Unbuilt Architecture and City Plans

[martinbayer]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQiOA7euaYA

 

[uk 75]

Oxford's city centre has become a tawdry pedestrian precinct of sweet shops or Harry Potter outlets with only Boots and WH Smith clinging on.
Ironically Cornmarket as the main street is called was once a thriving shopping street jammed with cars and buses and big name shops.
Taking cars out of Oxford's centre has been a mixed blessing but leaving them there might have been worse

When planners wanted to build a road across Christ Church Meadow

It is 50 years since Oxford abandoned the idea of building new roads to solve its city centre traffic problems. For years there was a plan to build…

www.oxfordmail.co.uk

We shall never know.. .

 

[uk 75]

London has survived many attempts to unleash architectural eyesores worse than the many that it does have.
A summary here

Unbuilt London

From a Ponte Vecchio-style bridge across the Thames to a monorail running through Regent Street.

neverwasmag.com

 

[SUPER=BUG]

For the first time, I felt that the development of air mobility was such an important thing.
I still wish the future of transportation would be simpler.

 

[Brett Davidson]

Well, those cars are high above the ground.

 

[exclaimedleech8]

This proposal is dead, so what of dead...
Note: the Nazi show no interest in this project even forbid further study on this project.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kd5feloqSU

If that project had gone through, all plant and animal life in and around the Mediterranean would be dead. Read about California's Salton Sea and imagine it several thousand times bigger

 

[exclaimedleech8]

The cancelled Hook New Town which was to be built west of London. Uniquely, it would have a town center where pedestrians and motor vehicles would be on separate levels.

The fact that we don't have such convenient and efficient circulation systems is a testament to the limitations of current building materials that make such verticality prohibitively expensive.

 

[chimeric oncogene]

The cancelled Hook New Town which was to be built west of London. Uniquely, it would have a town center where pedestrians and motor vehicles would be on separate levels.

The fact that we don't have such convenient and efficient circulation systems is a testament to the limitations of current building materials that much such verticality prohibitively expensive.

This urban form is standard in large parts of cities like Hong Kong, and has been since the 1970s. Indeed, a lot of the circulation systems in Hong Kong would have been initially designed in cooperation with British planners.

This is a very pleasant middle-class development built in the 70s, still very competitive, in many ways as good as or better than modern developments (better access to parks, more retail options etc).

In addition to the famous Central Mid Levels escalator network in the financial district, footbridge networks to ensure grade separation of foot traffic and road traffic can be found all around Hong Kong. They weave between malls (many with air-conditioning) and various retail arcades located along the footbridge networks, and typically lead to subway stations.

Tsuen Wan footbridge network - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Different implementations of mixed retail + pedestrian grade separation from different eras (1980s, Sha Tin New Town vs 2000s, Tseung Kwan O New Town). Note the air-conditioned footbridges leading into the subway station/giant mall/transit hub podium thing in the new iteration. Also note residential developments on top. Retail is integrated into the pedestrian walkway system as in the original concept. These are all upper middle class to upper class developments.

And yes, the New Town terminology was carried over by British and British-adjacent urban planners. They might not have been able to build a New Town in Hook, but they sure as hell were able to build a New Town in Sha Tin.

These things were first popularized by Magic Motorways back in the late 1930s and the GM World's Fair Futurama in 1939, but implementation has been non-uniform.

 

[exclaimedleech8]

This urban form is standard in large parts of cities like Hong Kong, and has been since the 1970s. Indeed, a lot of the circulation systems in Hong Kong would have been initially designed in cooperation with British planners.

This is a very pleasant middle-class development built in the 70s, still very competitive, in many ways as good as or better than modern developments (better access to parks, more retail options etc).

View attachment 778599



In addition to the famous Central Mid Levels escalator network in the financial district, footbridge networks to ensure grade separation of foot traffic and road traffic can be found all around Hong Kong. They weave between malls (many with air-conditioning) and various retail arcades located along the footbridge networks, and typically lead to subway stations.

Tsuen Wan footbridge network - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

View attachment 778600

Different implementations of mixed retail + pedestrian grade separation from different eras (1980s, Sha Tin New Town vs 2000s, Tseung Kwan O New Town). Note the air-conditioned footbridges leading into the subway station/giant mall/transit hub podium thing in the new iteration. Also note residential developments on top. Retail is integrated into the pedestrian walkway system as in the original concept. These are all upper middle class to upper class developments.

