New Cities

Recommended reading:

http://www.strongtowns.org/

http://marketurbanism.com/

The Rent Is Too Damn High: What To Do About It, And Why It Matters More Than You Think: http://amzn.to/28W6et9

Edit - I'll add that I think it's great that YC is spending some money to look into this, as it's a huge issue for many desirable, productive cities these days. Huge as in billions of dollars:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-07/here-s-how...

- mixed use zoning: reduce requirement for long trips by mixing many compatible types of commercial with residential, and remove single housing type developments. Also, allow many smaller apartment complexes mixed with single family houses, instead of segregating housing types.

- street design: No more hierarchical/dendritic street layouts. That is, no more dead-end streets, which lead to collectors, which lead to arterials - you're bottlenecking a huge population through a very small, fast, and unsafe road system. Instead, make the streets highly connected, and narrower to encourage slower but steadier car traffic, and blocks shorter. Porous streets networks can route around bottlenecks and can have many more concurrent cars than even crazy-huge Texas-style freeways.

- no big street setback requirements: encourage density by removing crazy suburban-style setbacks.

Edit: I wanted to make a plug for form-based zoning, which is zoning where the form (building type) is zoned, not its use. This doesn't necessarily refer to its style (Neoclassical, Modernist, etc) but how it interacts with the surrounding buildings on the street. E.g. buildings above a certain size might not be allowed in an area, and not be allowed to take more than N number of yards of street frontage. Setbacks of a certain size might be prohibited, or allowed. This allows of a reasonable number of mixed uses like restaurants, shops, and other day to day commercial uses to coexist with residential. This does not mean that heavy/noxious industry can be built up there. This was the error the Euclid v. Ambler decision made 100 years ago: they threw the baby out with the bathwater by restricting zoning by type; there is not a small amount of racism that came with Euclidean/exclusive zoning, e.g. removing a formerly viable way for immigrants to start a business with a house above (a la Bob's Burgers) and thereby increasing the barrier for success.

Cities reflect networks effects as strongly as anything, which is why the same cities that were important 100 years ago are, by-and-large, the same cities that are important today: there has been no doubling of exciting, the-place-to-be kind of cities in at least North America despite huge increases in population.

Because of this, our generation is stuck on the wrong side of the supply/demand bit for property. Property in uninteresting cities is very cheap, because nobody wants to be there. Property in Silicon Valley or Toronto is on fire because it's the place to be.

I think there's a critical mass kind of problem. In many ways, my quality of life in a smaller (or even very small) city could be several times higher than it currently is -- except for the people. And, for better or worse, it's the people that matter. I don't have any real desire to be the best educated, or most creative, or most entrepreneurial person in a city: I want to be surrounded by them and call them my friends.

So perhaps there's some kind of Kickstarter-like critical mass sort of system that could be put into place to kickstart small cities whereby 50 or 100 mutually interesting people committed to moving to a more remote city iff their compatriots did as well.

Of course, to make that work, there would be have to be some kind of "opportunity", which is why I'm happy to see yC-folks looking into the problem.

If you give arbitrary power to those who enforce the rules, sure, they can fit in 100 pages. If you don't value predictability and consistency of enforcement, sure, they can fit in 100 pages. In fact, the rules can fit onto one page. The Ten Commandments are pretty short.

However, if you want to have a predictable body of law administered fairly, it's going to take a lot more than 100 pages. Even the Ten Commandments aren't that simple when it's time for practical application. You can simply decide on a case-by-case basis and not write down what you do, and then it will fit in 100 pages. But if you give notice to others about what your decisions are, and you are bound by previous decisions...well, that sounds a lot like a common-law system. Decisions in such a system are going to exceed 100 pages.

These things aren't as simple as it seems...there are good reasons why the Supreme Court once considered what it meant to "use" a firearm.

This is where Y Combinator could play an interesting role though. Could you imagine two or three San Francisco tech companies all uprooting at once to a brand new city, where costs might be half the cost in San Francisco? And at the same time, maybe you could convince a couple other big tech companies to open satellite offices in the new city. To get more economic diversity, perhaps the startup-city could also buy up established, small-scale manufactures and move them to the city. Still -- these kind of moves would be very, very hard, as it would be very difficult and risky to try to uproot enough employees to actually make the move successful.

Any other ideas for how the economy could be bootstrapped?

Places where rich and poor, kids, young adults, adults and elderly all live happily together (modulo the usual father-and-son generational problems).

Seriously, planners in "new" countries should be forced to spend some time in "old" countries, if not to learn the good things, at least to learn their mistakes.

And another compulsory thing should be listening to James Howard Kunstler talking about Suburbia: https://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_sub...

I agree that the things listed in this article need fixing, but I also feel like they're missing the point.

I grew up in a small college town (in a house), but have spent most of my adult life living in cities (in appartments). Somehow, those cities have never felt like home to me. I've always felt like I was missing something. Privacy is not quite the right word. Perhaps solitude.

