Recently, YC began planning a pilot project to test the feasibility of building its own experimental city. It would lie somewhere in America, or perhaps abroad, and would be optimized for technological solutions: it might, for instance, permit only self-driving cars. “It could be a college town built out of YC, the university of the future,” Altman said. “A hundred thousand acres, fifty to a hundred thousand residents. We crowdfund the infrastructure and establish a new and affordable way of living around concepts like ‘No one can ever make money off of real estate.’ ” He emphasized that it was just an idea—but he was already looking at potential sites.
I've been thinking about the feasibility of this as well recently. A good college town has a component of informality, collegiality that binds its residents together.
Munich may be the best example I can think of: a college town dating back to medieval times, scaled up to a city of 4M+ souls. TUM and ABDK seem much more intertwined with the real-world urban design and planning of infrastructure and public spaces, than say MIT and RISD. Not to mention the crafts of cheese, bread, beer making, etc!
Utopian attempts to build cities almost always fail.
"the real-world urban design and planning of infrastructure and public spaces" from the 19609's brought us empty downtowns, sprawling suburbs, lack of culture and cars everywhere.
The notion of a 'tech first' place is almost repulsive.
Humans are people, who about 'people first'?
How about the fact that we have been 'iterating' already for thousands of years on this one?
'Munich' is a great city precisely because it is old, and it will never be great 'because tech'.
Utopianism is one of the most consistently apparent acts of crude hubris among technologies and ideologues, and it blows me away because there is so much in recent history to show how exemplarily bad it can all be. Basically the entire Soviet Union and satellite Empire speaks to this.
Visit anywhere in Eastern Europe and see the 'revolutionary people's Utopias' built on 'reason, technology and equality' ... my god man.
All of that said - it's good to experiment and if some college town wants to 'go tech' from Google, then that might be a good idea.
As for Google's 'Toronto Harbourfront' initiative ... no.
But was Salt Lake City designed as an urban opportunity, or was it really a group of people who simply wanted to make their version of society?
With the Mormons it would rather seem they were 'a people' of some sort, and they 'made do' with their environment, as opposed to a specific objective of building society around tech.
And are either Constantinople or St. Petersbourg planned? Or rather were there just significant government / centrally-planned bits of civic infrastructure after the fact?
I don't think anyone would reject the notion of 'tech' in a city, for example 'a subway' or 'universal wifi' - or maybe specific lanes/tunnels for little robots to deliver all of our stuff (!) ...
... but rather the notion of a city started from scratch with utility, specifically fancy utility in mind.
Maybe we could look at places, figure out what they need, and do that well, using technology. In some places it might mean a little bit of upheaval that's fine, if the benefits are at least tangible, unlike the whole Google Toronto thing which seems like civic vaporware to me.
Since confort and function both relate to humans living in these buildings, I'd say you're criticizing the buildings based on human values and therefore confirming the quote :P
Maybe he was so pleased with himself after making that unassailable observation, which will still be valid long after nothing of the buildings remain, that that it went to his head and impacted his work negatively? I have no idea, I just like the quote ^^
FLW has a reputation for making human scale spaces, designed around what inhabitants would do with it. There’s customs built furniture, custom fittings.
Gehry is designing 3D sculptures that don’t seem meant to live in.
Although most of FLW’s residential work in LA is foreboding and not particularly suited to living in. I’ll give you that. But it’s not really typical of his career. He was in mourning.
This is not true. Anecdotal, but I just toured a house Wright built for a veteran in a wheelchair and was pleased at how much thought went into the height and reachability of all the interior areas, in addition to the quality of the structure and the exterior.
Basically, to build a city you have to be able to answer the question "why would anyone move there?", and the only correct answer is "because there are jobs people want there".
And since we're talking utopian cities, there's two follow up questions. "What will your revision process look like when you realize your initial design was fundamentally flawed and it's time to throw one away?" and "How will you maintain control when people are tired of you playing Sim City with their lives and there's more of them than you?"
I agree with utopian thinking really doesn’t work. For people to stay in a city, they need to have meaning in their life. That meaning is provided through multiple ways, a nice impactful job, good schools and universities, family housing, walkable/bikeable roads to shops and restaurants.
In a way, you are 100% correct, most desirable cities will always be most human happiness/friendliness focused cities.
Tech will merely be a means to that end. Tech is always a means to an end. People don’t want fancy self driving cars with a 100 sensors, they just want to get from point A to point B quickly and comfortably.
A city with well networked subway system beats a city full of self driving cars stuck in a traffic jam.
It’s so easy to fall in the trap of loving solution rather than the loving the problem.
Well DC is one of the most violent places in the world. And the places that are not the most violent benefit from obscene cash infusions and 2x normal salary, to the point where real-estate in 'non violent' DC is unbearably expensive, moreover, DC was 'designed' a long time ago, also, the streets that were 'designed' are not the things that make it nice.
I see your points though - really creative aspects of urban planning, infused with some kind of true cause or design, maybe can yield some interesting things.
But most suburbs are not that. They're just places with extra wide roads, pre-planned access to shopping etc..
I have yet to experience a college town such as you describe, having been to several in Illinois, Indiana, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Florida (I invest in housing in college towns).
