Date: 13/01/2015 23:08:46
From: dv
ID: 660361
Subject: Carless city
I wonder what a modern city, designed to have no cars, would look like.
This project in Chengdu will rely little on cars but will have some cars.
I wonder what a modern city, designed to have no cars, would look like.
This project in Chengdu will rely little on cars but will have some cars.
only the rich should have cars
You’d still need adequate thoroughfares for trucks and emergency vehicles.
Bubblecar said:
You’d still need adequate thoroughfares for trucks and emergency vehicles.
Or would you? Perhaps some other kind of conveyance like a elevator that goes up down and sideways would be more efficient.
dv said:
Bubblecar said:
You’d still need adequate thoroughfares for trucks and emergency vehicles.
Or would you? Perhaps some other kind of conveyance like a elevator that goes up down and sideways would be more efficient.
Sounds a complicated and vulnerable way of getting emergency services to fires and heart attacks etc.
Bubblecar said:
You’d still need adequate thoroughfares for trucks and emergency vehicles.
Back in the days when there were no cars traffic was still a problem.
Bubblecar said:
dv said:
Bubblecar said:
You’d still need adequate thoroughfares for trucks and emergency vehicles.
Or would you? Perhaps some other kind of conveyance like a elevator that goes up down and sideways would be more efficient.
Sounds a complicated and vulnerable way of getting emergency services to fires and heart attacks etc.
I would be thinking that making use of the third dimension might enable them to get their faster.
dv said:
I would be thinking that making use of the third dimension might enable them to get their faster.
What about mechanical & power failures? The whole city could go up due to one fancy equipment breakdown.
dv said:
Bubblecar said:
dv said:Or would you? Perhaps some other kind of conveyance like a elevator that goes up down and sideways would be more efficient.
Sounds a complicated and vulnerable way of getting emergency services to fires and heart attacks etc.
I would be thinking that making use of the third dimension might enable them to get their faster.
How many tonnes a day of food and materials do you reckon a city needs? Plus stuff removed from the city. Even a small army needs an endless stream of trucks to keep it supplied.
The roads must roll.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Roads_Must_Roll
I don’t think you caqn make a carless city. Maybe just patches of it can be built and scaled for pedestrians, linked by public transport and whatnot.
But for things like doing the grocery shopping there is nothing like having a car to carry it home. I live 300m from the local shops, I often walk there, but if I’m doing a food shop I’ll take the car.
Bubblecar said:
dv said:
I would be thinking that making use of the third dimension might enable them to get their faster.
What about mechanical & power failures? The whole city could go up due to one fancy equipment breakdown.
So build it with appropriate redundancy.
Currently emergency vehicles have to contend with unpredictable traffic problems. With my XYZ lift scheme they’d have entirely predictable arrival times.
AwesomeO said:
dv said:
Bubblecar said:Sounds a complicated and vulnerable way of getting emergency services to fires and heart attacks etc.
I would be thinking that making use of the third dimension might enable them to get their faster.
How many tonnes a day of food and materials do you reckon a city needs? Plus stuff removed from the city. Even a small army needs an endless stream of trucks to keep it supplied.
I realise there’d have to be heads at some point for goods to be transferred to the city.
party_pants said:
I don’t think you caqn make a carless city. Maybe just patches of it can be built and scaled for pedestrians, linked by public transport and whatnot.But for things like doing the grocery shopping there is nothing like having a car to carry it home. I live 300m from the local shops, I often walk there, but if I’m doing a food shop I’ll take the car.
I can carry shedloads of groceries on my bike.
party_pants said:
I don’t think you caqn make a carless city. Maybe just patches of it can be built and scaled for pedestrians, linked by public transport and whatnot.But for things like doing the grocery shopping there is nothing like having a car to carry it home. I live 300m from the local shops, I often walk there, but if I’m doing a food shop I’ll take the car.
I suppose you could also impose rules on the sort of cars allowed in the city, more like electric golf cars for example.
party_pants said:
But for things like doing the grocery shopping there is nothing like having a car to carry it home.
Instead of loading your groceries into your car boot, load it into a small XYZ lift compartment and it will be at your home before you are.
Bubblecar said:
party_pants said:
I don’t think you caqn make a carless city. Maybe just patches of it can be built and scaled for pedestrians, linked by public transport and whatnot.But for things like doing the grocery shopping there is nothing like having a car to carry it home. I live 300m from the local shops, I often walk there, but if I’m doing a food shop I’ll take the car.
I can carry shedloads of groceries on my bike.
Quite often his pannier is fit to burst on his way back from the providore.
Bubblecar said:
party_pants said:
I don’t think you caqn make a carless city. Maybe just patches of it can be built and scaled for pedestrians, linked by public transport and whatnot.But for things like doing the grocery shopping there is nothing like having a car to carry it home. I live 300m from the local shops, I often walk there, but if I’m doing a food shop I’ll take the car.
I can carry shedloads of groceries on my bike.
I’d need at least a golf buggy to carry my shopping home. A bicycle would take several trips. I buy heavy stuff like cartons of soft drinks, and pick up a carton of beer on the way out.
Mind you, I’d love a system of bike paths where you are allowed to take those little motorised bikes, perhaps set a speed limit of 40 or 50 km/h.
party_pants said:
I don’t think you caqn make a carless city. Maybe just patches of it can be built and scaled for pedestrians, linked by public transport and whatnot.But for things like doing the grocery shopping there is nothing like having a car to carry it home. I live 300m from the local shops, I often walk there, but if I’m doing a food shop I’ll take the car.