And yes, the New Town terminology was carried over by British and British-adjacent urban planners. They might not have been able to build a New Town in Hook, but they sure as hell were able to build a New Town in Sha Tin.

These things were first popularized by Magic Motorways back in the late 1930s and the GM World's Fair Futurama in 1939, but implementation has been non-uniform.

View attachment 778602

Space is at an extreme premium in Hong Kong, so double decking the streets pencils out. There are few other places where that's the case.

 

[Michel Van]

Concept of Separate Auto ( & public transport) from pedestrians is old
Already proposed in 1900s, it was took over by Le Corbusier and others
in 1950s to 1970s it was quite popular in City design like London, Paris or Tokyo

most [in]Famous like the Barbican Complex in London or The Front de Seine district in Paris.

 

[exclaimedleech8]

Concept of Separate Auto ( & public transport) from pedestrians is old
Already proposed in 1900s, it was took over by Le Corbusier and others
in 1950s to 1970s it was quite popular in City design like London, Paris or Tokyo

most [in]Famous like the Barbican Complex in London or The Front de Seine district in Paris.

Exactly, it's almost exclusively the province of lavishly funded urban renewal and new town projects as well as the skyway systems found in Minneapolis and most Canadian cities, the purpose of which isn't protecting pedestrians from cars, but from extremely cold winters.

 

[exclaimedleech8]

Concept of Separate Auto ( & public transport) from pedestrians is old
Already proposed in 1900s, it was took over by Le Corbusier and others
in 1950s to 1970s it was quite popular in City design like London, Paris or Tokyo

most [in]Famous like the Barbican Complex in London or The Front de Seine district in Paris.

Actually, it goes back further than that. Da Vinci proposed an "ideal city" where, among other things, horse traffic would be banished into tunnels.

If you ignore the cost of materials, it's a very logical system.

 

[Michel Van]

Actually, it goes back further than that. Da Vinci proposed an "ideal city"

that would be this here

 

[Scott Kenny]

View attachment 778486View attachment 778487View attachment 778488View attachment 778489View attachment 778490View attachment 778491
The cancelled Hook New Town which was to be built west of London. Uniquely, it would have a town center where pedestrians and motor vehicles would be on separate levels.

The fact that we don't have such convenient and efficient circulation systems is a testament to the limitations of current building materials that make such verticality prohibitively expensive.

Not a materials strength limitation. A materials cost limitation. You're building roads and then bridges on top of them. Or building tunnels and running roads through them. Ignoring costs of bridges, you're paying for roads twice (once for cars, once for pedestrians).

=================================================

Does anyone have plans/cross-sections of the old EPCOT town? Or did I miss them earlier in this thread?

Supposedly, Walt had designed it so that utilities were in tunnels below the commercial vehicle access levels, which were below the private-automotive access levels, which were below the pedestrian/commuter pod surface level. This meant that utility work never blocked streets, and neither did moving or deliveries. Then you could have total green space around homes, with some small paths/rails for the quiet electric commuter pods.

This also meant that any EPCOT home had at least 2 basement levels and probably an elevator to move deliveries up to the appropriate level. I doubt you'd want "skylights" with the street levels exposed as that would allow street noise up to the people-only levels.

If I was living in the center of a city, I know I would greatly prefer a city plan like Hong Kong's various New Town with pedestrians completely separated from automotive levels.

 

[exclaimedleech8]

Not a materials strength limitation. A materials cost limitation. You're building roads and then bridges on top of them. Or building tunnels and running roads through them. Ignoring costs of bridges, you're paying for roads twice (once for cars, once for pedestrians).

If materials were stronger, you would need to use less of them, especially when you consider how weight compounds on itself. It would also reduce the cost of assembly as you could use fewer workers and lighter duty equipment.

 

[sienar]

This urban form is standard in large parts of cities like Hong Kong, and has been since the 1970s. Indeed, a lot of the circulation systems in Hong Kong would have been initially designed in cooperation with British planners.

This is a very pleasant middle-class development built in the 70s, still very competitive, in many ways as good as or better than modern developments (better access to parks, more retail options etc).

View attachment 778599



In addition to the famous Central Mid Levels escalator network in the financial district, footbridge networks to ensure grade separation of foot traffic and road traffic can be found all around Hong Kong. They weave between malls (many with air-conditioning) and various retail arcades located along the footbridge networks, and typically lead to subway stations.

