These superblocks are also used a bunch in china in newer cities. When subway's come to the edge of the superblock where you live its pretty nice -- you basically never interact with cars or potentially once or twice even though you live in the middle of a huge city (Shanghai for example in certain areas). After work you see tons of families walking around, people on dates, dancing, etc doing whatever in the central squares between the big apartment buildings that surround the area. And since many other superblocks have their own area like this, typically the park area is not overcrowded.. vs. like going to golden gate park in the evening or weekends in the summer.
The US could have some of these nice things too if the zoning law didn't ban all business in residential areas. It baffles me how the US has no shops / restaurants / convenience stores in residential areas and nobody questioned it over half a century.
We have multiple generations growing up with suburbs as the norm and have never traveled outside North America. As the saying goes: "Birds born in a cage think flying is an illness". It's basically impossible to change urban design here.
Yes, americans share a solipsism when it comes to envisioning walkable city life. City life without a car cannot be imagined, mainly, because we are trying to integrate a vision in our imaginations that rejects the fundamental premise of requiring cars for personal transport.
What we cannot comprehend is that walkable city life is aspirational; the luxury, the tactile beauty, the convenience, a sense of safety. Rather, we see parking problems, small living spaces, and waiting for busses. Or carrying groceries, like a peasant. Or the brutal concrete jungles of NYC.
Instead, the paradigm shift requires imaging the calm and splendor of walking in Bruges or Amsterdam, the quiet grandeur of Madrid or Vienna on a Sunday morning, the verdancy and fragrance of a Japanese suburb, Oxford's accessible country side, the convenience of having your kids and parents be independently mobile, ...
There are even stellar examples closer at home. Imagine Savannah, Charleston, Asheville, ... All tourist traps, and really expensive. Some people know what's up, but not enough. It will get better, as more and more people travel more.
> It's basically impossible to change urban design here.
Is it? It's not that long ago that highways were driven intentionally through Black neighborhoods [1]. What humans can do they can also undo, all it needs is politicians with guts.
Is it really possible that half the country (or more, according to latest polls) are bat crazy?
Is it possible that you are getting information from news sources and thinkers that are biased and reflect one storyline; while the other half of the country gets their facts and forms their opinions from sources that are biased the other way and reflect a different story-line?
Which makes you think they have gone off the kilter and have no logic, and makes them think the exact same thing about you.
I mostly headlines from RCP, BUT I make a point of reading both CNN and FOX, while assuming BOTH are bald faced liars. Between the two I can at least hope to get a little balance, and ferret out a few possible facts.
Any conversation is good if not done in bad faith, and I always assume good faith. Amazing what you can learn that way, and even more amazing how much progress can be made in local politics.
Someone once told me "Fight for your views, and don't back down from anyone. And always remember, you might even be correct." :D
A good politician is one who can say across the aisle, "Did you vote for Trump out of rabid-red-and-orange, or are you trying to accomplish something? Maybe there is a way to accomplish that in a way that makes us both happy."
Don't assume this is naive; I have had cause to be somewhat involved in local politics. And, sure, you need showmanship, but sincerely looking for solutions actually works.
> Is it possible that you are getting information from news sources and thinkers that are biased and reflect one storyline; while the other half of the country gets their facts and forms their opinions from sources that are biased the other way and reflect a different story-line?
The thing is, everyone can judge the "facts" that these people consume and see for their own that a lot of what Fox News et al. distribute to their consumers is outright propaganda and lies. Tucker Carlson infamously got away with the excuse that a viewer should be able to recognize him "not stating actual facts" [1], even though a large part of his following seems to be either unable to or unwilling to see through the lies.
In Germany, TV and radio stations as well as newspapers are bound by the law to "independent and factual" reporting, as well as to check the stuff they broadcast if it actually is true (§6/§19 MStV [2]). Obviously, we still have issues with the tabloids sometimes stretching the truth a bit, but in general it can be said that our media follows the responsibility it has as a vital part of our democracy.
> Any conversation is good if not done in bad faith, and I always assume good faith.
While admirable, this inevitably comes crashing down hard when enemy propaganda comes into the mix - both domestic and foreign, in particular Russian. When one side is known for "assuming good faith", an enemy has it very easy to apply disinformation tactics... and for what it's worth, the West has been at war with Russia for many years now, even though many people refused to admit that.
Seriously, anyone who gets their news from the media is trusting someone else's bias AND incompetence, despite us humans being extremely good at hearing only what we want to hear, and subconsciously transforming anything into whatever will support our preferred narrative.