Growing up, I could easily find space to be alone (and I mean, truly alone) . In my current city, there is literally no way to do that. My appartment is cramped, and low sound isolation means I can hear the neighbors. If I go outside to the park, there is approximately a person per couple thousand square meters (and the noise carries further). If I go to a coffee shop or other public place, it's even more crowded. I can go to the mountains, but it's about an hour by car to get there, and even then there are people around. (Unsurprisingly, the further I have to go, the less likely I am to do it on a regular basis.) This inability to have space has lead to a sort of mild chronic anxiety. Suffice it to say, I don't like cities, but I'm stuck where I am for other reasons.

So I can't exactly say I'm eager for even more population density. Some of the problems above could possibly be mitigated (e.g. better sound isolation), but the broader issues of how much personal space is really necessary just seems like it's not on people's radars. Is this just not an issue for other people? Am I crazy?

I hope that any discussion of better cities includes this as a component.

Aren't urbanists, sociologists and architects working exactly on the same questions since forever? The idea that a new study can find a new “disruptive” solution is naive at best, or dangerous at worst. But, of course, I welcome more money to social science. Those questions are well worth study...

Russia/Eastern Europe:

1. Free-for-all, mixed zoning. You own the land, build whatever you want as long as it's not a munitions factory (Most of Russia, Kazakhstan)

2. Market driven, privatized public transit (Most of Eastern Europe)

3. Small city blocks that let throught traffic.

4. Market controlled access to distric heating/cooling (Yakutsk an extreme example of privatized district level utilities)

5. Higher standards for building's energy efficiency (adopted across the former Soviet block)

6. Learn how to build decent "serially produced" housing for cheap (Ekaterinburg)

7. More traffic light controlled "turn right on red" signals - an easy way to increase traffic thoughtput by double digits (former Soviet block countries)

Asia:

1. learn how to build cities that are dense, but still livable (Hongkong, Singapore, Macau, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Tokyo)

2. Better construction technology and materials. MgO board, light/cellular concretes, thermal stops in slabs, automated, computerized armature prefabrication, etc (Most of People Republic if China, South Korea, Russian Far East)

3. Bus rapid transit, and how to make cheap public transport really work (Guangzhou)

4. Traffic laws that are two-wheeler friendly (Taipei, whole of Japan)

5. Public daycare and early primary education (Tokyo)

6. "Public housing for regular people" (Hongkong, Singapore)

7. Incentivize people to buy smaller cars, or use transit (Tokyo)

8. Double deck, or multi leve streets (Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Chicago)

When I lived in Rome briefly I was astounded at how livable it was. Throw a dart at a map of Rome and as long as you don't hit a major park, ruin, government building or the Vatican, you can reasonably assume that within a walkable radius, you will find grocers, restaurants, convenience stores, bars, hairdressers, gelato shops (there is a LOT of gelato in Rome), and everything else you need in your daily life. The tiny twisted streets barely offer enough room for a single car at a time - and my hat is off to the brave individuals who choose to drive through them - but because everything is so dense, you really don't need a car. You barely need public transit either, unless your place of work is too far to walk most days. It is also worth noting the majority of buildings in Rome are within 3-6 stories high, much unlike the American expectation that city centers feature enormous skyscrapers that pack people like sardines. Ultra-dense Manhattanized city centers may be efficient, but they lack the ancient and livable simplicity of old European cities.

Exception: Australia manages brilliantly to merge dense city centers with far-flung suburbs with an excellent mix of trains, light rail, and busses, which allow residents of large cities to get around easily without needing a car at all.

[1] http://www.vice.com/read/the-totalitarian-buddhist-who-beat-...

Not really. Autonomous vehicles are still coming. We don't know what infrastructure we'll need to support them just yet. Will there be a standardized way of powering / recharging them? What non-autonomous needs will they have and how to we handle them (because there will be some e.g. mechanical repair, rescue, etc)? Sure we can "guess" based on trends but we won't know for sure for probably another 10+ years what a brand new city will really need in this regards.

Same with smart grids especially with solar power becoming more efficient they may almost be unnecessary in 10-20 years (unlikely maybe but it's theoretically possible).

> There are many high-level questions we want to think through[...]And there are tactical questions we want to dig into

So there is a bit of reason to why most cities come up sorta "organically". Like NYC there was planning, sure, but that planning came from trends or requirements from the populous which happened over time. Engineering a full city from the group up sounds good but the majority of the people using the city are, well, people. People change. Technology changes. Political opinion changes.

Maybe you'll succeed in having a solid plan agreed upon by a majority but by the time the plan is taken and put into action and built a large amount of time will pass and I do not believe that original plan will still be as optimal or valid by the time it is completed. Then you'll have to do what every city does: improve, change laws, build stuff here and there that you originally thought you wouldn't do.