Tsuen Wan footbridge network - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

View attachment 778600

Different implementations of mixed retail + pedestrian grade separation from different eras (1980s, Sha Tin New Town vs 2000s, Tseung Kwan O New Town). Note the air-conditioned footbridges leading into the subway station/giant mall/transit hub podium thing in the new iteration. Also note residential developments on top. Retail is integrated into the pedestrian walkway system as in the original concept. These are all upper middle class to upper class developments.

And yes, the New Town terminology was carried over by British and British-adjacent urban planners. They might not have been able to build a New Town in Hook, but they sure as hell were able to build a New Town in Sha Tin.

These things were first popularized by Magic Motorways back in the late 1930s and the GM World's Fair Futurama in 1939, but implementation has been non-uniform.

View attachment 778602

Chongqing is a more extreme version of this.

 

[chimeric oncogene]

A materials cost limitation. You're building roads and then bridges on top of them. Or building tunnels and running roads through them. Ignoring costs of bridges, you're paying for roads twice (once for cars, once for pedestrians).

To a degree, yes, but concrete is fairly cheap. Typical costs in China are 30 bucks a square meter, so even if you need a square kilometer of it it'll only be a few tens of millions of dollars. Megablock construction is very common in Xiaoqu (microdistrict) urban form in China as well, and they also use a lot of grade separation.

 

[exclaimedleech8]

To a degree, yes, but concrete is fairly cheap. Typical costs in China are 30 bucks a square meter, so even if you need a square kilometer of it it'll only be a few tens of millions of dollars. Megablock construction is very common in Xiaoqu (microdistrict) urban form in China as well, and they also use a lot of grade separation.

Concrete may be cheap, but you need to put in rebar, build formwork, and wait 30 days for it to harden. You also need a crane to move precast slabs into place.

 

[Yellow Palace]

And yes, the New Town terminology was carried over by British and British-adjacent urban planners. They might not have been able to build a New Town in Hook, but they sure as hell were able to build a New Town in Sha Tin.

You don't have to go so far as Hong Kong, actually. They did it in quite a few places in the UK, at least in part. Cumbernauld is somewhat notorious for it, with the town centre repeatedly voted 'Britain's most hated building'. On the other hand, the Barbican Estate was designed with similar principles and is quite well regarded.

The difference, of course, is that one was viewed as a flagship development and maintained properly, while the other was viewed as a population sink in a declining area.

 

[gral_rj]

Does anyone have plans/cross-sections of the old EPCOT town? Or did I miss them earlier in this thread?

Supposedly, Walt had designed it so that utilities were in tunnels below the commercial vehicle access levels, which were below the private-automotive access levels, which were below the pedestrian/commuter pod surface level. This meant that utility work never blocked streets, and neither did moving or deliveries. Then you could have total green space around homes, with some small paths/rails for the quiet electric commuter pods.

Yes, this is what I remember from seeing some EPCOT plans some time ago(there is a thread in AlternateHistory.com that talks about EPCOT, and had plans of it).

 

[PMN1]

London has survived many attempts to unleash architectural eyesores worse than the many that it does have.
A summary here

Unbuilt London

From a Ponte Vecchio-style bridge across the Thames to a monorail running through Regent Street.

neverwasmag.com

The bridge replacing the current Charing Cross / Hungerford Bridge doesn't look toooo bad...

 

[chimeric oncogene]

Concrete may be cheap, but you need to put in rebar, build formwork, and wait 30 days for it to harden. You also need a crane to move precast slabs into place.

It's a few days, not thirty. Slipform is easily 4-8 meters per day, although usually the cadence is one floor per week (it can be done faster. Prefab construction brings this to one floor every five days and one house every two days, as was deployed by real estate developers like Country Garden, that prized speed above all else.

Rebar, cranes, etc are also very cheap. A typical thirty storey building in parts of China is buildable for as little as 500 USD per square meter.

The most expensive place to build in Asia is Hong Kong (just across the border from China!), at 4,500 US dollars per square meter thanks to Anglo-style cost disease. And that's with huge multistorey podiums and overengineered typhoon resistance and sixty storey apartments and 45 degree unstable slopes that have been heavily reinforced with ridiculous foundation work (so extensive you can barely tell where the hill ends and where the building begins) and so on.