A little work in politics and you will be shocked how far removed any given statement of a politician is from his objectives. "Lets block Russian Oil" could mean "this way we have an excuse for the high gas prices", or it could mean "this way it looks we are doing something" or it could mean "we have been on the phone with Putin, and he promised not to nuke Kiev if we give him a way to save face. This will be renegotiated soon" or many other things that involve many other countries, characters, and calculations. You can read about the sanction and jump to your preferred conclusion, or you can let the media guide you to their preferred jump, but either will guide you wrong if you think you understand the decision without all the relevant facts.
It says something about the state of media or the calibration of right/left these days that The Wall Street Journal is not considered a right wing source.
It says something even more that CNN, MSNBC, and the NYT are considered "left". Sensationalism capitalizing on division isn't "left". It's just modern capitalism in disguise.
Vox is a propaganda arm of the Democratic Party, which is a right-of-center political operation.
The US doesn't have a left-wing with any voice or power. The overwhelming majority of the country are right-wing or far right-wing.
CNN, MSNBC and NYT are definitely not left-wing news sources. At best, if we're being extremely charitable, they are centrist. There is no left wing media in the US.
As I always do, I have to leave my 2c for many people who moved to America from a very dense city, and disagree... I tried to live in dense places in Canada and the USA (dt Vancouver BC, SoMa in SF, etc.), use transit, walk for a long time, until I finally moved to a single family neighborhood... and it's SO much better! Especially during COVID. Aside from obvious benefits of quiet, trees, space, etc. I love driving everywhere, and dread having to walk or take transit now. I only wish I had moved all the way to a distant suburb instead of still being in the city... and that I did it years ago. I'll never live in a dense area again if I have a choice.
The main difference in Europe, as far as I can tell, is that only well-to-do people can afford a big house with land. And in Eastern Europe or East Asia, only the rich can. The US is just more advanced this way ;)
This is a post WWII development. I grew up in Stickney, a Chicago suburb where as late as the 70s, there were still commercial buildings scattered among the residential area (there was a tavern half a block from my elementary school, a grocery store across from a tavern¹ mid-block on a stretch of street that was otherwise all residential (modulo three churches). There were a number of houses that betrayed their original retail uses in their architecture elsewhere in the community.
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1. Only recently did I learn that this particular tavern was established by the Capone operation and the cupola on the roof was used to keep watch for Federal agents so that the open alcohol sales taking place during prohibition could be hidden in case of a raid.
> It baffles me how the US has no shops / restaurants / convenience stores in residential areas and nobody questioned it over half a century.
That's definitely not true. It's not the norm, but I can think of plenty of places I've lived or visited that had neighborhoods that were a mix of residential and shops.
Even in places without zoning codes, you’ll find plenty of restrictions that shape what is built and what it looks like from setbacks to parking minimums.
Many Houston neighborhoods are quite livable on foot and bike, if you don't mind a little perspiration. There are shops and restaurants scattered all around, sidewalks, even some multiuse trails.
The mainstream culture is still overwhelmingly automobile-centric, though. Travel to your place of work, or to any particular shop/restaurant, will likely require a car.
...Somewhat related: In Houston I lived within walking distance of two grocery stores, Kroger and Fiesta. A lot of customers walked to these stores, and they'd often use the store's shopping carts to transport purchases back home. So naturally the stores were always losing carts.
Kroger solved this problem by installing an electronic geofence and a wheel lock mechanism on each shopping cart, so they couldn't leave the parking lot.
Fiesta hired a man in a pickup truck to cruise the neighborhood and bring the empty carts back. And customers cooperated by leaving the carts near the road. IIRC different Fiesta stores marked their carts with different bright neon colors, so they could be returned to the correct store if they wandered afield.
Anytime I wanted to buy more than I could carry, of course, I'd go to Fiesta. (This was years ago; it's probably all razed for condo development now.)
I'll never get this. Except for really flat surfaces, shopping carts are the most annoyning thing to push around. If not using a bicycle, at least use a (maybe even compactly foldable) shopping trolley/buggy/Hackenporsche?
Many places do. It was very much the norm as cities were expanding rapidly in the 20th century. Something like 75+% of land in major metropolitan areas in North America are zoned for single-family housing only[1]. And of course that's not evenly distributed between cities, and much of the remaining 25% is still zoned as exclusively residential or commercial.
I live in Minneapolis and there's often commercial property in residential areas that was built before modern zoning. I think this is fairly common. But these commercial properties seem poorly used. Maybe some turn into studios, some storage, some vacant. It's uncommon that they are retail, though maybe it's infeasible to get them permitted for many retail functions (partly due to regulation, partly due to zoning since renovations are limited). But really it just doesn't feel like the demand is there.
