|
|
|
|
|
|
by curtisf
774 days ago
|
|
|
"Vertical" cities are cheaper, healthier, and more sustainable to live in than spread-out suburbs. What makes cities miserable is _cars_, which in most cities are driven primarily by people who don't live there -- since in well designed cities, the people who live there can complete many (though not necessarily all) trips on foot, bicycle, or by public transit. In the spread out neighborhoods the article is envisioning, anything but personal car transport becomes impossible for essentially every trip. This is bad for your health, the "nature" the author is focused on, and your wallet. --- Cities don't need to be built hundreds of stories high; two or three story apartment buildings are enough. They don't need to be built with a lack of green and nature; tree lined avenues are pleasant and don't take up much space. |
|
|
Very few cities are designed to begin with, let alone designed well.
BrasÃlia (Brazil's capital city) is one that IMO is designed, and well designed at that.
Living in BrasÃlia (I have never lived there but I have family and have visited many times) feels a bit like living in a small village with plenty of green and living spaces, where everybody knows each other but at the same time you have everything a big city has to offer just a short-to-medium car trip away. Unfortunately it wasn't designed with public transit in mind, but traffic there is mostly kept away from living and working spaces, so noise and air pollution is kept down anyway.
That is, at least the parts that were in the original city design. It grew though, and that growth was organic and disordered like any other city.