Poor people tend to want sunlight more and are less able to afford it here.
While your other summaries are fair, this is very much not what I said. I’m not saying poor people want sunlight more, I’m saying humans regardless of income on average prefer having sunlight and whatever else windows give. (Proof: building codes, seasonal affective disorder, human evolutionary history and any housing market ever. Take e.g. the Bay Area rental housing—rooms with tiny windows do exist but they are confined to the cheapest segment of the market, which is exactly my point. While huge floor-to-ceiling panoramic windows is a common feature of luxury housing everywhere.)
So while yes some middle-class people will be ok with living on the underground levels, and some poor people will chip in to live more crowded but with sunlight. But large and by the principle will be (as it is now to some extent) - the higher floor the higher price. Compare how now, large and buy people live in old rundown apartments when they can’t afford any better, although sure there’s some fraction of people who can and just don’t care. So basically what I’m saying, is that your city’s worst neighborhoods are now very literally hidden under nice parks and walking streets with upscale restaurants (as you said cheaper restaurants will likely opt for delivery-only), physically invisible for the rich people in their penthouses. And sunlight and fresh air (as in actually fresh, not from HVAC) are in a sense turned from something everyone can have to luxury good. I’d be the last person to discard any project just because it looks ugly, but you need a big fat argument right on top about why it only looks ugly and in fact will be better for everyone (or realistically for most). And just saying “but some people don’t even like sunlight” solves the problem about as well as saying “but some people like to sleep under the open sky” solves the problem of homelessness.
Columns of outside don’t work in high latitudes for people that want sunlight.
Indeed you mention dense thin rows of buildings, but doesn’t it change the whole calculus here? And more or less turns this into a Manhattan with underground car tunnels, or something close to it? I’m also not quite convinced this approach will work that well even in California, in the sense of making people happy with their view. Plus, when there’s a lot of another problem arises with these shafts—they heat up very quickly without wind. Yes, ventilation, but that costs money and I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a “ventilated courtyard”, so probably nontrivial amount of money.
What about truck noise and air pollution?
Why are we talking about 50ft here? I thought, without any sidewalks and extra lanes, on the track-only street it’ll be more like 5 feet from the wall at most. And I’d guess pick noise is acceleration, not steady movement. Likely still can make it work, as well as ventilation, but if the costs were trivial we’d be building under or right next (as in, 10 feet) to highways all the time. Plus, add enclosed space—reflected sound just goes to the opposite wall.
Snow - maybe salt the streets or use airplanes to blanket everything in salt?
Just. No. The correct procedure is you first remove bulk of the snow, then add salt so any residuals melt and flow down the drains. If you salt half a feet of snow you’ll end up with half a feet of squishy, greyish-brown, caustic mud, which is exactly as good for shoes, clothes, health and city’s appearance as it sounds. Been there, tried that. (Not with airplanes though, this would have added benefit of salting anyone who had imprudence to be out or open their window at that time.)
The problem with melting is that water has huge heat of fusion. Going with your 0.5 miles example, to melt 6 inches of fresh snow—a large but not extraordinary amount to fall in a day or two—you’d need around 1.1 millions kwh of energy, which is on the same order of magnitude 200k people are consuming in winter in one day. That not counting heating it up to the melting point. So again, nothing impossible but even more expenses into infrastructure and electricity or fuel. On the other hand, in colder climates you’ll have to build heavier anyway to protect from cold, so probably making the top layer able to support some kind of machinery is less of an issue.
Robo delivery theft
Yeah, I also thought of a fully enclosed tube, but then you can’t share roads with heavy vehicles and need to build even more infrastructure. Not just the tube, but access ports to it in case a robot breaks and blocks it, something for robots to navigate off, and so on. Skilled people can hack a bike lock in seconds, I don’t think breaking into a robot with a crowbar would take much longer. Not unsolvable problems both, but add more expenses.
Overall yes, you’re totally right that all these problems are solvable by throwing enough money on them (except for no windows in the “underground” levels. You either don’t have them and it’s a problem, or you do and it’s basically a regular densely built city plus some futuristic delivery infrastructure, if I understand the concept correctly). And in most cases it’s not huge amount of money. But those not huge amounts do add up, so does the space that some of the solutions require, and decreases in denizens’ comfort that some of them cause. Combined, it can easily change the outcome of the calculation.
Seeing Like a State
Firstly, I used grids only as a metaphor, obviously there’s nothing wrong with them per se, sorry if that wasn’t obvious.