Think about e.g. 46th + Grand or 38th + Nicollet though? Small commercial corridors within residential areas can become the heart of the neighborhood.
I agree re: retail though, in my experience there and elsewhere it’s groceries + restaurants/cafes that drive the neighborhood commercial engine, and if there’s enough then you can see traditional retail.
I live in a residential area and have all those things in a max 15min walking radius ...Dallas Texas even.
Maybe you mean exurbs? I almost move to a neighborhood where each house is on about 3 acres and, yeah, there you’re not walking anywhere. The trade off is no sirens/gunfire at night nor any crime to speak of. Plus you can see the stars.
Neither of your statements is true. Mixed use developments are extremely popular and are growing, at least in urbanish areas. And NYC famously has them mixed, with restaurants/shops in the bottom and housing on top. A lot of tv shows were filmed around that. Heck, a former president lived in a tower with his name on it where the lowest floors were all ssholping and restaurants
In fact, I'm trying to remember the last proposed development I saw that wasn't mixed use, unless it was a 5 minute walk from a shopping district. Well, except for the suburbs.
"Mixed use developments" as I see them in the DC metro region are only a single, limited form of truly mixed development.
Yes, we're building apartment blocks with retail on the ground level.
No, we aren't re-zoning single-family home zones into something else. At least not with any regularity.
No, we aren't dropping minimum parking requirements in favor of market forces.
Yes, we still subsidize driving through "free" on-street parking.
Looking at my neighborhood, I'm about 1.5 miles from the subway and 2 miles from the closet grocer. Not bad by suburban standards, but it sure would be nice to have a market/bodega down the block. But, it can't happen because between me and the grocer is ALL residential. You couldn't buy a corner lot and build a shop if you wanted. At least not without spending mega-$$$ on buying off politicians to update planning maps.
Parking requirements are there to prevent businesses subsidizing themselves by snapping up all the free street parking. Market forces would lead to a tragedy of the commons.
And it doesn't take mega $$$. If your community wants a corner store you can probably get a variance. The reason people say it takes mega $$$ is because they are asking the zoning commission to do some thing unpopular, and bribes cost money. The reason you don't have a corner store is your neighbors don't want it. And who the hell are you to move in and tell them they're wrong?
There are advantages and disadvantages of being in a residential only area.
> Parking requirements are there to prevent businesses subsidizing themselves by snapping up all the free street parking.
This really shouldn't be a suprise, but the "market forces" solution would involve charging for street parking. That works perfectly fine.
> The reason you don't have a corner store is your neighbors don't want it.
You're sort-of right, but the reality is that walkable & dense mixed use neighborhoods are in high demand in North America, that's why they're so filthy expensive. Ultimately, this needs to get handled by local politics. People need to be able to talk about what they want their spaces to look like and go out and vote.
> but the "market forces" solution would involve charging for street parking
Street parking isn't governed by market forces. At least how most people use them. I've rarely heard "market forces" used to refer to monopolies or government services that can operate with a subsidy.
And who the hell are you to move in and tell them they're wrong?
I somebody who paid for his house, pays his taxes, and votes, just like everybody else. I'm well within my rights to advocate for urban planning that meets my needs and desires.
Neighborhoods aren't static and there's ample evidence that current planning models are broken.
As for parking, consumers of the parking should be paying for it directly. "Free" street parking is not free and takes up considerable space. Parking minimums for many building types require an excess of parking that leaves vast asphalt pads empty most of the time.
Yes, if you can convince your neighbors to change zoning laws, you should. I thought I was pretty clear about that. But the reason it takes a lot of money is because it's unpopular.
Parking is either on street (and therefore a subsidy to the business) or in parking lots. Either parking minimums or street parking requires vast asphalt pads empty most of the time, because you have to account for peak capacity.
Current local parking example is a new apartment block - ~500 units, ~800 spaces required, developer thinks ~600 is enough because the building is adjacent to a subway stop and across the street from a massive mixed development. This is an area with almost zero on-street parking - there's no risk of tragedy of the commons here because there's no street parking to "steal".
Why is the county requiring more parking than the market value? The developer has no incentive to under-build parking - nobody would rent in the building if there wasn't enough parking available.
Edit - Des Moines has 19.4 parking spaces per household. Seattle has >5 per household. Other stats about parking density in the article...
> The developer has no incentive to under-build parking - nobody would rent in the building if there wasn't enough parking available.