Ultimately it seems like a very interesting exercise but I do not believe in its practicality.

> - Adora Cheung, Sam Altman

Wait, Adora is part of YC? I thought after all of the drama around HomeJoy and the people it may or may not have sold to she had just basically disappeared. I had no idea she was part of YC.

Edit: just to clarify (because I'm not sure it came off correctly) I just didn't know Adora was part of YC and am curious as to her role, etc not to bring up any drama or other bs. I had just assumed she went on to found another company as that seems to be the norm for many founders.

Instead of asking "how can we make the city of the future" we should instead be asking "how can we create a habitats for humans that promote happiness, health, harmony, and do so in a way that is economically and ecologically sustainable."

I believe that people are happier when they have a sense of connection and belonging in their community. Cities discourage this.

I believe people are happier in environments that feel more natural and alive. Cities discourage this too.

I believe people are happier when they have a sense of personal space and privacy. Another mark against cities.

Cities make efficient use of space, density lets you produce buildings cheaply in terms of living units/dollar, and they are more efficient in terms of distributing goods and services. I believe that alternative building techniques can mitigate much of the cost of reduced density. I also believe that by integrating permaculture based agriculture into the landscape design you can mitigate some of the efficiency losses in terms of distributing the most important good - food. You could further reduce the distributional inefficiency using a system of neighborhood based co-ops - I'm sure people would adapt to quite easily to the reduced selection of snacks and processed food.

Zoning regulations that separated hazardous or noisy manufacturing from housing make sense, but for office work, I can't see why there is a need to keep it separate.

I've always thought that if you are building a city from scratch, founding a University would be a great way to start. If you found it with strong programs in any or all of "architecture, ecology, economics, politics, technology, urban planning" then you get a major draw in that people studying these areas would be able to be instrumental in implementing them in a real way. When people are going to University is also one of the major pivot points in people's lives when they are willing to relocate.

I want to believe in this, but I can't help feeling cynical--likening the results with that of privatization of prisons in the US.

Red-Light Cameras that infest my city were sold to public by claiming they would increase public safety, but instead are just another way for the city to generate revenue, much of which likely goes back to the camera builders.

It's hard to imagine a very for-profit entity like YC having an impact on city planning without ultimately driving towards a monetary return on investment.

Paris has a great subway system that is very clean, and their roads are very walk able.

Montreal and Toronto have great systems.

I think a cities climate is always important to consider. If you want to have bike paths, but you get a ton of snow in the winter, how do you deal with that? At my university up in Rochester NY we had tunnels under ground connecting the buildings. This helped a lot with the brutal winters.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/19/magazine/19Urban_West-t.ht...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_West

http://www.santafe.edu/about/people/directory/

Alberto Hernando de Castro, and

https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=S_ad8ycAAAAJ&hl=en

maybe Franz-Josef Ulm

http://www.citymetric.com/%E2%80%9Curban-physicists%E2%80%9D...

https://cee.mit.edu/ulm

And I don't know who's been doing Chinese planning, but they've obviously had some experience building cities that never became populated.

I've experienced several absolutely miserably loud neighbors. Talk about destroying my potential.

I moved to a house -- way more space than I need -- to get away from it. To end up with neighbors who blasted their car stereos -- think SUB-woofers -- all day long. In an unincorporated community where there was no noise ordinance and the county sheriff left it up to the individuals to sort things out.

Another necessary component: All you "libertarian", laissez faire people need to decide whether you are really, fully behind that idea. In which case, I would have no problem going across the street and putting a slug in each of their heads.

If I'm going to solve a problem, then once and for all.

Otherwise, come up with some effective noise control ordinances -- AND EFFECTIVE, PRO-ACTIVE ENFORCEMENT AND PENALTIES.

So... if you want "new cities" including "denser" living, fix your fucking noise problems.

See Pattern Language/Christopher Alexander for ideas on how to design the physical spaces to work for the people who will be using them, including random passersby.

Put cars lowest on the priority list. To me it feels like you should only need a car to travel between neighborhoods, though there would need to be a solution for elderly/less mobile folks.

Build the city near some beautiful nature, and then put a free public transit line that gets people from the city center to there, fast. I live about a 10 minute drive/30 minute bike ride from a beautiful national park, but I rarely go there because it's not fast and easy to get there.

Subsidize a good amount of small office/storefront space for new businesses. Let people try out ideas for shops and businesses without going into crazy debt just to sign a lease.

Make efficiency/sustainability requirements for building WAY higher than the norm. In many climates, AC/heating isn't actually needed if you invest a bit more in building materials upfront and build intelligently.

I'm sure most people would agree that cities tend to bring a certain degree of isolation. Once upon a time people would know everyone in their town, but in a large city today it's pretty rare to even know your neighbours.

