It seems odd to me, abstracting a bit from society as is, that architecture isn’t the main occupation of nation-state level entities. It’s like the single most important defining feature of the cities and yet totally under explored. Anyways I’d love to visit (another) planned city. They’re always amazing and terrible in exactly the inverse of the amazing and terrible in (relatively) unplanned cities.
It‘s not under-explored at all. Millions of people work in architecture and city planning. Every city has several departments that deal with planning and construction.
It‘s just completely dysfunctional. Architecture professors have focused on “innovation” for 100 years and have achieved little. We still flock to the old, 19th century (or older) city centers and love it. We spend thousands to spend a week or two there on holidays.
Very few modern places exist where this is the case.
In survey after survey, 80% of the people prefer traditional over modern(ist) designs.
So the whole profession has failed, since about the introduction of the Bauhaus.
This is some strange no? It looks like you are talking about city planning more than architecture when talking about city centers.
Modern designs are affected by supply and demand, while modernist designs have been supplanted by many other school.
Innovation has ranged from tiny homes, to livable homes, to new materials, to shipping containers, building heights, concrete types, designs and more.
I’ve seen architectural styles emerge and evolve from different countries, so it’s hard to read this and find the source of your opinion.
The creation of public spaces is highly dependent on the governance of those localities.
I was bemoaning the growth of self sufficient enclaves as a real estate solution in Mumbai, but I acknowledge that this is the market providing for its consumers what the government is yet to provide.
Is this primarily an attack on academia, under the assumption that everyone hates the combination of “innovation” “modernism” and “professors”?
There's a bit of survivorship bias in your reasoning. The extremely wealthy built beautiful things that we still enjoy. But the horrible places that common people had to call home in the 19th century are not treasured in the same way.
Aesthetically pleasing it is, but also way less practical and way more costly to build. Nice stone facades can't have any thermal insulation on them (and having it inside is less than ideal), in Europe this would be a big problems apart from very south regions. I think mcmansions are trying to find some middle ground, but they don't seem to receive much love (those are not so common in Europe so just judging from far).
Medieval castles can be very pretty to visit too, I wouldn't want to live in one if given modern choice regardless of wealth, even if ignoring all the red tape for any sort of change or even repair.
those places are nice for vacations, but without denser apartment buildings the city tends to expand a lot horizontally and after a while it's very expensive to have a decent public transportation system. it's mostly impractical for large cities to be built this way. i've seen very few cities that managed to make this work.
> Architecture professors have focused on “innovation” for 100 years and have achieved little.
The issue is that architecture is not a science. It has nothing to do with the past 100 years. There is simply, to date, no solid theoretical foundation that can inform design. Corbu made a lame attempt in his early phase to establish a set of axioms, and that didn't work out.
So the search in the past 100 years wasn't entirely based on "innovation". The field is searching for something resembling a theoretical framework.
> So the whole profession has failed, since about the introduction of the Bauhaus.
This is a reactionary statement. There are numerous amazing works of architecture from the 20th. And your dragging in Bauhaus indicates you actually are not well read in the history of modern architecture. (This negative fascination with bauhaus carries a strong whiff of the National Socialist Germany, btw ..)
> In survey after survey, 80% of the people prefer traditional over modern(ist) designs.
Well, Architecture (contra building design) is high art. It is not for the unwashed. 80% of the people also prefer drivel for their cultural fare.
Architecture has a generally modest cost, as compared to the more "as usual" construction. Except when you go nuts like trying to cross a desert.
So why "nation-state"?
Even the smallest country can and does make architectural and city-planning efforts. The american (not a nation-state) planned cities, usually built by average companies.
> The city will have an underground passageway for deliveries and garbage collection. It will test advanced digital technologies and autonomous robots.
The passageway for deliveries sounds like the best thing, but garbage maybe not so much. I have a feeling that over time it will degrade into a sewer-like environment (without the water) with foul smells, unless the garbage is really well sealed.
Edit: Then again, these underground passageways are way bigger than I expected (shown in the video). I thought those would be just big enough for some rail-based autonomous vehicles. But if people handle the garbage underground, I really wonder if the ventilation is superior as to create a worker-friendly environment. It really looks like some people will spend their day underground delivering packages or collecting garbage.
Makes me think of Pipedream Labs' concept of a network of tubes with an internal robotic conveyance systems for home/office delivery[1]. It seems like something that large new buildings could benefit from, even without a connection to a broader network. People don't love having to go down to a front desk to pick up packages, property managers don't like handling them, and delivery drivers don't like wandering around trying to find a random unit. Would be interesting to see if it's viable on a larger scale.
Maybe the garbage will be like in Sweden? In some city or neighborhood they have this modern setup where each garbage disposal chute is connected by pneumatic tubes to a central garbage dump in the area. So when garbage needs collected the truck doesn’t need to drive around the neighborhood stopping every 5 meters making a ton of noise and spreading garbage around accidentally. It enters this underground area and collects it in bulk out of the huge bins.