(this was supposed to be a hill, they replaced it with concrete so they could build a railway station in it and so the railway company could sell pretty apartments on top of the station to fund the railway; the hill is more a theoretical construct these days, being filled with rail and highway and pedestrian tunnels and topped by endless parks on little platformy things like a Mario game and a mix of very old and brand new housing - you can do anything, anything, with enough concrete)

And housing prices are easily double that 4,500 dollar per square meter price tag even after the housing market collapse, so the construction cost is a minor component of the total cost (although that depends on how much value is captured by the government and how that all shakes out; the proceeds from land sales are mostly ploughed into infrastructure in Hong Kong and China, like mass transit, high speed rail, new sewers, water treatment plants etc that greatly contribute to the value of the land, value capture at work blah blah blah).

Ultimately, concrete, steel, formwork, cranes, and other machines are cheap. What is not cheap is labor, permitting, building around old infrastructure, and building all the supporting physical and social infrastructure and paying for all of that plus the rest of society (what they call externalities) - that is, cost disease (or at least, what I might speculate to be major contributors to cost disease).



Steel is 230-400 USD a tonne depending on market conditions, concrete is 60 bucks a cubic meter (my earlier estimate was probably a bit off, sorry). You only need a cubic meter of concrete per square meter of high rise, and only a few hundred kilos of that at most need be steel. Most of the cost is not the bill of materials.

The difference, of course, is that one was viewed as a flagship development and maintained properly, while the other was viewed as a population sink in a declining area.

Yeah, the architecture is only a small part of the overall problem; you need proper maintenance, upkeep and actual proper use. You need a village to raise a child, you need a village to raise a village.

=/=

Incidentally, this is also why Da Line is a thing in Saudi Arabia. Clean sheet construction on a desert semi-voluntarily cleared of inhabitants is not expensive, especially at humungous scale and with imported labor from all corners of the world. Reinforced concrete, tower cranes, giant diggers etc are all very low cost (indeed, usually the bigger the machine, the cheaper it is to operate per unit output!) making ridiculous constructions quite economical in the grand scheme of things.

(compare Da Line with that silly railway stationtop apartment; instead of plating the hill in concrete, filling it full of foundations and tunnels, and then trying to build huge apartment complexes atop the whole thing, it would have been way cheaper to bulldoze the entire hill if that had been an option - hence, Da Line bulldozes all the intervening terrain!)

 

[Scott Kenny]

Yes, this is what I remember from seeing some EPCOT plans some time ago(there is a thread in AlternateHistory.com that talks about EPCOT, and had plans of it).

Thank you!

 

[exclaimedleech8]

=/=

Incidentally, this is also why Da Line is a thing in Saudi Arabia. Clean sheet construction on a desert semi-voluntarily cleared of inhabitants is not expensive, especially at humungous scale and with imported labor from all corners of the world. Reinforced concrete, tower cranes, giant diggers etc are all very low cost (indeed, usually the bigger the machine, the cheaper it is to operate per unit output!) making ridiculous constructions quite economical in the grand scheme of things.

(compare Da Line with that silly railway stationtop apartment; instead of plating the hill in concrete, filling it full of foundations and tunnels, and then trying to build huge apartment complexes atop the whole thing, it would have been way cheaper to bulldoze the entire hill if that had been an option - hence, Da Line bulldozes all the intervening terrain!)

View attachment 778780

Da Line is a thing because Saudi Arabia is a very wealthy country that can afford such vanity projects. Clean sheet construction goes on everywhere in the world, almost none of it separates pedestrians and motor vehicles vertically.

 

[Scott Kenny]

Clean sheet construction goes on everywhere in the world, almost none of it separates pedestrians and motor vehicles vertically.

I would argue that failing to separate pedestrians and motor vehicles vertically is a sign your civil engineers need to go back to school.

If it is physically impossible for pedestrians to step into traffic, you cannot have pedestrians getting run over. Similarly, if it is impossible for pedestrians to step onto train tracks or cars to drive onto train tracks, you cannot have trespasser strikes.

 

[chimeric oncogene]

Clean sheet construction goes on everywhere in the world, almost none of it separates pedestrians and motor vehicles vertically.

There are significant parts of Shenzhen's downtown metro where there is grade separation between pedestrians and vehicles on retail/public services podiums; it's not uncommon as a feature in big downtown districts.

The costs are certainly somewhat higher, yes, but hardly prohibitive. That's not the biggest problem with applying the idea in a lower-density, non-retail-integrated environment.