Of course, in the year 20x6 we have lots of social infrastructure, but mostly it starts with an assumption that you want to choose who you interact with. But what if you shouldn't always choose? In the wake of the Brexit some commentators have rightly asked "how didn't I know anybody voting leave?"

For better or worse, we are stuck in proximity to a certain number of people, maybe people quite different to us. In cities, we tend to ignore that as much as we can, and our social tools follow suit. Could we build new ones that instead embrace this restriction and turn it into a good thing? Could we bring a sense of local community back to our cities? Could we build slightly-out-of-your-comfort-zone-as-a-service and pierce the filter bubble at least a little?

I'm not sure, but I think it's worth finding out!

There's also an interesting question in what happens when we cluster too many people into one city based around talent markets for knowledge work.

The Brexit vote in England may well be partially the result of the fact that the younger workforce in the UK was all stuffed into London due to the high concentration of knowledge work employers there, preventing newer ideas and values from being evenly applied across more of the country. You see the same thing happening in the USA, with near total dominance of one political ideology in the larger coastal cities and dominance of the other in places further afield. We're seeing a reversion to city-states in this regard, and with the distributed nature of knowledge work, you'd expect to see the opposite happening...

Consider Brasília for instance, it was designed from the top down, and it certainly some interesting properties. Being able to walk in a mostly straight line from arbitrary point A to point B is something I enjoyed about living there. And the traffic flow control is pretty interesting and worked pretty well for a long time. However today the congestion is bad, and the design of the major landmarks is pedestrian hostile.

Obviously we can improve on all the shortcomings of a city designed 60 years ago, but in designing a city today I suspect we would just create an entirely new rash of problems that were difficult to solve. Also consider that Brasília had a raison d'etre that can't be matched without political buy-in at the highest level. Again, I don't mean to entirely dismiss the idea, but I suspect that solving problems of existing cities will probably lead to better long-term results than trying to go off to a literal green field.

Jane Jacobs "The Death and Life of Great American Cities"

Ray Oldenburg "great good place"

Booker T Washington: Up from Slavery

I'd skip figuring out cities. Start with how to create neighborhoods that work? Where citizens can be educated, participate in their local government, and find work at the neighborhood level.

I used to want the Jetson's or Disney's Epcot. Now I want 150 tiny bars and restaurants each one holding no more than 20-30 people at best (generally). Less big box stores and less chains (not zero just less) and more boutiques / specialty shops and restaurants

Of course arguably the general public doesn't want that though. If they did the USA wouldn't be 95% big box shopping centers and 95% giant chain restaurants.

I've wondered how to build for that. Tokyo, where I spent most of my time, is having lots of older interesting neighborhoods torn down and replaced by tall glass buildings with at best a generic shopping center at the bottom. The architecture might be ok but the feel is gone and ends up feeling cold and sterile. I get the old places are often fire traps or earthquake hazards but I just wonder if there's a way to design the new places to some how capture the essence of what it was before the change.

1. Design with hyper-loop in mind from day one.

2. Easy access right of way for utilities, most cities bury everything which is silly, there should be an easily accessed common right of way so that fiber, water sewer etc. can be easily accessed for upgrades or repair without having to dig up the streets.

3. Consider driverless cars only, and electric only. Include bicycle or non-car personal vehicle pass ways that are safe.

4. Plan for green spaces with point source food production in mind.

5. Design in space for point source energy production, solar etc.

Most of these are pretty obvious. The other thing that I have thought about is the parallels to networks, if you had a high speed low energy use hyper-loop that could function like a ring topology with small low rise communities around the ring. For quality of life a lot of people enjoy the small community feel (think palo alto) I live in Seattle in a small sub-community (Kirkland) that has that walk around the neighborhood to all services feel to it and I feel that it adds a lot to my quality of life.

People have competing value systems. Communities grow around those value systems as they are constantly negotiated and re-negotiated over time. Asserting that one system of values is better than another is nothing short of authoritarianism.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8-EEgmEWJw

Check out the US census population projection for the next 50 years.[2] Population is leveling off, and if immigration is restricted, it will decline. Most of the EU countries, and Japan, are already in population decline. Also see Fig. 6, "Dependency ratios". The US is headed for a situation where 75% of the population is either too old or too young to work. Retirees increase from 23% now to 43% in 2060.

We will need more retirement communities to warehouse old people until they die.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_towns_in_the_United_Kingdo... [2] https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio...

Modern subway systems are automated with barrier walls and doors making it near impossible for a human to end up on the tracks. If built like this from the get-go, collisions between transit and pedestrian could be virtually zero. Plan your stations based on the distance needed to reach EVERYWHERE in a reasonable walking distance, make sure your system has the capacity to meet the daily working population, and you really don't need direct A-to-B transportation.

So I think, "how do you build legitimate rail transit into an existing city without it currently" is an interesting question for people researching and thinking about this topic.

Good luck!

My unproven and likely bad idea would be to promote medium sized cities of medium density which are interconnected but have enough wilderness/farmland to feel separate (in many countries the city and country have abrupt demarcations).