The very existence of slums/slumlords suggests that selling substandard housing to desperate people suggests both that there are people willing to accept substandard housing and that it is profitable. If it can work with rat and mold infestations, etc, it can work with an uncomfortably small amount of parking.
I have no idea what the right amount is, but I certainly don't believe your reasoning provides more information.
I mean, it holds true in small cities I've seen too. As for towns with tons of space, they'll probably spread out. You need a certainly density to support a mixed use development, and people who decide to live in lower density areas are making a choice to trade certain advantages (job density, walkability) for living space and/or lawns. So they're not going to opt into mixed use living.
first of all, that is not true - there are places that allow mixed usage - and it is not 'the US' that doesn't allow it - zoning is almost always a local function, i.e. state and city/town governments make these decisions.
If resident in a certain area don't allow mixed-use areas, its because the voters in those places don't want it. If the voters in 'anytown, USA' wanted a mixed use district - they would have it. Obviously it is not what most people want.
I know I don't want it, and would vote against in it my area. Who wants to buy a house in some quiet area and then have a combo 7-11/gas station popup across the street so that some huge corporation and make just a bit more money at the expense of a nice quiet residential area being destroyed?
> If the voters in 'anytown, USA' wanted a mixed use district - they would have it. Obviously it is not what most people want.
This assumes people participate in local politics. I would amend this to, "obviously most people don't want it enough to attend town halls and learn whose business interests is blocking progress"
>>"obviously most people don't want it enough to attend town halls and learn whose business interests is blocking progress"
So you should decide what people want, not the people that live there?
People do show up at the polls when they want something, this is not what they want, so they don't show up.
You know who wants it? huge corporations that would be more than happy to destroy quiet residential areas so they can sell $6 cups of coffee and increase the value of their stock.
There is a reason why representative democracies exist: Many topics are quite complex and many citizens have their live on their mind and don't dive deep into proposals.
Also zoning is mostly relevant when an area is newly erricted. Thus regarding
> So you should decide what people want, not the people that live there?
There is nobody yet living there.
Changing that after the fact is hard. A small corner supermarket in "suburbia" isn't sustainable as residents can't easily reach it without lots of other changes (walking/cycling infrastructure, public transport, ...) and if people have to use the car anyways the mall a mile or two further south is more attractive.
> So you should decide what people want, not the people that live there?
I didnt say "I" should decide, just speaking plainly that laws are written by whoever shows up, most people have higher priorities. It's a fault in democracy from my perspective, we are not all equal in the amount of free time we have. The poor are busy with survival, the rich/leisure class gets to spend all day lobbying and campaigning. Maybe with universal basic income, politics would be more representative since more people would have time to participate.
Surely the solution to bad facilities is not "no facilities"? Growing up with shops, houses and businesses pretty mingled, it seems like a much better approach than zoning them all - you just need proper planning regulation and careful thought around what is and isn't allowed.
Few people vote, especially locally, but everyone spends money. America's most expensive neighborhoods per sqft, except for some suburbs in California, are all in mixed-use NYC neighborhoods next to transit.
>>when you're much more likely to get a nice little coffee shop\eatery.
Not sure why you are assuming it won't be a 7-11 or a Starbucks or a Subway or a McDonalds - because statistically, that is what you are going to get - drive thru almost any city , and that is what you have. Hoping you get some small mom-and-pop bakery is just a fantasy. Reality says you will get big well funded chain stores that most people don't want in their neighborhoods.
That's what you get in US cities who treat pedestrians as a 3rd class citizen behind cars and more cars, so again, it's due to lack of good city planning.
Walk through European cities and Asian cities and you see a nice mix of local and yes also bigger corporation shops. But you can also find in neighborhoods of
some US cities such as NYC, Philadelphia, Boston, Seattle, etc.
But I also doubt most people wouldn't want a Starbucks down the street.
In a walkable neighborhood, the result may be different. For instance, NYC has a lot of local shops, enough that NY state as a whole has the lowest per-capita rate of fast food chains in the US. And I see multiple local coffee shops here for every 1 Starbucks (though Starbucks is still quite common; far more likely than a McDonald's). I think it may be related to walkability since chains are more common in NYC's more car-oriented neighborhoods.
Outside that, I still don't think you're most likely to get a McDonald's in the middle of a residential neighborhood: it'd most likely be a corner store, since that's what walkable areas are most full of. At least in NYC, it's uncommon to have fast food outside of a busy shopping street. The shops embedded in the middle of residential neighborhoods are largely corner stores and delis, and to a lesser extent cafes / bakeries and barber shops / hair salons.
>It baffles me how the US has no shops / restaurants / convenience stores in residential areas and nobody questioned it over half a century.