The landscaped retail/parking podium is also not uncommon in China, which has seen the overwhelming majority of global construction over the past twenty five years; however, the superblocks make for fewer crossings of roads, so you don't get as many bridges and there is less overall integration; underground galleries and walkways are often seen though, again integrated with retail.

I would argue that failing to separate pedestrians and motor vehicles vertically is a sign your civil engineers need to go back to school.

If it is physically impossible for pedestrians to step into traffic, you cannot have pedestrians getting run over. Similarly, if it is impossible for pedestrians to step onto train tracks or cars to drive onto train tracks, you cannot have trespasser strikes.

Well, you end up with utilization issues if there's not enough density to support the extra space; walkways without retail are potentially hazardous if there are no eyes on the street or if they're too empty and if the urban environment is crime-ridden. It is in theory difficult for police on motor vehicles to patrol elevated podiums.

Some people, especially in the US and even in East Asia, have expressed opposition to this kind of urban form for allegedly breaking down community bonds, and for making streets un-street-like, and empowering megacorporations and chain retail as opposed to smaller operators (the urban form necessitates a degree of scale). Recently, there has been a move away from integrated podium developments back to some sort of fine grained street grid (but still with megacorporate developers and retail arrangements ), which gives you more retail storefront and less mall space.

Of course, you end up sweating under the sun in tiny streets designed by people with no common sense (or people who live in a temperate environment) to include a proper overhang or cover for rain and sun in a tropical environment (which they did back in ye ancient times and ye olden days!), which reminds you why they went from fine-grained street grids to integrated podiums in the first place...

Urban design has many cultural and climate and soft aspects - overhangs might be less desirable in cooler climates, where an overriding concern might be getting enough sunlight on the street level to warm people up.

=/=

Also see Johor Forest City, a city of a million that was to be built by Country Garden (now bankrupt) in Singapore; note the extensive grade separation proposed in the (unbuilt) downtown core

A civic outcry in Malaysia forces a Chinese builder to live up to its eco-friendly tag

JOHOR BAHRU, Malaysia – On Jan. 1, 2014, fishermen near Kampong Pok, a village on Malaysia’s southern shore, were alarmed to find a fleet of barges and dredgers dumping sand on their fishing ground. Up until that moment, they’d heard nothing about land reclamation planned for their neighborhood...

news.mongabay.com

Forest City By Country Garden Pacificview - Company Details

 

[Scott Kenny]

Well, you end up with utilization issues if there's not enough density to support the extra space; walkways without retail are potentially hazardous if there are no eyes on the street or if they're too empty and if the urban environment is crime-ridden. It is in theory difficult for police on motor vehicles to patrol elevated podiums.

Well, yeah, the whole point of the pedestrian level is retail storefronts! Apartments and condos go on top of the retail spaces.

Then you've got cars and parking on a sub level, utility supertunnels that are accessible by work trucks without digging up the streets, and finally some light rail/metro tunnels below all that. IIRC some of the metro stations in Tokyo are 200m deep!

Some people, especially in the US and even in East Asia, have expressed opposition to this kind of urban form for allegedly breaking down community bonds, and for making streets un-street-like, and empowering megacorporations and chain retail as opposed to smaller operators (the urban form necessitates a degree of scale). Recently, there has been a move away from integrated podium developments back to some sort of fine grained street grid (but still with megacorporate developers and retail arrangements ), which gives you more retail storefront and less mall space.

Of course, you end up sweating under the sun in tiny streets designed by people with no common sense (or people who live in a temperate environment) to include a proper overhang or cover for rain and sun in a tropical environment (which they did back in ye ancient times and ye olden days!), which reminds you why they went from fine-grained street grids to integrated podiums in the first place...

Yeah, those people are misguided at best, IMO.

Urban design has many cultural and climate and soft aspects - overhangs might be less desirable in cooler climates, where an overriding concern might be getting enough sunlight on the street level to warm people up.

Definitely a reasonable concern. I think for general design purposes I'd want to use cloth awnings over big concrete shades, though.

Also see Johor Forest City, a city of a million that was to be built by Country Garden (now bankrupt) in Singapore; note the extensive grade separation proposed in the (unbuilt) downtown core

A civic outcry in Malaysia forces a Chinese builder to live up to its eco-friendly tag

JOHOR BAHRU, Malaysia – On Jan. 1, 2014, fishermen near Kampong Pok, a village on Malaysia’s southern shore, were alarmed to find a fleet of barges and dredgers dumping sand on their fishing ground. Up until that moment, they’d heard nothing about land reclamation planned for their neighborhood...

news.mongabay.com

Forest City By Country Garden Pacificview - Company Details

Yes, that is exactly the kind of thing I was talking about!