Within each satellite you'd have self sustaining public transit to connect all areas within and a great majority of the built up area is within half mile as the crow flies from a metro station. Encourage mixed use, with the exception of heavy industry which should be segregated. Build with a pedestrian first, assisted mobility second and automobiles last --not that cars would be penalized, just make it easy for walking and transit to be people's first consideration. Build high speed links between the satellites (rail and car).

Don't build these things in flood zones or desert areas which require more costs.

On top of wanting an exciting city with affordable housing and good public transportation. I want to live in a city where I feel safe. Safe from physical harm, safe from theft, safe from bad police, safe from being spied on, safe to participate in "quirky" things.

Tokyo is partly that city. I can go to strange fetish clubs, burlesque, punk rock, cosplay, etc and no one bats an eye. But I'm unlikely to get stabbed, unlikely to be pick pocketed, if I drop my wallet I'm likely to get it back with all my money. If I go to a cafe/coffee-shop I can leave my wallet/computer on a table for 10-15 minutes and expect to to be there when I get back.

Why does it feel like every other city outside Japan except maybe Singapore I can't do that?

I'm in Berlin right now and I love the variety of things going on but I hate that a high percentage of people destroy the commons. Street Art Yay! Tagging Boo! Broken glass everywhere where people threw their beer bottles. Pick pockets all over. People trying to steal your bags right out from under you.

In LA/SF/NYC and Berlin almost all public restrooms for men are some level of destroyed.

How do you get people to care about the commons and stop destroying things just to be dicks?

Please figure out how to design that kind of city.

Who is? And where can I sign up for that?

That said, I've lived in quite a few cities and the most important aspect of anywhere I've lived is the type of people I'm comfortable surrounding myself with. I think that's fairly true for anyone who has job mobility. After that everyone places different weight on a host of other factors (access to fast/efficient transport, culture, outdoors activities, sustainable utility supplies, weather, food, demographics, proximity to family, local school quality, etc, etc).

The larger issue is that many of these known solutions aren't being implemented due to established NIMBY interests that create an intractable political situation that prevents anything but the status quo.

For example I'd point to how NYC has been transformed for the better by the shift of road space usage from exclusive car use to being more inclusive of cyclists and pedestrians. This was incredibly difficult to implement due to extreme push back from just about everyone. Eventually once people realized it was working for the better opposition started to melt away. Even with this positive example to cite, for many cities basic safety improvements such as separated bike lanes remain incredibly hard to implement due to local and business opposition.

Additionally there are funding issues. This isn't the same country by country, but in Canada at least municipalities don't have a lot of tools to raise revenue and are very poor.

Metro Vancouver had a 10 year plan to dramatically expand rapid transit but it didn't have the money to implement it. The vaguely transit-hostile provincial government wasn't about to help out. The province forced Metro Vancouver into a referendum on a new 0.5 cent sales tax to raise revenue but it was defeated.

Here we have an example where the region's planners completely understand that they need to expand rapid transit to the region to better move people around the region and increase housing affordability, but there aren't the funds available to execute on the idea due to political ideology.

It's tough because we don't yet know what to solve for. We don't understand the nature of city creation, what attracts people, how culture gets formed, how businesses and leisure activities pop-up. We don't know if things we perceive as problems are constraints that make the city thrive in unknown ways. We don't know if there's a significant amount of path dependency and sequencing that's appropriate.

To me, cities feel man-made because they're made of concrete, steel, and other metals. But they're a lot like an organism, competing against other cities and only keeping features which make them continue to thrive.

Super cool topic though and great on YC for opening research on the topic rather than proposing solutions. Best of luck to the team.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songdo_International_Busines...

For instance -- there's no need for me to sleep in an expensive part of town, but there's also no need for me to be awake while my bedroom is shifted out into the outskirts. This would be something like Bruce Willis' character's apartment in The Fifth Element, but I don't think we have to wait until we're building cities in space to start working on this.

Similarly, if there's a diner that closes after 3PM, why should I ever have to walk past its empty storefront later in the day? The popularity of food trucks is evidence that there is value in being able to move supply around to find the demand and that we can reorganize our cities on a short time-scale. We don't even need to wait for the parts to be self-driving, as nice as that would be.

Thus, perhaps the city of the future needs to figure out how to give people space and personality in their dwellings. Living in a shoebox apartment where all one gets to do is pick the wall coverings does not appeal to everyone.

Instead, perhaps it might be better to think about how someone can buy property in 3D? Large empty 3D grid-like structures where someone can build and have a high degree of control over their interior and exterior?

Perhaps even elevated walkways and trains, so people can get around without needing to venture down?

Might sound like something out of sci-fi, but cities really need broader appeal. A lot of people just don't want to move into a building where someone chose everything else for them.

