on cities build without legacy systems and structures already in place? Say we've got 10,000,000 colonists in cold storage, and a robot construction force to set up our new colony world, including its capital city. What do we build, and why?

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This is a Star Hero forum... instead of imagining that The Evil Oppressor is going to come and tear down people's homes' date=' rob them of their cars, and make them live in a communist distopia, how about we focus on cities build without legacy systems and structures already in place? Say we've got 10,000,000 colonists in cold storage, and a robot construction force to set up our new colony world, including its capital city. What do we build, and why?[/quote']A Communist Dystopia to crush all their hopes and dreams! The fools should never had gall to hope for anything better! Mwahahahah...ahem, what where we speaking about?

 

TB

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Re: Cities of the Future

 

In a recent story I wrote I retooled the North East US, the Sprawl from Washington to Boston.

 

The dense urban center was massive towers from 60-120 stories tall. They were wide hexagonal shaped towers, say about a quarter mile to a side (I'd have to find my notes on the math there to make sure...)

 

starting at Level 20 they had bridges conecting them and a street platform around them, every 20 levels they had another series of spokes going to the next tower over. The pattern alternated, so only three spokes came out at any level, the levels directly above and below had the "opposite" spokes. Travel between levels was internal in elevators or via large Exit Loops between buildings and levels.

 

Most transportation was public trains and it was conceivable people would spend most of their lives in a 2-3 Tower radius as they tended to provide anything one could need. It was likely you would live at one point in a tower and work in another and shop at yet a third.

 

There are promenade levels in most towers (sometimes several) that took up many floors (an average being 6). They were open areas with shops/comercial sites around the edges. At least one fill wall was a giant window, the only internal structure would be the elevator columns and massive struts holding up the levels above.

 

As you reached the edge of a city the towers might reduce in size going as low as twenty stories before giving over to other structures (if any). Sometimes they towers just stopped giving a massive Wall appearance to the edge of the city. From above it probably looked a lot like a hive things, lots of hexagonal columns all connected together.

 

Anyways, there's a city idea.

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Re: Cities of the Future

 

I had an underside as well... the Towers went down twenty stories, massive columns anchored into the earth, but were never finished created giant open caverns with these huge square columns in them, I populated that with the poor and outlanders...

 

I have really cool sketches on napkins for it all and everything too... just like a real writer.

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