 

[chimeric oncogene]

Well, yeah, the whole point of the pedestrian level is retail storefronts! Apartments and condos go on top of the retail spaces.

Indeed, but retail has to be scaled to the population and foot traffic.

If your development is overall too low density, you cannot support 1000 storefronts to fill up your kilometers of walkways. Even if you built 1000 storefronts, there would not be enough stores to fill them up, they would not be economically viable. Many of them would be empty and shuttered.

You've got the general idea; there are many expressions of this sort of urban form, usually there's a parking lot in the core of the podium and retailers around the rim or something like that.

There are lots of different ways to arrange these components around a railway station, or use these in an urban environment.

You can take a look at this article, which also touches on the various design aspects

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/303950629_Rail_Village_and_Mega-Structure

Yeah, those people are misguided at best, IMO.

I'll be the first one to tout the benefits of ultra-high-density capital-intensified high rise living, but the problems are not made up; you can't really buy a store on a retail podium/corridor thing, which causes rent issues, and building management can push you around at their whims. If you break up management, you get horror shows of maintenence. If the government does it, you get government problems and more horror shows of maintenence. These environments deteriorate fast when maintained poorly, especially the backends; and in buildings this big there are lots of backends.

It's not like a conventional street, where e.g. a clinic or small restaurant can hop around between a few side streets in the event of a rent dispute.

Even in places like Hong Kong, many people like old-timey streets; a good ratio of old-timey construction (peeling concrete and all) and modern superblock superpodium is considered desirable to get a diversified retail experience (indeed, new developments alongside the old areas tend to revitalize the old area because foot traffic spills over!); but when you're building New Towns all at once, that's harder to achieve.

This is not to say that the new attempts to build new old timey street thingys have turned out well IMO, but I am no expert.

Tarps and awnings have their uses but they get moldy fast in heavy tropical rain, and the runoff is annoying.

 

[TsrJoe]

New towns in the United Kingdom - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[Scott Kenny]

Tarps and awnings have their uses but they get moldy fast in heavy tropical rain, and the runoff is annoying.

Fair point.

Guess that's my living in a desert speaking. What you need here is SHADE, not rain protection. You'd need a real roof for monsoon rains.

 

[Michel Van]

The Skyline of Paris could look quite different, had not happen several events

like Tour Apogée of Project Italie 13 or Le Tour Cybernetic at La Defence

Tour Apogée would be residential skyscraper of around 300 meter hight at Place Italie in Paris
Behind it was area planned for residential and office high-rise buildings similar to La Defence, called Project Italie 13.

Le Tour Cybernetic would be 300 meter high tower by artist Nicolas Schöffer
it would house restaurant on top and Cultural center in base at La Defence


but what happen ?
The sudden dead of President Pompidou, who supported those projects.
with his dead the support to build Le Tour Cybernetic died also.

Follow by this monstrosity: Le Tour Montparnasse in 1973

It became most hated building in Paris and let to political and cultural outcry
New President Giscard d'Estaing order new laws that limited the High of residential and office high-rise buildings
what reduce the high of Tour Apogee drastic

but biggest issue was Oil crisis of 1973 with exploding cost this tall skyscraper became to expensive to build in 1970s
Project Italie 13 was terminated unfinished, instead of Tour Apogee came a shopping center...

 

[exclaimedleech8]

Buckminster Fuller's Triton City: a city that would float on the water.

It's a smart idea given that 71% of the surface of this planet is covered by water and most of our crowded cities are on the water.

The development of strong and lightweight foamed metals and ceramics would all but eliminate the risk of sinking and make this quite a practical proposition.

If nothing else, floating highways and airports would be helpful to many urban challenges.

 

[exclaimedleech8]

It's a few days, not thirty. Slipform is easily 4-8 meters per day, although usually the cadence is one floor per week (it can be done faster. Prefab construction brings this to one floor every five days and one house every two days, as was deployed by real estate developers like Country Garden, that prized speed above all else.

Rebar, cranes, etc are also very cheap. A typical thirty storey building in parts of China is buildable for as little as 500 USD per square meter.

