[NoRagrets]

Interesting perspective. I don’t think cities should be adaptable to change. Most city models should be abandoned and new models created. Features of the older model can be reused.

The notion that cities should be designed to be adaptable and are ‘living entities always changing’ comes from a world view that puts non living entities of cities like buildings and roads and infrastructure over living entities. Like humans, habitat, wild life and environment. Here capitalism and materialism trump over stable environments for living.

Families, businesses and even nature needs stability. Stability doesn’t exclude adaptability but it requires a certain amount of static ‘non-changeablity’.

The problem at hand is: 1. Workforce has become migratory. 2. A lack of transport network and infrastructure is blurring all kinds of lines between urban, suburban and rural.

This is an uniquely American problem esp in cities where govt doesn’t invest in transportation infrastructure.

Cities should be stable. People should adaptable if they want freedom of movement. If you want cities to be living entities, then the citizens should curtail migration in and out. It’s an either/or situation. Such a binary approach would ensure that we have less of inequalities, unaffordability, exploitation of resources an destruction of eco systems.

Trying to be a migratory populace AND wanting to have adaptable cities is a recipe of disaster and strife as we have all seen in recent times.

[dragonwriter]

> The notion that cities should be designed to be adaptable and are ‘living entities always changing’ comes from a world view that puts non living entities of cities like buildings and roads and infrastructure over living entities

No, it's the exact opposite. Adaptable cities adapt to serve the changing needs of the people living in them. This is better just building new ones with different features when the old features are found to be inadequate because:

(1) Geography (access to fresh water, natural trade routes, climate) matters for cities, and the good places to site cities are mostly taken,

(2) The people least well served by an existing city design will naturally be the least free to abandon the city for a new one.

> . If you want cities to be living entities, then the citizens should curtail migration in and out

I see no rationale for this. You repeat it multiple times, but without clear reasoning.

[jelliclesfarm]

I can see why you can’t understand my rationale.

I don’t think there is a need for adaptable cities. People should be adaptable. Not cities.

Civilizations emerged on the edges of rivers and water bodies. Valley civilizations were always on the banks of water bodies because there was a stable source of water during agrarian times. Because this is when we switched from migratory/nomadic mode to pastoralists/agrarians.

Any healthy eco system relies on the availability of resources. Resources are not always renewable or fungible. Infrastructure is not mobile and is often bulky.

With the current tech civilization, we are ..in a way..becoming nomadic again. Environments are generally inter connected massive cogs that change slowly.

Wanting adaptable city environments with a nomadic minded populace is unattainable, unsustainable and an utter mismatch.

Let me give an example in simple terms: When Musk wants to create underground tunnels to move people about or when we build a rail system or roads for a bus route or freeways for inter/intra transportation, we are putting down a rigid foundation. This is expensive and certainly not ‘adaptable’.

When we put down a power grid or lay pipes for a water department to serve people by sending water to residential taps, we create rigid inflexible..and expensive..infrastructure. This caps population and rather it MUST cap population and regulate migratory tendencies because carrying capacities exist everywhere and at every scale.

To not have a binary approach to migration vis a vis adaptable cities is the equivalent of building civilizations with spit and duct tape. Which has been proven again and again all over the world including the Bay Area.

[coupdetaco]

People go in but they dont come out