Because it's pretty much impossible to allow business like that without also allowing the more loud and unsightly commercial activity that white collar folk get their panties in a massive knot over.
It's very hard to allow general commerce without also letting the plumber pave his back yard and use it to park his fleet of vans. Yes you can play whack-a-mole with specific requirements but anything comprehensive just approximates onerous zoning.
Yes -- on the perimeter of the main square there is all of that exactly -- its pretty convenient for sure but having stores / shops like that on each of these super blocks I imagine works when you have tons of people living around there. Many of these complexes have say 20 buildings and each building houses probably 100 people.
Satellite towns have made sense for a long time. They are the best trade-off for those who want affordable housing, urban lifestyle, and access to a decent job market. Remote work doesn't change the situation much, because most jobs still require human contact.
The recipe for a satellite town is simple. Create a fast and frequent rail connection to the central city and build dense mixed-use areas around the station, with lower-density areas farther away. The rail connection is the key. Car-centric satellite towns create too much traffic and often can't reach sufficient density to support local services.
Yes, but it's nice to live in a small town that just happens to be embedded in a great world city and all the amenities and concentration of interesting people that comes with it.
Small towns are not for everyone. It's hard to escape small towns, everybody knows you and the cultural activities are just very limited. I feel quite trapped in my small student-city, there's just nothing new anymore and I am quite bored of the usual activities. In those superblocks you are still living in the city and it's easy reach other parts. But you don't have to for your day-to-day needs.
I am starting to think that living in a small town is not for me either. My wife and I have been living in a beautiful small town in the mountains in Central Arizona for 20 years. It is beautiful here, and we get a million tourists a year to verify that. What I miss is culture, things like music, museums, lots of ethnic food, stage productions, etc. Without success so far, I am trying to talk my wife into permanently renting our home, and downsizing to living out of 7 or 8 steamer trunks that could be shipped efficiently. To start with, I would like to live in apartments for about 6 months each in Quebec, Santa Barbara, near family in Rhode Island, etc., etc. I figure we could do that until we are ready for moving into an nice assisted living place.
Richer Asian cities often have good quality of life in the cities. Walkable and good transportation. It's true in many parts of China and all over developed Asia
Yeah, I don't feel like this is something China lacks. Most of the cities I've been to were mixed-zoning (or, well, maybe just un-zoned?), such that you could go for a quick walk from most apartments and quickly find convenience stores, restaurants, bars, coffee shops, etc.
some of the superblock will have sun at any given moment.
parks are tricky. if they are not busy enough they can at best become a dead zone no one wants to stay around in, and at worst degenerate into a haven for unsavory activities, since no one is keeping an eye on it. parks are basically force multipliers for activity, but it can be a positive or negative relationship.
In Japan, properties have "sunlight rights", so that neighboring properties above a certain height are not allowed to shade them (causing lots of sloped, north-facing roofs).
In addition, height of buildings is determined by the width of the fronting street: tall buildings are allowed on trunk roadways, buildings in areas between trunk roads are limited to 3 stories or so.
All it all, it makes Tokyo into a large 'collection of small towns', much like Berlin seems to be. Quite pleasant place to live.
Reminds of Tokyo's "blocks". I don't know where to find the details but I went to small exhibit in Omotesando (a part of Tokyo) where they showed how much of Tokyo is built where there are "large" (4-6 lane roads). The buildings on those roads are 8-15 stories tall. Behind the buildings on the main road are lots of side streets with small apartments buildings and single family homes. The 4-6 lane roads and the tall buildings are firewalls and were designed to prevent run away fires.
I don't remember if this design was in response to 1923 fires or WW2 fire bombing. But, I did notice that I can except for a few spots (West Shinjuku, or Otemachi), I can be in a crazy popular famous busy part of town (Shinjuku, Shibuya, Harajuku) and just a few steps off the main street it's suddenly quiet and pleasant. It wasn't until I saw the exhibit that I realized one of the reasons.
Compare to much of SF, NYC, I almost never feel any moment of "peace and quiet" during the day at least.
That all fits in well with the hierarchical way of assigning addresses in Tokyo as opposed to the street name and number used in much of the western world. I wonder if the address scheme came first or the urban development pattern came first and the address scheme followed.
Can you explain what you mean by the hierarchical way of assigning addresses? Every source I ever read and person I ever talked to that had even a slight guess was that chome were assigned in order of when they were constructed and there wasn't much rhyme or reason besides that. Discussing odd even numbering and city blocks going up by 100s and 1000s was one of the few things people thought was impressive about American infrastructure.