The most expensive place to build in Asia is Hong Kong (just across the border from China!), at 4,500 US dollars per square meter thanks to Anglo-style cost disease. And that's with huge multistorey podiums and overengineered typhoon resistance and sixty storey apartments and 45 degree unstable slopes that have been heavily reinforced with ridiculous foundation work (so extensive you can barely tell where the hill ends and where the building begins) and so on.

(this was supposed to be a hill, they replaced it with concrete so they could build a railway station in it and so the railway company could sell pretty apartments on top of the station to fund the railway; the hill is more a theoretical construct these days, being filled with rail and highway and pedestrian tunnels and topped by endless parks on little platformy things like a Mario game and a mix of very old and brand new housing - you can do anything, anything, with enough concrete)

And housing prices are easily double that 4,500 dollar per square meter price tag even after the housing market collapse, so the construction cost is a minor component of the total cost (although that depends on how much value is captured by the government and how that all shakes out; the proceeds from land sales are mostly ploughed into infrastructure in Hong Kong and China, like mass transit, high speed rail, new sewers, water treatment plants etc that greatly contribute to the value of the land, value capture at work blah blah blah).

Ultimately, concrete, steel, formwork, cranes, and other machines are cheap. What is not cheap is labor, permitting, building around old infrastructure, and building all the supporting physical and social infrastructure and paying for all of that plus the rest of society (what they call externalities) - that is, cost disease (or at least, what I might speculate to be major contributors to cost disease).

View attachment 778779

Steel is 230-400 USD a tonne depending on market conditions, concrete is 60 bucks a cubic meter (my earlier estimate was probably a bit off, sorry). You only need a cubic meter of concrete per square meter of high rise, and only a few hundred kilos of that at most need be steel. Most of the cost is not the bill of materials.




Yeah, the architecture is only a small part of the overall problem; you need proper maintenance, upkeep and actual proper use. You need a village to raise a child, you need a village to raise a village.

=/=

Incidentally, this is also why Da Line is a thing in Saudi Arabia. Clean sheet construction on a desert semi-voluntarily cleared of inhabitants is not expensive, especially at humungous scale and with imported labor from all corners of the world. Reinforced concrete, tower cranes, giant diggers etc are all very low cost (indeed, usually the bigger the machine, the cheaper it is to operate per unit output!) making ridiculous constructions quite economical in the grand scheme of things.

(compare Da Line with that silly railway stationtop apartment; instead of plating the hill in concrete, filling it full of foundations and tunnels, and then trying to build huge apartment complexes atop the whole thing, it would have been way cheaper to bulldoze the entire hill if that had been an option - hence, Da Line bulldozes all the intervening terrain!)

View attachment 778780

The way I look at it: here in Phoenix, most apartment complexes provide tenants with covered parking so that the interiors of their cars don't get damaged by the UV rays of the relentless Arizona sun, but I haven't seen any places that allow the tops of these shades to be walked on.

 

[chimeric oncogene]

The way I look at it: here in Phoenix,

Yes, that explains it quite nicely, you live in Phoenix, Arizona, in houses built by Americans under American conditions out of American wood to American preferences.

The urban fabric is completely different, the way of life/daily routine is completely different, heck, even the concrete and steel is more expensive. You won't find a construction company in Hong Kong or Shenzhen that builds wood buildings - even two-story houses are sometimes built out of reinforced concrete, because that's what people are familiar with. Plus typhoon resistance.

Where would you get the wood for the 5 over 1? Wood would be extraordinarily expensive! Mainland Asia has seen heavy historical deforestation.

Urban design is in many ways very idiosyncratic and very local.

Floating cities are a maintenance nightmare, the primary advantages are the possibility of mass producing the houses in giant yards in China for pennies on the dollar and shipping them around the world, and also the vague possibility of relocating the houses at some point in their lifespan, although given corrosion issues and the general messiness and damp I would not be optimistic.

 

[Scott Kenny]

You won't find a construction company in Hong Kong or Shenzhen that builds wood buildings - even two-story houses are sometimes built out of reinforced concrete, because that's what people are familiar with. Plus typhoon resistance.

Where would you get the wood for the 5 over 1? Wood would be extraordinarily expensive! Mainland Asia has seen heavy historical deforestation.

Bamboo, silly.

Grows like grass. Is a grass, actually. Grows fast enough to get 20ft lengths in a couple of years.

Floating cities are a maintenance nightmare, the primary advantages are the possibility of mass producing the houses in giant yards in China for pennies on the dollar and shipping them around the world, and also the vague possibility of relocating the houses at some point in their lifespan, although given corrosion issues and the general messiness and damp I would not be optimistic.