2. Build from scratch. Here, the biggest problem will likely be building out the infrastructure (such as roads, water treatment, schools, etc.), convincing people to move to the "middle of nowhere", and finding an affordable area that has access to enough clean water, that isn't already somewhat built up. I'm from Arizona, and have driven through much of the state: even as a large Western state with lots of available land, I have a pretty hard time thinking of potential areas that aren't already semi-developed, unless you want to constantly fight surrounding municipalities for water rights.

3. "City within a City". Basically, find an under-developed suburb or area of a major city. In Phoenix, this might be the town of Queen Creek, or if you were OK displacing a multi-generation, poor community in the heart of the metro, Guadalupe. Here, you get all the advantages of the small-town takeover, with the added bonus that your community is still close to a central hub of employment and existing options. The disadvantage is that you now have to deal with regional politics, and face backlash (potentially) for displacing existing residents. You also don't get to define your main roads and police system much (due to county-level planning). But, depending on what you mean by "city", you might be able to grab 2-4 square-mile-blocks that are not yet incorporated into a large city, and start developing almost immediately (as there's already water/electricity access nearby, and there is likely latent local demand for the kind of development you want to build).

Solve governance, solve everything.

Money and effort would be better spent looking at and solving the plight of cities that have seen hockey-stick growth. Then you could take those lessons and watch for the next city at the start of a population boom and ensure that it grows in the "right" way.

Didn't they try something like this in China already?

Their journalists constantly travel around the world and evaluate schools, public services, transportation etc., publish a yearly top lists of cities etc. They've collected some of their features in books: here's their latest, "How to make a nation": https://monocle.com/film/affairs/monocle-preview-how-to-make...

I'd like to see out-of-the-box thinking when it comes to building a system for optimal well being. For instance, are we sure that our common model for a city, where people own housing, and are almost always surrounded by strangers apart from their small group of family/friends, is actually an ingredient for optimal quality of life?

Why not experiment with humans living in structures resembling tribes, which is really what our human intellect evolved into for thousands of years?

Again, in a world where we don't have to worry about issues that we had to worry about in the past (food, shelter, security) and instead we're looking for ways of being intellectually stimulated, I envision group sized sections where people actually live together. The model of european hostels really resonates with me, where strangers actually get to live with one another.

Of course current cities have hostels and have ways for us to live in structures resembling tribes, but the important bit is that we make it part of the culture so that newborns consider this way of living the normality - rather than the normality being to own a house just for you and your family.

> A high leverage way to improve our world is to unleash this massive potential by making better cities.

I don't think cities make it even into the top 10 reasons why people don't realize their full potential.

Here's a small list, out the top of my head:

Depending on were you live, corruption is probably in the top 3 reasons why "people don't realize their potential". Most people don't have the "guts" (or low moral standards) to participate in the corruption games that are required to climb the social ladder.

Then there's the thing called "competition". Once a person realizes his full potential (s)he will want to stay at the top as much as possible and that includes fighting others who try to challenge their dominant position.

Racism, xenophobia and other types of discrimination. Maybe not as evident in the "western" world, but still a very powerful reason in many parts of the world.

Other reasons include things like politics, poor laws and stupid fiscal policies. In general, these go hand in hand with corruption and everything else.

In my view we don't need more large cities, rather I think the solution is de-centralization and de-urbanization.

Many small high-tech independent "village-sized" cities, self contained and self-sufficient, interconnected with high-speed transport services is the way to go.

New cities normally don't work as expected: cities are like a living organism, they need time to mature. Lots of research was already made on these subjects (most people are not aware of it) and even if some ideas are really good, status quo makes any change very difficult.

By the other hand the knowledge fronteer is still near on building cities in different environments/planets, so IMO, YC should go on that direction instead.

This means public squares and pedestrian-friendly landscapes, as everyone well knows. This also means housing the homeless. The smell of urine and the general feeling of squalor comprises the bulk of the burden of negative feeling for me in SF.

> [1] Two out of three people will live in cities by 2050 - an influx of 2.5 billion new urbanites.

How much of that is by choice? I know quite a few people that wouldn't give up their rural lives willingly.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPCOT_%28concept%29 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oregon_Experiment

It is impossible to keep adding people to the same space while giving everybody much room for their money. Trying to cram a generation of millennials into the same area as a wealthy cohort of boomers and rich immigrants predictably makes home prices go up.

All the ways of lowering property prices usually imply killing the economy and putting people out of work. Home prices usually end up going down only because people are made not to be able to afford them. This is incredibly destructive and it only allows more people to live in the same space when they are forced to move in with their parents.