This is a great concept that I'd been mulling over a lot. If you think about it, vast majority of peoples productivity goes in to real estate and taxes. It's not just your rent or mortgage you pay directly. When you buy burger, that shop is paying for its lease so indirectly you paid part of its lease as well. In same way, you are not paying just your income tax but sales tax, tax on transportation, business tax and so on for all your consumptions. So if you sum up your expenses and start figuring out all the money that eventually ended up to real estate owners or tax collectors, it's very likely to exceed 70% or more for many folks.
Now the fact is that land is cheap as soon as you get out of urban area. You can literally buy up size of downtown Manhattan for less than a house price in Manhattan. What if you set up utilities, roads and offices and make all real estate free? No one has to pay for any rent, mortgage or lease? What if entire country was built like this from the start? What if fast well planned commute infrastructure over distances was always high priority? This experiment can be conducted if we manage to buy up may be Manhattan size area, can set up universities and move some big players.
Totally unrelated, but I just last week did say I loved being an American and love this country yet immediately I got shunned for being a crazy right-wing conservative. I'm like what??! So I can see how thought leaders in this space are keeping quiet waiting for the hypersensitivity to cool off.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 89.1 ms ] threadI've been thinking about the feasibility of this as well recently. A good college town has a component of informality, collegiality that binds its residents together.
Munich may be the best example I can think of: a college town dating back to medieval times, scaled up to a city of 4M+ souls. TUM and ABDK seem much more intertwined with the real-world urban design and planning of infrastructure and public spaces, than say MIT and RISD. Not to mention the crafts of cheese, bread, beer making, etc!
"the real-world urban design and planning of infrastructure and public spaces" from the 19609's brought us empty downtowns, sprawling suburbs, lack of culture and cars everywhere.
The notion of a 'tech first' place is almost repulsive.
Humans are people, who about 'people first'?
How about the fact that we have been 'iterating' already for thousands of years on this one?
'Munich' is a great city precisely because it is old, and it will never be great 'because tech'.
Utopianism is one of the most consistently apparent acts of crude hubris among technologies and ideologues, and it blows me away because there is so much in recent history to show how exemplarily bad it can all be. Basically the entire Soviet Union and satellite Empire speaks to this.
Visit anywhere in Eastern Europe and see the 'revolutionary people's Utopias' built on 'reason, technology and equality' ... my god man.
All of that said - it's good to experiment and if some college town wants to 'go tech' from Google, then that might be a good idea.
As for Google's 'Toronto Harbourfront' initiative ... no.
Almost always? What would you cite as a success?
But was Salt Lake City designed as an urban opportunity, or was it really a group of people who simply wanted to make their version of society?
With the Mormons it would rather seem they were 'a people' of some sort, and they 'made do' with their environment, as opposed to a specific objective of building society around tech.
And are either Constantinople or St. Petersbourg planned? Or rather were there just significant government / centrally-planned bits of civic infrastructure after the fact?
I don't think anyone would reject the notion of 'tech' in a city, for example 'a subway' or 'universal wifi' - or maybe specific lanes/tunnels for little robots to deliver all of our stuff (!) ...
... but rather the notion of a city started from scratch with utility, specifically fancy utility in mind.
Maybe we could look at places, figure out what they need, and do that well, using technology. In some places it might mean a little bit of upheaval that's fine, if the benefits are at least tangible, unlike the whole Google Toronto thing which seems like civic vaporware to me.
-- Frank Lloyd Wright, "The Living City" (1958)
Maybe he was so pleased with himself after making that unassailable observation, which will still be valid long after nothing of the buildings remain, that that it went to his head and impacted his work negatively? I have no idea, I just like the quote ^^
Any human aesthetic judgment is human by definition.
FLW has a reputation for making human scale spaces, designed around what inhabitants would do with it. There’s customs built furniture, custom fittings.
Gehry is designing 3D sculptures that don’t seem meant to live in.
Although most of FLW’s residential work in LA is foreboding and not particularly suited to living in. I’ll give you that. But it’s not really typical of his career. He was in mourning.
And since we're talking utopian cities, there's two follow up questions. "What will your revision process look like when you realize your initial design was fundamentally flawed and it's time to throw one away?" and "How will you maintain control when people are tired of you playing Sim City with their lives and there's more of them than you?"
In a way, you are 100% correct, most desirable cities will always be most human happiness/friendliness focused cities.
Tech will merely be a means to that end. Tech is always a means to an end. People don’t want fancy self driving cars with a 100 sensors, they just want to get from point A to point B quickly and comfortably.
A city with well networked subway system beats a city full of self driving cars stuck in a traffic jam.
It’s so easy to fall in the trap of loving solution rather than the loving the problem.
No, they will be the richest with the coolest stuff to do.
Paris is not a happy/friendly city.
In fact, most places are happier than NY, Paris, London.
Also, most people don't move so functional cities are not so much aspirational as the people that live there are lucky!
I see your points though - really creative aspects of urban planning, infused with some kind of true cause or design, maybe can yield some interesting things.
But most suburbs are not that. They're just places with extra wide roads, pre-planned access to shopping etc..
That said, lot's of money pouring in tends to help!
Now the fact is that land is cheap as soon as you get out of urban area. You can literally buy up size of downtown Manhattan for less than a house price in Manhattan. What if you set up utilities, roads and offices and make all real estate free? No one has to pay for any rent, mortgage or lease? What if entire country was built like this from the start? What if fast well planned commute infrastructure over distances was always high priority? This experiment can be conducted if we manage to buy up may be Manhattan size area, can set up universities and move some big players.
Also, about half a mortgage is for a building, not real estate.
And how exactly did they shun you?