Very much agree here.

You don't maintain a floating house, it sinks. And lets be honest, most homeowners just don't do the maintenance.

 

[exclaimedleech8]

Floating cities are a maintenance nightmare, the primary advantages are the possibility of mass producing the houses in giant yards in China for pennies on the dollar and shipping them around the world, and also the vague possibility of relocating the houses at some point in their lifespan, although given corrosion issues and the general messiness and damp I would not be optimistic.

Ceramics don't corrode

Yes, that explains it quite nicely, you live in Phoenix, Arizona, in houses built by Americans under American conditions out of American wood to American preferences.

Apartment buildings in Phoenix and most of the United States are not made of wood

 

[martinbayer]

The most expensive place to build in Asia is Hong Kong (just across the border from China!), at 4,500 US dollars per square meter thanks to Anglo-style cost disease.

I am honestly, truly, deeply sorry to have to inform you that Hong Kong *IS* a part of China as a socalled "Special Administrative Region" (yeah, right!) since 1997, when the Brits cowardly handed it back to the socalled "Communist" *deeply* capitalist mainland dictatorship as per prior *contractual* agreements. But welcome to the 21st century, you have so much recent history to catch up on, young Padawan!

 

[chimeric oncogene]

Apartment buildings in Phoenix and most of the United States are not made of wood

The high rise residential Tower is obviously going to be concrete, but the American five over one is wood frame over a concrete podium for the parking. The typical American suburban house is also as I understand it wood framed, or perhaps steel framed with wood construction.

What are 5 over 1 Buildings? Pros and Cons of One-Plus-Fives

What are 5 over 1 Buildings? 5 over 1 buildings are mid-rise residential structures built with a wood frame over a concrete platform.

mtcopeland.com

Now of course, I am not very familiar with the great city of Phoenix, and cannot attest to the typical urban form or the most common structure (as I understand it, Phoenix has a magnificent expressway system and extensive suburban developments tying into that expressway system, with excellent accessibility), would be honored to know more.

With exquisite car access and proper highway density, US style suburbia is actually significantly more convenient than even the highest density urban area, if you drive. Phoneix must be amazing.

Ceramics don't corrode

They don't, but your walls get all moldy and there is a bit of scum over the concrete and you end up with lots and lots of little shellfish and barnacles dotting the concrete, and you get the occasional bit of water damage and the papers in your drawer get moldy and the paint goes all brown and so on.

Of course, it depends on exactly what your environment is like and mitigation measures and so on, but this is non-trivial.

Also it depends on what you're building this out of, the typical construction is reinforced concrete hull for the floating buildings, at least in the Netherlands.

Embracing a Wetter Future, the Dutch Turn to Floating Homes

Faced with worsening floods and a shortage of housing, the Netherlands is seeing growing interest in floating homes. These floating communities are inspiring more ambitious Dutch-led projects in flood-prone nations as far-flung as French Polynesia and the Maldives.

e360.yale.edu

Bamboo, silly.

They use it for scaffolding in Hong Kong, but not anywhere else. Not quite considered robust for high rise, and you would probably need some sort of specialized fiber board/composite, since you can't use these as 2x4s or structural members directly.

There have been a variety of wood skyscrapers, at least on an experimental scale, but for soundproofing and fireproofing it is hard to beat reinforced concrete. It's better, even, than steel construction, which is not favored in much of East Asia for a variety of reasons.

 

[Brett Davidson]

Bamboo, silly.

Grows like grass. Is a grass, actually. Grows fast enough to get 20ft lengths in a couple of years.

Indeed.

Ulaman Eco-Luxury Resort / Inspiral Architecture and Design Studios

Completed in 2022 in Kediri, Indonesia. Images by Wanderskyy, Kevin Mirc, Bianca Blajovan, Nora Brown, Symbiosis Studio. Located in Kaba-Kaba, Tabanan, Bali, the breathtaking second phase of this eco-resort incorporates a number of key facilities that unify the entire...

www.archdaily.com

 

[Graham1973]

A video covering the New York City Subway, showing both abandoned tracks and provisions for future expansion that never happened. The presentation isn't the best though.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eiwlodu5Y8Q

Wikipedia has a long listing of unbuilt proposals for the NYC subway on the page linked below. At least some of the things mentioned on that page appear in the video.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposed_expansion_of_the_New_York_City_Subway