As someone who has lived in cities with bad plumbing, I am very concerned with what planning goes into stuff that is underground. Updates to that stuff requires closing roads, digging stuff up, waking up to jackhammers. I think most of the other sexy stuff like flying taxis can totally just happen in existing cities. Takes way less effort to implement. Isn't really what makes a city genius/unique. If it were the differentiator, then you know that that system costs too much and is just a tourist attraction. Some major cities already do stuff better than the majority of American cities. If Lore had just gone to any major city in Asia, then he'd realize just copying one of them would make his city 30yrs ahead of any American city. I think your bits on moving populations should be the core of anyone's new city initiative. They should figure out what to offer to make someone want to move, and the city planning should be based off interest, and adaptively handle demand. Otherwise these dudes really are just building pyramids. Testaments to the size of their manhood to stand after they die, or something. I would be interested in seeing a compilation of the most efficient cities by size, starting with a town of, say, 50k. Maybe with totals on how much was spent on infrastructure for each. Then you could get a feel for an ideal city plan, through the stages? Really enjoying this series actually. Fostering some genuine interest in other cool places I could live. You really write as someone who has had the perspective of living in some great, overseas cities. The really fun citybits really should be featured on tiktok. Plz educate the children
1. Agreed that there are plenty of less “sexy” elements of building/running a city that are far more important than flying cars/self-powered building, like having good plumbing as you mentioned.
2. To your point that Asian cities can look superior to a lot of Western cities, I agree that in some areas this is true, especially public transit for example. However, I think this has a lot to do with age, rather than some lack of knowledge on the part of US cities for example. NYC subway opened in 1904... Seoul in 1974, Taipei in 1996, etc. So they have a huge advantage in that sense. Also there tends to be a lot more political hurdles to large infrastructure projects in the US for various reasons. I’ll have a future update about this but maybe Lore will be able to match some of prowess of these newer cities because his own city will be “young” as well.
3. If you are interested in comparing infrastructure costs there’s a great website here: https://transitcosts.com/about/ that has some really cool data you might find interesting. Might not exactly answer your efficiency question since obviously depends on coverage, quality of service etc. but this should be a good place to start.
Thanks for the Article Max! Both arguments are valid imo. Why build a new city where you can build on top and improve a city that is already in existence and already built. I could imagine they would have scouted this out and maybe drew to conclusion that it is easier to create a city from scratch than improve a current city due tom dyanmics, planning etc.
Fair point, I have other articles specifically calling out exactly that 2nd point; that building in/improving existing cities IS hard. But the point is that firstly there's a difference between physically building a city and actually getting people to live there, and secondly that given the near 100% failure rate of past planned cities (many of which have founders/visions that closely resemble Marc Lore and his own ideals) it might be more sensible/utilitarian to do those marginal improvements in existing cities.
As someone who has lived in cities with bad plumbing, I am very concerned with what planning goes into stuff that is underground. Updates to that stuff requires closing roads, digging stuff up, waking up to jackhammers. I think most of the other sexy stuff like flying taxis can totally just happen in existing cities. Takes way less effort to implement. Isn't really what makes a city genius/unique. If it were the differentiator, then you know that that system costs too much and is just a tourist attraction. Some major cities already do stuff better than the majority of American cities. If Lore had just gone to any major city in Asia, then he'd realize just copying one of them would make his city 30yrs ahead of any American city. I think your bits on moving populations should be the core of anyone's new city initiative. They should figure out what to offer to make someone want to move, and the city planning should be based off interest, and adaptively handle demand. Otherwise these dudes really are just building pyramids. Testaments to the size of their manhood to stand after they die, or something. I would be interested in seeing a compilation of the most efficient cities by size, starting with a town of, say, 50k. Maybe with totals on how much was spent on infrastructure for each. Then you could get a feel for an ideal city plan, through the stages? Really enjoying this series actually. Fostering some genuine interest in other cool places I could live. You really write as someone who has had the perspective of living in some great, overseas cities. The really fun citybits really should be featured on tiktok. Plz educate the children
Thanks for saying so Eddie!
1. Agreed that there are plenty of less “sexy” elements of building/running a city that are far more important than flying cars/self-powered building, like having good plumbing as you mentioned.
2. To your point that Asian cities can look superior to a lot of Western cities, I agree that in some areas this is true, especially public transit for example. However, I think this has a lot to do with age, rather than some lack of knowledge on the part of US cities for example. NYC subway opened in 1904... Seoul in 1974, Taipei in 1996, etc. So they have a huge advantage in that sense. Also there tends to be a lot more political hurdles to large infrastructure projects in the US for various reasons. I’ll have a future update about this but maybe Lore will be able to match some of prowess of these newer cities because his own city will be “young” as well.
3. If you are interested in comparing infrastructure costs there’s a great website here: https://transitcosts.com/about/ that has some really cool data you might find interesting. Might not exactly answer your efficiency question since obviously depends on coverage, quality of service etc. but this should be a good place to start.
4. Lastly, no plans on a CityBits tiktok just yet but highly recommend https://www.tiktok.com/@mrbarricade?lang=en for more street-focused Gen Z content.
Thanks for the Article Max! Both arguments are valid imo. Why build a new city where you can build on top and improve a city that is already in existence and already built. I could imagine they would have scouted this out and maybe drew to conclusion that it is easier to create a city from scratch than improve a current city due tom dyanmics, planning etc.
Fair point, I have other articles specifically calling out exactly that 2nd point; that building in/improving existing cities IS hard. But the point is that firstly there's a difference between physically building a city and actually getting people to live there, and secondly that given the near 100% failure rate of past planned cities (many of which have founders/visions that closely resemble Marc Lore and his own ideals) it might be more sensible/utilitarian to do those marginal improvements in existing cities.