Importance could make sense in that a first mover in Shibuya could get a prime chome but I'd still like more information.
In the US, addresses are typically in the form of nnnn Street Name. In some cities with a grid and a regular numbering scheme, if you're familiar with the scheme, you can get a sense of where in the city the address is located. In extreme cases like Salt Lake City, you're almost getting grid coordinates though if the address is a street within a block, some of that advantage goes away. But most cities have a haphazard naming and numbering scheme. Odd/Even for the side of the street is about the only thing you can somewhat rely on. Seeing the address 1905 Peachtree Street tells you nothing about where a building is located in Atlanta. Is that near 2205 Peachtree Street? What about 6823 Peachtree Road? Is that even the same street? Is the difference of 200 in address numbers a consistent distance in different parts of town? The address scheme in Tokyo gets you into a neighborhood though you will have to obtain local knowledge to find the building by number. You can walk up the hierarchy to get a general sense of how close two addresses are to each other, though nowhere near as exact as you would get from something like what is used in Manhattan (a relative rarity).
It's not just that it's quiet. It's that 100 feet behind the 14 story building it feels like I'm no longer in the city. The buildings in the back are generally 2 stories tall with 1 car wide streets or 2 but no traffic on them. I probably can't convey the difference
Superblocks have much potential. And in general there is so much potential to build cities for people instead of cars.
Check out what we’re doing at Culdesac if you want to see how we’re approaching the opportunity. We’re building the first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US.
Every time Barcelona's superblocks come up on HN, people confuse them with mere blocks.
A superblock (or superilla in Catalan) is usually a 3 by 3 grid of blocks. The inner streets are closed to through traffic, although locals can still get their cars to their apartment garages.
The inner streets are then turned into a combination of parks, benches, bike lanes, and plants.
Currently just a handful of these superblocks exist.
Superblocks are great, but they are bit boring. Take, for example, Barcelona - it looks the same everywhere. I think, the city should not be homogeneous. Thus, the idea is to make them heterogeneous.
Barcelona is a good example of how to not make things homogeneous; the map layout can be similar, but each superblock has its own personality. Not only they are architecturally varied, there's difference in the kinds of businesses hosted in the ground floor. This superblock has a bakery, the next one holds the fire station, the next one is residential but with red brick, the next one has a bank, and so on. It is very different from walking in other "purely residential" blocks that are just closed to the world, looking inwards.
This doesn't sound like Barcelona's superblock concept at all. It sounds like you are talking about mere blocks.
The superblock concept only exists in a few places so far in Barcelona. It takes (usually) a 3 by 3 grid of blocks and closes the inner streets to though traffic, instead putting playgrounds, benches, bike lanes, and plants there.
Actually the density is so great that lots of blocks have a bakery, and most have a convenience store, and usually several kinds of other shops, like clothing or stationery.
I was amazed that there were two model train shops within 10 minutes walk of our place in Barcelona. In a dense city, specialist businesses can thrive.
Barcelona has a few pilot superblocks, five or six, but not nearly enough to make it 'boring'. You are perhaps thinking of the square grid, in place since the 19th century.
Part of what I love about modern western cities is how much verity there is in buildings. When I look out my window I see buildings of all different eras and design styles.
Some of them are “ugly” in a way but they still contribute to the aesthetic positively. One old 90s concrete office tower is fine, 30 identical ones would be ugly.
The thing that bothers me the most is housing prices that leave so many people out on the street. I think every person deserves housing. So more affordable housing, even if it looks “boring”, is exciting to me.
Affordable housing doesn’t have to mean 5 copy pasted towers lined up in a row. If hiring an architect for a unique design costs too much, then scatter the buildings so it’s 5 towers over 5 postcodes.
It's not the architect or design that costs. Building 5 identical houses next to each other is simply much cheaper and faster due to the economy of scales of prefabricating and delivering identical elements and being able to use the same machinery and crew to put them all up att once. Spreading the out over 5 postcodes means you need more people, more construction equipment, more infrastructure work etc. etc.
Coming from northern Europe and now living in Tokyo, I'd say the capital city where I'm from (Stockholm) is a super boring in variety. The only thing going is the numerous parks they have, but buildings, new or old, are built very similar to other and incredibly boring. Got the similar feeling in London. All "planned" to the teeth to be static and not stick out. (old or new)
Compare that to Tokyo, where I've seen a rusty old house that looks like an haunted house 100m from sky scrapers at Toranomon Hills, or the small streets of Daikanyama where I could see a frigging Greek palace around the corner. All of this often not too far from a shrine that have idled there for hundreds of years.