Yes you do add some flexibility in some points. But the core approach remains the same—top down planning, centered around maximizing a relatively small amount of metrics under an unrealistically small amount of constraints, with a bunch of quick fixes added afterwards. I’m not familiar with how they go around planning successful suburbs and cities from scratch, but I’d guess there’s much more of “Here’s the best practices and approaches that worked in the past, and here’s some good examples, let’s build something similar but fixing the known problems”, and much less of “Here’s the two metrics that matter, lets crank them up as high as possible and then correct for whatever problems might come to mind”.
I think it’s illustrative how your suggested solutions to most of the problems require at least one of the three: governmental spending (air filters, snow, first responders), regulations (noise insulation, walls strength, ventilation) or centralization (robo delivery pipes, centralized heat pumps). The first two are inevitable provided by the government, which is rarely good at fine tuning to the precise needs of the population, the last can be in theory done by a private company, but that would be a monopoly with infinitely high entry barrier for competitors, so no better in practice. So it’s very easy to see how all of the problems—noise, stale air, ugly looking parks, lack of sunlight in winter and sizzling heat in the courtyards in summer—get solved just to the point where almost nobody actually dies and (optimistically) not too many people leave the city, but nowhere nearly enough to make the life there actually pleasant.
Another illustrative point is how when it comes to preferences people might actually have, you reason from the outside view of what’s technically possible. But they can supplement sunlight with LED lights, right? But someone able to walk 50 meters to their car but not 500 meters to the train station can use a wheelchair?Sure they can, but more often than not it’ll make them miserable, and probably incur extra financial costs on the people already not in the best position to handle them.
OK, I might not understand what you’re saying here. I agree that this is the primary issue people raise and that means this isn’t discussed enough, but I figured that would dominate the article if I focused on it.
A few things… Circulating air even from all the way outside is a lot cheaper and easier to deal with than the sunlight issue, so fresh air is really not a huge issue.
You mention “worst neighborhoods” near the ground implying there is a section of the city where crime is high, but there are no streets near the bottom: Any poor people living below are living in a small space accessible by stairs or elevators directly from the streets at the top.
Idk if this is complete, but here’s a capitalist argument: People vote with their feet. They can always live further out and commute in. If the conditions are actually worse than another place, poorer folks will try it out and leave to enjoy life somewhere more reasonable. If the full negative sunlight/window economic externalities caused by putting up a new building are assessed and charged to the new owner (I should include this), the owner won’t build if he (and others) can’t get enough return on the lower sections. If people don’t like not having sunlight and they’re still there, maybe it’s legitimately worth it to them? For example, maybe they’re earning way more money than they would otherwise.
Indeed you mention dense thin rows of buildings, but doesn’t it change the whole calculus here? And more or less turns this into a Manhattan with underground car tunnels, or something close to it? I’m also not quite convinced this approach will work that well even in California, in the sense of making people happy with their view. Plus, when there’s a lot of another problem arises with these shafts—they heat up very quickly without wind. Yes, ventilation, but that costs money and I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a “ventilated courtyard”, so probably nontrivial amount of money.
I think dense thin rows of buildings can still achieve very high per-floor area ratios, maybe 2⁄3 or so, allowing most of the ridiculously high density Manhattan doesn’t come close to. View can probably be included in the negative externalities charged to new construction. Hot air rises, giving a free ventilation force. Just want to note here that moving this amount of air with fans really isn’t that expensive anyway.
What about truck noise?
Yeah, 50 ft is just the figure I found. Trucks would also likely be going slower than 30 mph. “For every doubling of distance, the sound level reduces by 6 decibels.” Soundproofing is a combination of reflection and absorption; Add absorption materials to reduce echos. People live next to streets with trucks using them already, right?
Snow
Fair enough, how about pushing snow into chutes or tubs and having trucks ship it out? Or throw it into the trash AVAC system?
Robo delivery theft
Tbh fast response times, dash cams, high use streets, and police should be enough to handle this even with mixed traffic, although the separated infrastructure pays for itself readily in robot speed and throughput. Navigation can be done either with paint and optical sensors, magnetic markers, or fixed digital broadcasts from frequent points.
Seeing Like a State
OK, the point I’m trying to make here is that these critiques apply as much to existing suburbs and cities as they do here in the sense that: Centralized systems like mass transit, utilities, and emergency services are everywhere. Regulations and codes around building and transportation are everywhere. Government spending on centralized systems and many more things is also everywhere. The amount of top down planning used in existing municipalities is already quite high, and I think this about matches it, not being notably more other than just actually addressing super-high density development. I just don’t think the comparison to master-planning is actually reasonable.
