First, I want to thank you for thinking critically about this. I appreciate your efforts and line of reasoning.
Poor people tend to want sunlight more and are less able to afford it here.
So first, note that this is correlation and not a direct relationship. I’d love to see a study here.
I think this also is mostly resolved by the market: Poor people wanting sunlight will live more crowded in sunlit sections. Middle class people not needing sunlight will live further down in less crowded conditions. Rich people will just pay the premium and live in spacious conditions with sun.
If sunlight turns out to be a huge constraint, it reduces maximum density considerably but still allows for densities multiple times the densest cities we see today.
Columns of outside don’t work in high latitudes for people that want sunlight.
I next mention dense thin rows of buildings lining streets. The streets would be north/south to handle this.
You need streets with not much shade for some climates.
Yeah, the streets with shade thing is just an example to show walkability in nice climates. I agree you can’t do all of these in such climates, and that may make them poor choices to starting such a city there.
What happens if you need to rebuild something on the 3rd floor underneath a walking street?
You can have thinner walking streets supported by the buildings to the side as well as the roof of the building supporting it, but in general you may have to shut down that street when rebuilding it.
How far can cranes reach anyway?
Typically 230 ft, so ideally you have a grid of crane points spaced so half the diagonal is that distance. With a square grid that gives 320 ft between adjacent grid points. You can either space streets to line up with this grid or the grid will be more constrained somehow.
Police and medical need to move quickly; fire and medical need to carry stuff.
Police, fire, and medical can still use truck lanes to carry a bunch of stuff quickly in an emergency. 15 mph is faster when things are much closer together. Elevators can bring them with equipment to the street level, where so long as their equipment is relatively lightweight, it can still be electrically powered and easy to move.
What about maneuvering fire hoses outside high floors?
You can use the building across the street, ladders on the outside of that building, extendable emergency bridges, something like a really tall maneuverable ladder that attaches to rails on another building, or a helicopter with a platform dangling from it.
What about truck noise and air pollution?
Heavy trucks are about 80 db at 50 ft going 30 mph. I think soundproofing a 60 db reduction isn’t that expensive, maybe $2 / sq ft of wall in the US? Since the air pollution is concentrated in one area, you can use air filters to get rid of most of it. Ventilation is also a lot cheaper than full HVAC.
Drainage system failure effects are multiplied.
Yeah, you either need very good drainage reliability and throughput or this won’t work in certain climates.
Snow
I’m not too sure about this; maybe salt the streets or use airplanes to blanket everything in salt? Maybe heat smaller sections and have people push snow into those sections? Also, you can still have some space on streets or roofs for heavy machinery in exchange for higher construction costs for that part of the roof.
Cities stink and higher density multiplies this.
So, crowding is the same. I don’t think either of us knows the exact causes of city stink, which would be helpful here. Air filters and ventilation should help address this.
Parking lanes are necessary to prevent failures from blocking traffic.
This depends a bit on how close you need parking to be in the case of failure. There’s still some parking, and even a parking lane can be filled with cars, as is usually the case in Manhattan. I imagine the solution here is adding paid parking spots until this is not a huge issue or having low latency towing.
Robo delivery theft
If robots are in a fully enclosed tube, it’s still pretty hard to just take one. The robots can also communicate position and video live with a computer system and the city can respond quickly if something is off.
transport accessibility
This already isn’t an issue with trains. Lightweight electric wheelchairs shouldn’t be an issue on the street. A few ramps at changing street levels can accommodate forced street level transitions.
rooftop HVAC street/park pollution
Air filters and lower surface area help a lot with stink and cooling here. Piping ventilation from buildings under streets through side buildings should help with concentrating this into parks. From there, concentrating HVAC units on rooftops minimizes interaction with walking space. You can also do most of the heating/cooling with ground-based heat pumps to reduce these units entirely to huge fans.
This creates a whole lot of new infrastructure every new building needs to be plugged into, as well as new requirements (ability to support extra weight, noise insulation), which makes new development a lot more expensive.
Definitely more expensive; However, I don’t think it’s that much more: Noise insulation is pretty cheap. The extra weight supported here is the same eventual overall weight. Again, this expense is borne when it becomes worth it anyway.
Seeing Like a State
*Note: I’ve also only read Scott’s post.
This is important and I want to address this further. Note that the design here doesn’t say “here’s exactly how the buildings are laid out and what they’re used for”, nor “we’re designing for this fixed density”. Furthermore, the design is not a whole lot different in scope from what we see today in many suburbs and cities. Grids are pretty common, and Jane Jacobs (sort of the antithesis of Le Corbusier, the father of Brasilia’s design) basically thinks they’re great (and a lot better than suburb culdesacs). A grid is fine in optimal conditions, and if the terrain and environment make that a dumb idea just drop the grid and design around the terrain. It’s not critical to have a perfect grid or anything.
Just want to first note that most of the proposed things require no innovation either.
Multistory buildings (also regulated away in most suburbs) adds ~25% to construction costs. Jane Jacobs also mentions parks being much better if they’re on the way to things, and the ratio of park even today doesn’t approach the scale portrayed. Also want to note that suburbs only exist in a few countries.
Poor countries with cities still exist, and many seem to be getting along well enough (at least getting richer over time). If it’s not that I guess my intuition goes the other way. I imagine police stepping up militance to combat some of these things can work. If discrimination is legitimately a good solution to some urban issues, I’d at least be surprised, but it should still work with the other things here.
The housing market should generally address this. There’s will certainly eventually be parts of the city topped out in density, but until then if space becomes valuable the market will eat that value by making more space. Families can always live in less dense (but still city-density) sections a little further out.