> Got the similar feeling in London. All "planned" to the teeth to be static and not stick out. (old or new)
That reminded me of this The Economist article [1] about buildings in London: there are 'protected line of sight' which buildings have to avoid:
> Taller buildings [...] must not block designated views of various landmarks, which explains why some of the skyscrapers in the City of London are oddly shaped. The curious wedge-shaped Leadenhall Building, known as “the cheesegrater”, is intended to protect a view of St Paul’s Cathedral from a pub in Fleet Street. The design also means that the building cannot have a central concrete core, as in most skyscrapers. Instead, the floors are held up by an innovative steel exoskeleton. This makes for a thrilling journey up the building’s glass lifts. But it does add somewhat to the cost.
Shiny modern towers next to historical buildings. All of the buildings in this photo are from a range of times and design styles. I think if you took any one of these buildings and made the rest look similar, the aesthetics would be degraded.
It is. North American zoning certainly isn't ideal, IMHO. But a mix of superblocks, both dense and sparse mixed-zone housing, single family homes, and high rises would appeal to me. Just let people pick where they want to live.
I also find these superblocks a bit oppressive, TBH. If they were one option among many I might find them appealing, but as the _only_ option they seem a bit...dystopian. Very much like the endless suburbs you find in American cities. Do we really need an absolute all-encompassing housing ideology?
I don't like American-style suburbs, I'm not defending cars over people. I think the lack of public transportation in the US is a tragedy.
But "You must live in one of 100 identical walk-up 4-storey courtyard-facing brown brick blocks, with a limited selection of approved local community businesses, and commute or drive for anything else" seems oppressive, yeah. Some people want to live in shiny glass high rises, or pay a premium to have a private yard, or live on a busy street full of bars and clubs. We don't need to define the One True Housing for Everyone and then implement it city-wide, we could just put a few of these superblocks within cities. But Barcelona looks just as oppressive to me as endless American suburbs, though admittedly it may be more pleasant to live there.
Have you ever been to Barcelona or are you making assumptions from looking at an overhead view of the street grid? It’s one of the most pleasant and human scale cities to walk around in that exists.
There are people in those cars. I lived in the center of city for 9 years without a car and being walkable is great but you tend to end up limiting your life to a small area. Cars can enrich lives, open up opportunity and for families with small kids, make getting around more convenient. No need to be anti car to the point where cars are not an option anymore, optionality is key.
> North American zoning certainly isn't ideal, IMHO. But a mix of superblocks, both dense and sparse mixed-zone housing, single family homes, and high rises would appeal to me.
Take a look at Chicago from your mapping tool of choice. Slowly zoom out until the street names fall away and the minor roads start to disappear. The dominant feature is their 4x4 grid of major roads and it extends even to the close-in suburbs - especially in the north and south.
Perhaps you can call this the North American version of the superblock. Density is concentrated along these major roads (and the central business district, of course). The inner roads have that mix of single family homes, townhouses, high-rises, etc. depending on the neighborhood you are in.
Why does it have to be all or nothing? Why do you think putting up superblocks necessitates tearing down every single other block? Why do you think this gets rid of suburbs and low density housing outside of the city's core?
The grid in Barcelona started in Eixample neoghbourhoods. Check Gracia, Barceloneta, Horta, Gòtic for very different arrangements. I agree Barcelona needs more green though, too much asphalt.
All of these nice things are happening in many European cities where they have prioritized people over cars. None of this will happen in any meaningful scale or timeline in the US to reverse the country’s decline.
i'd say the leaders were the netherlands and denmark. iirc paris, barca and oslo have started changing things by removing cars from the centers more recently.
Discusses Barcelona, and 3x3 superblocks, and uses a 2xN illustration. Maybe its just me but the visual completely failed to make me believe Barca has 3x3 superblocks because it didn't show it.
Smaller note: Barcelona can be decomposed in three Catalan words (a happy accident): Bar, Cel, Ona, meaning Bar (yeah, this one is easy), Sky and Wave. Being a mediterranean city, fits quite well :)
Mexico City, at least in the central parts, has an interesting layout. Busy avenues roughly 1km apart grid the neighborhoods. Inside those squares most of the streets are one-way and low speed. You can walk in almost any direction and find a bus or subway station in 8 minutes. And of course they mix residential commercial and light industrial freely. It’s not unusual to find a small furniture maker next to a restaurant below an apartment building. They don’t ban cars and the “blocks” are larger, but it seems to work.
