Oceans Yet to Burn

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

One Thousand and One Villages

Follow-up to my post One Thousand Villages, separated out so Tumblr won’t harm my precious, precious PNGs, so let’s tag some people from the last one. @wirehead-wannabe @mailadreapta @bambamramfan Let’s also tag @xhxhxhx in case he finds it interesting or discovers some glaring flaw or something.

We’ll borrow Mailadreapta’s word here and refer to the new model as a Quad - it’s a 500m x 500m area as part of a larger 1km x 1km pattern.  I decided to revisit the subject and get a better sense of the scale and proportions, and in doing so, I realized that 1km x 1km is just too big for a single unit (and also too big to start with as an experiment if someone were to attempt this).  We’ll call the collection of four quads a Klick.

In the above images, green is residential, blue is mixed-use/commercial, yellow is light industrial, white is civic buildings, and orange is public transit.

Noting some feedback from @mailadreapta

I think the biggest problem is employment: there’s just no way you can ensure that everyone works in their own quad, so most people will still need to leave in order to work. I assume that a high-speed thoroughfare lie along the boundaries of the square (with transit) to accommodate this.

For a similar reason, I would put the commercial and civic buildings (except for the school) among the edge: these are these are places that will be visited often by people from other villages, so keep them away from the residential center.

This is, in fact, roughly the plan.  Although I did have the civic center in the middle last time.

Now then, now that that’s out of the way, let’s do some uncredentialed urban planning!

EDIT: Got a couple of numbers wrong.  That’s what I get for being so desperate to post this at 5AM in the morning.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

One Thousand Villages

@wirehead-wannabe I recall you talking about wanting a college-campus-like environment with activities and whatnot as a living area, but outside of a college campus.

@mailadreapta I recall you talking about the difficulty of getting people to go for medium-density housing.

And I guess @bambamramfan I think I’ve mentioned a similar idea already.  (Though it was a low-trust mechanism, I’m of the opinion that high trust is an equilibrium state which can be achieved through various mechanisms.)

There is an idea I’ve been kicking around for a while, which is to borrow an idea from computer science for resolving the challenges of urban areas by recursively reducing the size of problems until they can be adequately resolved.  Thus, the city is reduced to a bunch of villages/towns.

The above render is for a rough sketch design that spans one kilometer and houses a population of around 5,000 or more, assuming an apartment is about 100 sqm (based on the size of an average apartment in the US).  After reviewing it, I can’t help but think it should perhaps be about ¼ the size, but ah well.  Grey is civic buildings, light green is residential, light blue is commercial, and light brown is footpaths.

• Mixed use development has a lot of advantages, including reductions in commuting, but for various reasons people don’t like it.
  
• People seem to find themselves feeling less connected to, and less trusting of, others.
• Crime continues to be a problem for many cities.
• Childhood obesity is on the increase, and children most likely need to get outside more.
• Police violence is a problem in many cities.
• Greenery is important for human psychological health.
• High levels of traffic congestion.

My proposal, then, is to create a smaller community within the city with several key elements:

• Semi-permeable membrane - Outer wall reduces noise.  Security and level of surveillance can be adjusted according to local crime levels.  As crime rises, all visitors can be tracked, or access can even be limited.
• Quick access to public transportation (orange areas) - the average human walks at 5kph, and is therefore never more than about 700m and ~10 minutes from a public transport stop.
• Quick access to local shops - reduce unnecessary transport usage and make goods available easily to the locals, also it’s directly next to the transit stop.
• Community Center - Common facilities for exercise, social clubs, social events, and so on are near the center.  All residents own a share of the Community Development Board (or something) which hires personnel to clean up the neighborhood, maintain the facilities, and puts on community social events on the regular.  This is very local, direct political involvement with a high share of control per person.  
• Community Support Officers (CSOs) - (I only recently discovered UK has something with the same name.)  Trained not only in police work, but also emergency medical care, fire suppression, and social work.  Part of the idea here is that CSOs will engage almost entirely in foot patrols when not doing other support work.  They will know who is an actual threat, vs who is mentally ill, possibly be able to deflect bad paths before they become permanent, and pick up on crimes using high-context detective work.  The people of the block will be real people to them and they will see their consequences as they happen.
• Low-velocity roads - Borrowed from Barcelona, encourages and enhances walking, discourages car use, but still lets cargo move in and out.  Safer for children.  
• Ample foot/bicycle paths, ample green space for exercise, sports, and letting children outside to play.

Probably this needs to be revised a lot more, starting with a reduction to 500m.

I think something like this might have the potential to lower crime and police violence, while reducing the opposition to medium-density living and increasing psychological and physical health.  

But you know, I’m not an expert.  There’s probably something terribly wrong with this.