Increasing supply or nudging the new generation to go in areas with more potential for spacial growth not only allows the new community to be built to the image of its own people but building and growing the infrastructure of a new neighborhood or revitalizing a dying town creates jobs for the people that go there. These jobs would be filled by people who can actually afford to live where they work and potentially profit from property value growth with less chance of a bubble pop because prices would not be starting from so high

The best thing governments could do to help with this situation would be to encourage some of the institutions and jobs relevant to new generations to move out of overpriced, overcrowded centers. They could foster jobs creation in centers with more low cost space and less chance of spacial overload. They could maybe move some public jobs there to help jump start the migration. This would also put some downward pressure on the prices in overcrowded places until we reach some kind of equilibrium.

I say stop trying to cram everyone in the same volume. Let the older rich generation keep the expensive quarters they've spent their life building and allow new generations to create our own communities, in our own space, from choices guided guided our own tastes.

Any solution that doesn't help spread jobs out to cheaper less overcrowded regions are going to hit the volumetric limits of the laws of physics eventually.

Hopefully in 15-20 years, when energy (from solar?) is abundant and cheap, making stuff like water desalination and vertical farming cheap, a place like Western Australia would be inhabitable. That way, you could open the floodgates for ten or hundreds of millions of immigrants to escape oppressive and corrupt regimes and start anew within a liberal democracy. All that cheap labor would make it easy to build out extensive subway lines and high rises.

Google hosted a talk in 2014 by MIT Professor Sandy Pentland called "Social Physics: How Good Ideas Spread". His research concludes that our connectivity - free and fast flow of data on networks, people on roads, goods and services, etc. - is our greatest economic and social virtue. His models show - "like a law" - that the more connected we are, the wealthier we are as a society.

Check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMBl0ttu-Ow

And good luck to everyone behind this.

I'm really fascinated by the way that Dubai is designed in terms of industry-specific districts, it gives you scalability but also network effects and serendipity. They also have overground driverless trains. Masdar city nearby has an underground driverless car system and sustainable architecture, a very attractive model.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_City,_California

- Prioritise streets for walking / light autonomous electric vehicle use

- Build underground streets or lanes that are designed for an autonomous delivery network. Getting rid of trucks and other large vehicles from the ground level road network will greatly easy congestion

- Zone for indoor / vertical farms for delivery to local stores

- Mix residential and commercial zones to allow for short commute times for residents

- Metro to speed up longer trips within the city

Utopian, yes. Impossible, no. [Edited for formatting]

The entire complex does not allow any cars on the surface within the complex. All cars are kept in underground parking lot. This allow more efficient use of land, keeps noise away from residents and real useable green space for residents.

I did not feel like I was in stuck in a concrete jungle at all.

You could then have a system of self driving busses that people could order with a smartphone, and then find the most efficient route to get everyone where they want to go. And then you have minimally congested streets that are very pedestrian friendly.

In fact you don't need self driving vehicles to accomplish this even. A human pilot following instructions from a computer that calculates the optimal route. The point is you can get public transportation without the downside of fixed routes.

Anyway, along other recommendations people have given, look at this site. I've always been fascinated with it: http://www.newworldeconomics.com/ Especially this article on Toledo, Ohio vs Toledo, Spain: http://www.newworldeconomics.com/archives/2010/022110.html

You should start by reading "How buildings learn." Old buildings that work extremely well typically did not start off as superior. They typically gained value over time as residents added improvements that worked well because they lived there and understood the problem space.

All moving of people/products would be a matter of scaling up and down within your range. Each range would only allow that class of transport (so, no cars/taxis in a walking area, no walking in an expressway area)

I could probably spend days listing the problems this would solve, but some examples:

1. Practically eliminate pedestrain->traffic interactions that lead to accidents and annoyances 2. Eliminate parking problems 3. Improve general health (walking in local areas) and much less (if any) road-rage type issues 4. Improve product delivery times (assuming we could get distribution networks to work together) 5. Improve the appearance of the city (no roads in/by your parks) 6. Improve the appearance of homes (only sidewalks go to homes!) 7. Improve the mobility/freedom of individuals (no need to buy a car/get a license, simply find the right public transport) 8. Instant tourist attraction as everyone will want to come see/experience this new type of living

Again, I could go on. It seems to me that designing transportation is the primary issue, branching out into all others.

my 3 priorities would be;

- close to Silicon Valley and California High Speed Rail

- no one should really be living there (no status quo)

- has to be close to a body of water (better climate)

I think I found the perfect location! Link to Google Maps: http://tinyurl.com/gnzquv3

The exact point where the couple is drinking wine in the picture can be the Dolares park of the new city :)

Explanation is simple if in one city, let’s say fountains are on the every corner and in another they are not, you would be able to spot the difference between those two persons from the different cities even though you don’t know the exact reason(fountains, rocks, rivers, etc.). So every city does have an energy.

Another thing about the nature is a rivers. Water passing through has a huge impact on the people living nearby. Water takes and refreshes the energy. I’ve been living for some time in the city with two small rivers and could spot the difference compared to the city with the wider river. Water refreshes the people taking the entry and in ‘small rivers’ city people were more mean keeping negatives for longer.