If anything this design moves more things from a flat “no, everything has to be this way” to a “sure if it’s actually worth it” approach to regulation. I’m sure there are things about peoples’ preferences I’m not aware of here, and it’s important to make things a little flexible and open to later change because of that. However, I’m not sure you have a better understanding, either. Existing systems have made the decision for us on a lot of matters and may realistically not have a lot of reason to those decisions.
While your other summaries are fair, this is very much not what I said. I’m not saying poor people want sunlight more, I’m saying humans regardless of income on average prefer having sunlight and whatever else windows give. (Proof: building codes, seasonal affective disorder, human evolutionary history and any housing market ever. Take e.g. the Bay Area rental housing—rooms with tiny windows do exist but they are confined to the cheapest segment of the market, which is exactly my point. While huge floor-to-ceiling panoramic windows is a common feature of luxury housing everywhere.)
So while yes some middle-class people will be ok with living on the underground levels, and some poor people will chip in to live more crowded but with sunlight. But large and by the principle will be (as it is now to some extent) - the higher floor the higher price. Compare how now, large and buy people live in old rundown apartments when they can’t afford any better, although sure there’s some fraction of people who can and just don’t care. So basically what I’m saying, is that your city’s worst neighborhoods are now very literally hidden under nice parks and walking streets with upscale restaurants (as you said cheaper restaurants will likely opt for delivery-only), physically invisible for the rich people in their penthouses. And sunlight and fresh air (as in actually fresh, not from HVAC) are in a sense turned from something everyone can have to luxury good. I’d be the last person to discard any project just because it looks ugly, but you need a big fat argument right on top about why it only looks ugly and in fact will be better for everyone (or realistically for most). And just saying “but some people don’t even like sunlight” solves the problem about as well as saying “but some people like to sleep under the open sky” solves the problem of homelessness.
Indeed you mention dense thin rows of buildings, but doesn’t it change the whole calculus here? And more or less turns this into a Manhattan with underground car tunnels, or something close to it? I’m also not quite convinced this approach will work that well even in California, in the sense of making people happy with their view. Plus, when there’s a lot of another problem arises with these shafts—they heat up very quickly without wind. Yes, ventilation, but that costs money and I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a “ventilated courtyard”, so probably nontrivial amount of money.
Why are we talking about 50ft here? I thought, without any sidewalks and extra lanes, on the track-only street it’ll be more like 5 feet from the wall at most. And I’d guess pick noise is acceleration, not steady movement. Likely still can make it work, as well as ventilation, but if the costs were trivial we’d be building under or right next (as in, 10 feet) to highways all the time. Plus, add enclosed space—reflected sound just goes to the opposite wall.
Just. No. The correct procedure is you first remove bulk of the snow, then add salt so any residuals melt and flow down the drains. If you salt half a feet of snow you’ll end up with half a feet of squishy, greyish-brown, caustic mud, which is exactly as good for shoes, clothes, health and city’s appearance as it sounds. Been there, tried that. (Not with airplanes though, this would have added benefit of salting anyone who had imprudence to be out or open their window at that time.)
The problem with melting is that water has huge heat of fusion. Going with your 0.5 miles example, to melt 6 inches of fresh snow—a large but not extraordinary amount to fall in a day or two—you’d need around 1.1 millions kwh of energy, which is on the same order of magnitude 200k people are consuming in winter in one day. That not counting heating it up to the melting point. So again, nothing impossible but even more expenses into infrastructure and electricity or fuel. On the other hand, in colder climates you’ll have to build heavier anyway to protect from cold, so probably making the top layer able to support some kind of machinery is less of an issue.
Yeah, I also thought of a fully enclosed tube, but then you can’t share roads with heavy vehicles and need to build even more infrastructure. Not just the tube, but access ports to it in case a robot breaks and blocks it, something for robots to navigate off, and so on. Skilled people can hack a bike lock in seconds, I don’t think breaking into a robot with a crowbar would take much longer. Not unsolvable problems both, but add more expenses.
Overall yes, you’re totally right that all these problems are solvable by throwing enough money on them (except for no windows in the “underground” levels. You either don’t have them and it’s a problem, or you do and it’s basically a regular densely built city plus some futuristic delivery infrastructure, if I understand the concept correctly). And in most cases it’s not huge amount of money. But those not huge amounts do add up, so does the space that some of the solutions require, and decreases in denizens’ comfort that some of them cause. Combined, it can easily change the outcome of the calculation.
Firstly, I used grids only as a metaphor, obviously there’s nothing wrong with them per se, sorry if that wasn’t obvious.
