| I agree, but would probably place residential height limit around 3 stories (jump out of the window rule), and then for things like hospitals you can go a little taller maybe up to 20 stories. We have a serious problem in talking past each other though. When people talk about building density the conversation starts around skyscrapers (bad) like Hong Kong or something, but what we need is just medium-density, mixed use development so lots of single family homes, narrow streets, walking/biking, and of course town houses and apartments so we can get variety and mixed income levels living in the same place. The rich family has the giant house on the corner. The young couple fresh out of school lives in an apartment down the street. They see each other every day at the coffee shop or at the park in the neighborhood, or maybe even a local church, gym, or office. And in building this way we can weave in healthy natural aspects, trees, flowers, gardens, etc. and animals that are better adapted for these environments can live or "visit" these areas. Then as you get further away from this town/city you just get more and more hills and countryside and independent farms. We know how to do this. We choose not to. It's not profitable for Mercedes if we all walk to work. It's not profitable for Conagra if we grow our produce or buy from an independent farmer. Not that these companies are necessarily (although sometimes they are) evil or anything, it's just an incentives alignment. And unfortunately government officials literally just do not understand what we need to do, so they're like empty vessels chasing things like Sidewalk Labs in Toronto or the Smart Cities Challenge in Columbus where all it amounts to is a corporate handout because the only way to solve a lot of the problems we have is just to build correctly. No amount of EVs fixes our problems (I have an EV btw). What does fix our problems is when families have 1 car per family instead of 2-4, and 90% of their day-to-day activities are within a short walking distance. We need a lot less of this giant SUV to Costco 30 miles away because you're cosplaying living in nature attitude. This is what an appropriately dense city looks like: https://twitter.com/trad_arch_bdays/status/15171411856676003... This is what a correct neighborhood looks like: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/37/9b/26/379b266652e0a2013c0c... This is an anti-pattern. It’s devoid of life. https://facts.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/edward-he-uKyzX... This is also absolutely dead. There is no nature here. http://media.beam.usnews.com/70/0d/89b92a674c3b894107a03641e... Idk what it looks like yet but I'm going to figure out a way to fix this. |
Even in Shanghai there's plenty of neighborhoods full of life at a human-appropriate scale. Just not at city center.