I don't know what they're doing in your city (outsourced to lowest bidder private company?) but I've never once found any garbage on the ground here after garbage collection by the city.
Having a car manufacturer design a city is like having a shark design a ship: there's a strong incentive for things to be done poorly.
Good planning would heavily involve mixed-use development, reducing the distance to desired amenities (keeping roads small instead of having every block separated by 6 lanes), and a strong focus on mass transit (train, tram, bus).
The city of the future would be a 15-minute city covered in solar panels, broken up by public green areas, with every street lined with trees. I imagine it would also be covered mostly in mid-rises.
I was thinking it would be better to have solar in the city and wind around it, as turbines make some noise and as the roofs are gonna go unused otherwise. But I can see how putting solar on the roof can make it harder to maintain than having a solar park on the ground.
I was also thinking having solar panels above tram lines, but that may not be worth the cost.
Looks a bit like "Aarhus Ø" in my city. a part of the city that is quite new.
https://aarhusoe.dk/media/owqjyq0b/dji_0091.jpg - the construction site in the corner is done now, its a very very tall building that looks similar to the one in the center - just... very much taller.
it's a terribly crowded place, and i hate it - but at least the apartment buildings look different than all the ol 'red brick cubes' from the 40s and 50s we have in the rest of the city (You can see some of them in the background in this picture)
Near future? Maybe less than you would think, EVs are still financially unreachable and utterly impractical for most of the world. For me they are easily reachable but I just don't find the appeal, the limitations, range anxiety, everything proprietary and not fixable in normal garages, thats not how I run my cars in relatively low cost manner.
Buying car shouldn't be emotional decision but a rational one, its not a small investment, for many second biggest in their lives after housing.
Far future, certainly ICE cars will be mostly dead, what will come we shall see.
Interesting POV! Because batteries plus a motor is so easy, electric bicycles and similar are the vehicle to look at, not cars. I know that in the Philippines, EV carts are slowly taking over on certain islands in places where a car doesn't make any financial sense.
Having a lot of slow chargers (ac, very cheap to build) around would solve like 90% of the reason most people (not you) give for not being able to switch: Living in an apartment without chargers.
I'm certain we can at least agree that leaving out chargers has at least some measurable impact on the transition.
> The city will have an underground passageway for deliveries and garbage collection.
This would be a great improvement over many cities, though definite drop in QOL for delivery and garbage truck drivers. Though I imagine having it underground makes it much easier to manage with autonomous vehicles.
You make a good point. Away from the noise and traffic -- assuming quiet EVs which they would of course have to be. If it has nice lighting and ventilation.
The final phase is going to be 2000 people, which is small even for a town, or even for a midsize real estate project inside a city. Calling it a city just feels ridicolous.
Around 35.22N, 138.91E, right between Mishima and Gotenba in Shizuoka. Up to about 700k m^2 or 7500k sqft, max, about twice as big as the Las Vegas Convention Center or Boeing Everett factory. Used to be a smallish car plant next to a Toyota test track. Not at all an unpopulated area.
2,000 people for $10 billion.[1] That's $5 million per person.
The future is expensive, but of course the intent is to advance early-stage (ie expensive) technology toward affordability. It sounds like they want to winnow down to the best option among alternate system architectures, so I expect there's a fair bit of infrastructure-level redundancy too.
This "city" is actually more like a Disneyland park, except that their main focus is on to experiment with futuristic commercial ideas/concepts.
Here is the list of a few companies that co-invest with Toyota:
- Nissin (Instant food company) to "Create and evaluating food environments to inspire new 'food cultures'".
- UCC (Japanese coffee maker) to "Explore the potential value of coffee through futuristic cafe experiences".
- Daikin Industries (Air conditioner manufacturer) to "Experiment with 'pollen-free spaces'".
I don't know exactly what they are trying to test (I guess that they don't know either), but it's meant to be an industrial theme park than a real city with municipal authority.
Although upfront cost for city construction is probably negligible compared to the operating cost over the lifespan of the city. If you have even modest labour, infrastructure and service savings every year for decades to come building smarter probably pays off.
It’s more like a small scale real life testing ground. Not a city but maybe meant to prove technology and design that can scale to a city. Toyota hasn’t had a great track record with alternative mobility historically - just some quirky experiments - so I’m curious what they’re working on that justified this big investment for this “city”.
Readit News
It‘s just completely dysfunctional. Architecture professors have focused on “innovation” for 100 years and have achieved little. We still flock to the old, 19th century (or older) city centers and love it. We spend thousands to spend a week or two there on holidays.
Very few modern places exist where this is the case.
In survey after survey, 80% of the people prefer traditional over modern(ist) designs.
So the whole profession has failed, since about the introduction of the Bauhaus.
Modern designs are affected by supply and demand, while modernist designs have been supplanted by many other school.
Innovation has ranged from tiny homes, to livable homes, to new materials, to shipping containers, building heights, concrete types, designs and more.
I’ve seen architectural styles emerge and evolve from different countries, so it’s hard to read this and find the source of your opinion.