Get a granny’s basket thing on wheels.
AwesomeO said:
party_pants said:
I don’t think you caqn make a carless city. Maybe just patches of it can be built and scaled for pedestrians, linked by public transport and whatnot.But for things like doing the grocery shopping there is nothing like having a car to carry it home. I live 300m from the local shops, I often walk there, but if I’m doing a food shop I’ll take the car.
I suppose you could also impose rules on the sort of cars allowed in the city, more like electric golf cars for example.
Mind you you wouldn’t need emergency vehicles so much if there were no cars…
I still think adequate vehicle access would only be prudent.
Bubblecar said:
I still think adequate vehicle access would only be prudent.
Bubblecar said:
I still think adequate vehicle access would only be prudent.
Hard to see how you can get around it, in city scapes that have survived since antiquity there is still space for cars, albeit small cars like in Italy. Call them horse drawn car sized.
dv said:
party_pants said:
But for things like doing the grocery shopping there is nothing like having a car to carry it home.
Instead of loading your groceries into your car boot, load it into a small XYZ lift compartment and it will be at your home before you are.
Hmmmn – it’s a bit outside of my scope of thinking for now.
party_pants said:
dv said:
party_pants said:
But for things like doing the grocery shopping there is nothing like having a car to carry it home.
Instead of loading your groceries into your car boot, load it into a small XYZ lift compartment and it will be at your home before you are.
Hmmmn – it’s a bit outside of my scope of thinking for now.
if people lived in a huge cube it might be possible
wookiemeister said:
party_pants said:
dv said:Instead of loading your groceries into your car boot, load it into a small XYZ lift compartment and it will be at your home before you are.
Hmmmn – it’s a bit outside of my scope of thinking for now.
could you climb into that XYZ compartment and arrive with your groceries?
Yeah okay but it might be more energy efficient for you to walk
I’ll be flexible, doesn’t have to be a cube. A square prism or parallelepiped will do.
dv said:
I wonder what a modern city, designed to have no cars, would look like.This project in Chengdu will rely little on cars but will have some cars.
I’m sure I saw a TV program about this once. The electric shuttles travel underground. I like the idea. What I saw had been built, but didn’t have any residents.
A Google search on this found nothing. But this article seems to be related:
——————
A tiny pocket city built from scratch next to a crowded urban center could alleviate some of China’s crowding and pollution problems. A Chicago-based architectural firm designed a master plan for the city, which will be built within eight years and host 30,000 families, or roughly 80,000 people.
Chengdu Tianfu District Great City will connect via mass transit to Chengdu, a megalopolis of 14 million in southwest China. Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture says its planned city will use 48 percent less energy and 58 percent less water than a conventional city with the same population. It’s designed to be self-sustaining and environmentally conscious, using waste summer heat to provide winter heating. A power plant will use co-generation technology to provide both electricity and hot water.
Great City will cover just 1.3 square kilometers, or 0.5 square miles. This is about 245 football fields of space. That is not a ton of space for 80,000 people. And that’s the idea – everything is supposed to be so close that you can walk anywhere within 15 minutes.
Here’s a breakdown of land use:
Total site: 800 acres
Urbanised area: 320 acres
Buffer zone with natural landscape: 480 acres
Within the urbanised area:
15 per cent of land reserved for parks
60 per cent for construction of buildings
25 per cent for infrastructure, roads and pedestrian streets
The focus on open space is a nod to the Chengdu Plain, where Chengdu is located. The farmland is so fertile it’s known as s the “Country of Heaven” or “The Land of Abundance,”
Gordon Gill, one of the architects and firm partners, said a main goal was keeping residents connected to nature. “We’ve designed this project as a dense vertical city that acknowledges and in fact embraces the surrounding landscape – a city whose residents will live in harmony with nature rather than in opposition to it,” he said.
The high-density city is designed to be a prototype, which could conceivably be replicated anywhere else in the country. It’s supposed to start construction later this spring.
> the city, which will be built within eight years and host 30,000 families
That’s the equivalent of 33 Burj Khalifas.
> Great City will cover just 1.3 square kilometers, or 0.5 square miles for 80,000 people.
Be interesting to compare that with the population density of “CENTRAL 中環” Hong Kong.
Central Hong Kong (including the Zoo and Hong Kong Park) has an area of about 0.8 square kilometers.
My most recent idea for a car-free city is based on the observation that at any time of day about 90% of all the cars will be parked. So cut the number of cars in the city by ten and have all cars on the road. This would necessitate changes in car ownership.
My second most recent idea for a car-free city was based on the idea that after a complete crash of the world economy and descent of the world into chaotic war the car would virtually disappear from the world’s cities because all mass production would cease, but the home-built truck and motorbike would survive for civilian use and the armoured personnel carrier for military use.
My third most recent idea for a car-free city is based on Heinlein’s high-speed conveyor belts. I am continually thinking about how to reduce the capital and operating cost of conveyor belts for people without compromising durability and comfort.
If Willy Wonka can have a lift that moves in three dimensions, why can’t we?
mollwollfumble said:
My most recent idea for a car-free city is based on the observation that at any time of day about 90% of all the cars will be parked. So cut the number of cars in the city by ten and have all cars on the road. This would necessitate changes in car ownership.
many european cities have short term rent-cars in the same way some councils have bikes to rent. rock up, grab the car for a couple of hours, bring it back.. all automatic and done with credit card etc..
seems to work
These utopian commune cities have been tried before by other crazy drug fucked hippie wastrels who live out their days cadging money and staying as far away from reality as possible on the end of a bong.
I’ll have no truck with them.