Yes you do add some flexibility in some points. But the core approach remains the same—top down planning, centered around maximizing a relatively small amount of metrics under an unrealistically small amount of constraints, with a bunch of quick fixes added afterwards. I’m not familiar with how they go around planning successful suburbs and cities from scratch, but I’d guess there’s much more of “Here’s the best practices and approaches that worked in the past, and here’s some good examples, let’s build something similar but fixing the known problems”, and much less of “Here’s the two metrics that matter, lets crank them up as high as possible and then correct for whatever problems might come to mind”.
I think it’s illustrative how your suggested solutions to most of the problems require at least one of the three: governmental spending (air filters, snow, first responders), regulations (noise insulation, walls strength, ventilation) or centralization (robo delivery pipes, centralized heat pumps). The first two are inevitable provided by the government, which is rarely good at fine tuning to the precise needs of the population, the last can be in theory done by a private company, but that would be a monopoly with infinitely high entry barrier for competitors, so no better in practice. So it’s very easy to see how all of the problems—noise, stale air, ugly looking parks, lack of sunlight in winter and sizzling heat in the courtyards in summer—get solved just to the point where almost nobody actually dies and (optimistically) not too many people leave the city, but nowhere nearly enough to make the life there actually pleasant.
Another illustrative point is how when it comes to preferences people might actually have, you reason from the outside view of what’s technically possible. But they can supplement sunlight with LED lights, right? But someone able to walk 50 meters to their car but not 500 meters to the train station can use a wheelchair?Sure they can, but more often than not it’ll make them miserable, and probably incur extra financial costs on the people already not in the best position to handle them.
Thanks again for your input!
OK, I might not understand what you’re saying here. I agree that this is the primary issue people raise and that means this isn’t discussed enough, but I figured that would dominate the article if I focused on it.
A few things… Circulating air even from all the way outside is a lot cheaper and easier to deal with than the sunlight issue, so fresh air is really not a huge issue.
You mention “worst neighborhoods” near the ground implying there is a section of the city where crime is high, but there are no streets near the bottom: Any poor people living below are living in a small space accessible by stairs or elevators directly from the streets at the top.
Idk if this is complete, but here’s a capitalist argument: People vote with their feet. They can always live further out and commute in. If the conditions are actually worse than another place, poorer folks will try it out and leave to enjoy life somewhere more reasonable. If the full negative sunlight/window economic externalities caused by putting up a new building are assessed and charged to the new owner (I should include this), the owner won’t build if he (and others) can’t get enough return on the lower sections. If people don’t like not having sunlight and they’re still there, maybe it’s legitimately worth it to them? For example, maybe they’re earning way more money than they would otherwise.
I think dense thin rows of buildings can still achieve very high per-floor area ratios, maybe 2⁄3 or so, allowing most of the ridiculously high density Manhattan doesn’t come close to. View can probably be included in the negative externalities charged to new construction. Hot air rises, giving a free ventilation force. Just want to note here that moving this amount of air with fans really isn’t that expensive anyway.
Yeah, 50 ft is just the figure I found. Trucks would also likely be going slower than 30 mph. “For every doubling of distance, the sound level reduces by 6 decibels.” Soundproofing is a combination of reflection and absorption; Add absorption materials to reduce echos. People live next to streets with trucks using them already, right?
Fair enough, how about pushing snow into chutes or tubs and having trucks ship it out? Or throw it into the trash AVAC system?
Tbh fast response times, dash cams, high use streets, and police should be enough to handle this even with mixed traffic, although the separated infrastructure pays for itself readily in robot speed and throughput. Navigation can be done either with paint and optical sensors, magnetic markers, or fixed digital broadcasts from frequent points.
OK, the point I’m trying to make here is that these critiques apply as much to existing suburbs and cities as they do here in the sense that: Centralized systems like mass transit, utilities, and emergency services are everywhere. Regulations and codes around building and transportation are everywhere. Government spending on centralized systems and many more things is also everywhere. The amount of top down planning used in existing municipalities is already quite high, and I think this about matches it, not being notably more other than just actually addressing super-high density development. I just don’t think the comparison to master-planning is actually reasonable.
If anything this design moves more things from a flat “no, everything has to be this way” to a “sure if it’s actually worth it” approach to regulation. I’m sure there are things about peoples’ preferences I’m not aware of here, and it’s important to make things a little flexible and open to later change because of that. However, I’m not sure you have a better understanding, either. Existing systems have made the decision for us on a lot of matters and may realistically not have a lot of reason to those decisions.