The creation of public spaces is highly dependent on the governance of those localities.
I was bemoaning the growth of self sufficient enclaves as a real estate solution in Mumbai, but I acknowledge that this is the market providing for its consumers what the government is yet to provide.
Is this primarily an attack on academia, under the assumption that everyone hates the combination of “innovation” “modernism” and “professors”?
Medieval castles can be very pretty to visit too, I wouldn't want to live in one if given modern choice regardless of wealth, even if ignoring all the red tape for any sort of change or even repair.
The issue is that architecture is not a science. It has nothing to do with the past 100 years. There is simply, to date, no solid theoretical foundation that can inform design. Corbu made a lame attempt in his early phase to establish a set of axioms, and that didn't work out.
So the search in the past 100 years wasn't entirely based on "innovation". The field is searching for something resembling a theoretical framework.
> So the whole profession has failed, since about the introduction of the Bauhaus.
This is a reactionary statement. There are numerous amazing works of architecture from the 20th. And your dragging in Bauhaus indicates you actually are not well read in the history of modern architecture. (This negative fascination with bauhaus carries a strong whiff of the National Socialist Germany, btw ..)
> In survey after survey, 80% of the people prefer traditional over modern(ist) designs.
Well, Architecture (contra building design) is high art. It is not for the unwashed. 80% of the people also prefer drivel for their cultural fare.
https://www.historyandheadlines.com/east-st-louis-and-the-ol...
So why "nation-state"?
Even the smallest country can and does make architectural and city-planning efforts. The american (not a nation-state) planned cities, usually built by average companies.
The passageway for deliveries sounds like the best thing, but garbage maybe not so much. I have a feeling that over time it will degrade into a sewer-like environment (without the water) with foul smells, unless the garbage is really well sealed.
Edit: Then again, these underground passageways are way bigger than I expected (shown in the video). I thought those would be just big enough for some rail-based autonomous vehicles. But if people handle the garbage underground, I really wonder if the ventilation is superior as to create a worker-friendly environment. It really looks like some people will spend their day underground delivering packages or collecting garbage.
[1] https://youtu.be/BgMu35T9P9Y
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_pneumatic_post
Edit: I think it’s this https://www.envacgroup.com/how-it-works/the-envac-system/
https://www.npr.org/2017/07/26/539304811/how-new-york-s-roos...
Are you describing "Cut and Cover" ?
As in "Cut and Cover is a method of construction of shallow tunnels"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnel_construction#Cut-and-co...
It has been used for centuries, e.g. was used to dig the first parts of the London underground in the late 1800s
Good planning would heavily involve mixed-use development, reducing the distance to desired amenities (keeping roads small instead of having every block separated by 6 lanes), and a strong focus on mass transit (train, tram, bus).
The city of the future would be a 15-minute city covered in solar panels, broken up by public green areas, with every street lined with trees. I imagine it would also be covered mostly in mid-rises.
I was also thinking having solar panels above tram lines, but that may not be worth the cost.
https://aarhusoe.dk/media/owqjyq0b/dji_0091.jpg - the construction site in the corner is done now, its a very very tall building that looks similar to the one in the center - just... very much taller.
it's a terribly crowded place, and i hate it - but at least the apartment buildings look different than all the ol 'red brick cubes' from the 40s and 50s we have in the rest of the city (You can see some of them in the background in this picture)
Buying car shouldn't be emotional decision but a rational one, its not a small investment, for many second biggest in their lives after housing.
Far future, certainly ICE cars will be mostly dead, what will come we shall see.
I'm certain we can at least agree that leaving out chargers has at least some measurable impact on the transition.
This would be a great improvement over many cities, though definite drop in QOL for delivery and garbage truck drivers. Though I imagine having it underground makes it much easier to manage with autonomous vehicles.
This list of largest hotels ends at 28. The 28th largest has 3000 rooms.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_hotels
More like a small town?
A hotel?
More or less an institute campus?
0: https://maps.app.goo.gl/HYDD2aF6drR7LuvV9
The future is expensive, but of course the intent is to advance early-stage (ie expensive) technology toward affordability. It sounds like they want to winnow down to the best option among alternate system architectures, so I expect there's a fair bit of infrastructure-level redundancy too.
[1] https://apnews.com/article/toyota-city-japan-ai-robotics-eee...
Here is the list of a few companies that co-invest with Toyota:
- Nissin (Instant food company) to "Create and evaluating food environments to inspire new 'food cultures'".
- UCC (Japanese coffee maker) to "Explore the potential value of coffee through futuristic cafe experiences".
- Daikin Industries (Air conditioner manufacturer) to "Experiment with 'pollen-free spaces'".
I don't know exactly what they are trying to test (I guess that they don't know either), but it's meant to be an industrial theme park than a real city with municipal authority.
Although upfront cost for city construction is probably negligible compared to the operating cost over the lifespan of the city. If you have even modest labour, infrastructure and service savings every year for decades to come building smarter probably pays off.