It does work really well and makes it really nice to walk or cycle inside your "zone" so to speak. The downside is that they concede the large avenues entirely to automobile centered design resulting in 10-13 way intersections that you have to navigate in order to get from one zone to another.
The most egregions example is probably the exit from Chapultepec leading into Condesa which drops you off next to a highway with no way of crossing without a 1KM detour:
That reminds me a bit of Tokyo. It's full of small streets[0] that cars can drive on, but they tend not to because they're narrow and don't have sidewalks, so making cars move slowly. Cars then naturally flow through to the larger streets[1] when possible, which do have sidewalks.
[0] https://goo.gl/maps/4RtUzUUfjvMpLs8y6 (this street has a small painted sidewalk since it has more commercial activity, though pedestrians often walk in the middle; the adjacent streets have no painted sidewalk).
i think seoul has something like this where the residential areas or "blocks" are basically this area of highrise apartments (prob covers a few minor blocks). inside this block there are big public square type areas for kids and fams to play or do whatever, usually a strip mall connected for convenience stores or what have you. no cars can really drive through it.
i do understand the appeal to convience and safety, but honestly it's super boring to me. having grown up in suburban sprawl and then living in NYC for a few years, this type of community is basically just bringing the suburbs to the city in a different form. i enjoy the bustle of the streets. for seoul it may be borne out of necessity, but in the US if i had a choice i'd rather not.
if you know know of stuytown apartments, just imagine if that was 50% of manhattan. it would totally suck IMO. just blocks of gated communities within the big city and ruins the "vibe" for lack of a better word.
It's not a gated community. It is to keep cars out, and allow people to use more space in their city. If anything I think having tons of space wasted for cars is bringing the suburb to the city. You get much more bustle with people than you do with cars, and much better vibes.
i mean to each their own, it's to keep "non-residents" out as well. some nicer places have guards that actively look for that. and by "bustle" i mean i can walk out of my apartment 50 ft and visit whatever shops i want on the corner or what not, cars and all.
for these super-blocks you have to still walk outside of the insulated area to reach anything and during that time it is def not a city vibe.
i'm speaking specifically to seoul and what i imagine this looks like.
I'm too used to our cities that every block based design seems incredibly dull to me. I prefer designs like Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Warsaw, Prague. These cities are so much more interesting than Barcelona or Berlin. In Barcelona as a visitor, you don't even come inside these blocks. They are meant for people who actually live there, but nobody else has a reason to visit one.
I hope we won't follow the superblock trend or what Dubai is doing. Basically a square grid full of isolated blocks or towers.
I am curious what the difference is in property value and general perceived desirability between external-facing and internal-facing apartments in these superblocks in Barcelona.
Looks nice. Plans like this would be even better if the norm was for residents to own a share of the land and buildings (and the responsibility for maintaining) - co-housing style.
Just seeing that aerial photo of Barcelona’s grid gave a dose of anxiety. I can’t really imagine living in one of these places, no matter how cleverly the Lego blocks are arranged.
A lot of people have this reaction to aerial photographs of densely-populated places, but, crucially, people don't live in aerial photographs -- they live at ground level. And the experience of being on the ground in places like Barcelona is very nice, no matter how it looks from the air.
Interesting to see this being developed in Spain, I wonder if it would be a manifestation of the greater community you see in Spanish cities like Barcelona.
Some people see pictures of Barcelona and think r/CityPorn. I think CityHell. What a SimCity 2000 dystopian hellscape.
I get why some people like it. But I hate everything about it. Cities suck. Their economic prowess is indisputable. In the age of remote work I hope we find a way to live in smaller, sparser villages as opposed to sardine cities. Blech.
So you want to just give up? Granted, I just moved away from Barcelona. But they are doing some really awesome transformation of the city while I was there. Finally you, as a person-out-of-a-car, you can just enjoy your city. They are moving away from being a tourist theme park, or the office park for the rich people from the surrounding suburbs who of course MUST be able to race into their parking spot in the city center.
The major is getting an enormous amount of shit for doing all this, and in general anything she does or does not, because car-proponents are extremely vocal about everything. IIRC she proposed a tram line on one of the car-arteries, and the neighborhood voted "no". Which is insane. Who wants more loud cars, less PT, less pedestrian zones? It should be "people who live elsewhere", and even "businesses elsewhere", because it has been proven that better access brings more customers.
So she learned her lesson and just doesn't do binding polls anymore, she just does it. And it's fantastic.
I wonder how superblocks tie into the idea that the World Economic Forum/Davos crowd are starting to push: “in 20 years you will own nothing, and be very happy…”?
It might be more difficult to own your own property (like a condominium) in a superblock?