Recently I had a conversation with one girl working in the european conferences organization company and she named several cities where events are more common. The reason for that was transportation hub, including air transport connection mostly and roads as well.

So contemporary cities even though they are not tied to goods transportation along the river are connected to the air lines hubs a lot.

So I would state 3 things: nature, transport, history.

There is one good example of the city made by the power of will of one man, city is St. Petersburg, it is a really good example for research. Such thing as a soil was imported to make it possible.

I’m not saying it’s not possible, but saying you should mind milling of things and the only possible way to have it is to have perfect internal sense.

It approaches the problem from several levels. From how you lay out a city to accommodate mass transit, to street layouts that make living more enjoyable.

https://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic1050153.files/A%...

Christoper Woflgang Alexander.

- Why are you living in this city/metropolitan area, as opposed to some other city?

- Why are you living in this particular dwelling, as opposed to a different dwelling in the same city?

I hypothesize that most people will perceive objectively positive outcomes as a result of their choice, while objectively negative outcomes as a result of necessity ie. factors external to their free choice. This would imply that the most negatively affected population anywhere is also the least mobile to relocate, for factors that are often, but not solely economical. Many of the non-economic ideas behind "New Cities" won't help these people, albeit some of the infrastructure and public transit proposals would enable them to better participate in the local economy.

However, economic activity draws people and companies in, which generates more activity. We end up with over-populated cities like Paris, and the issues that come with them: ever-increasing housing prices, large suburbs, long commutes.

So I wonder if the main issue is really cities, or how to find a way to go from large monolithic cities to several reasonably-sized cities that cooperate. The technologies involved being transportation, remote work tools, etc.

Also, when I think about cities I like in Europe, an interesting point is that they are often built on the seashore (Lisbon, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Nice...).

This is what they should provide us in order to do business with our city:

Energy, water, trash, recycling, food centers, construction materials, police, fire, EDUCATION, housing, healthcare, EDUCATION, farm and agriculture equipment, construction equipment, manufacturing equipment, internet and basic mobile phone service, and housing for newer citizens who dont yet own their residence. Note: everyone should own their place, tax free without the lifelong cruft of mortgage and property value flux. Im serious. If you want us to buy from you, you buy from us, or you give to us. The people will own and run such a new city. Not the corporations that are ruining human values, health, and economies for cities all over this earth. The people will have to have the best hand, and the buy-in to our game is extremely high.

In addition to this concept, we wouldnt have a mayor, chief of police, or other forms of a single person running any one show. Even schools shouldnt have a single Principal, but more like 3 to 5 awesome 'lead educators'.

Totally aside, how do you keep out the drug cartels? How do you instill an attitude of giving a shit about your neighbor? How do you create resources that eliminate the need for acts of crime and violence for less privelaged to 'make it'?

One of the key things you want to achieve is to keep house prices low but this seems like something which will be very hard to achieve. For example if the first of these "new cities" does meet all of the objectives (e.g creating a happy place for people to achieve their potential) won't that raise house prices as people will want to move there?

(I'd like to see this at the state and national levels too, but that's a big task, so starting at the city level seems best.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_method

Why is measuring a city using "KPIs" a goal of this study? The effectiveness of an entire city cannot be captured by a few numbers. Chasing metrics can easily leave you blind to reality.

not sure how easy it is for outsiders to buy any land in these tiny population cities.

I am not sure why they don't list towns with fewer than 200 people. Anybody know where to get that data ?

There are even some small counties: http://www.davickservices.com/america's_100_lonliest_countie...

Anyway, the last major city to be founded in North America was Las Vegas in 1911. I think it's about time we think about starting a new one.

College campuses are pretty good prototypes of what a modern city should look like, in my opinion. You should have lots of public space and minimal private transportation. The only difference would be much more density and vertical construction.

The company I work at in SV does not allow remote work, but I've heard from a few of my teammates that if it did, they would seriously consider moving away from the area to someplace with a much lower cost of living. I would too.

It's like Software, where you come up with a large code base that is ridden with problems, but somehow works most of the times. You can either dive into that and improve it or you start writing your own system from scratch.

I am sure YC would have thought about this. Just want to know why they choose starting from scratch.

But how can we build a city that could grow to 100 million people? Can we build such a city while avoiding congestion, a city where you can travel fast and easy from one end of the city to another? How dense should such a city be? How can you make it livable? And so on.

* Low car ownership: I know exactly one person who owns a car. And everyone I know (including this person) uses the train/subway/bus system. If you really need a car for a couple days, it is cheap to rent one.

* Rent control: while not perfect, the fight to keep berliners in the city center is an interesting example of which policies are put in use to fight rising rent and gentrification.

(Short answer due to browser crash. Firefox developers, your android browser sucks)

Which cities do the best? Those will access to natural resources and access to water both fresh and salt. We are always going to need fresh water to drink, and boats have been the best low tech mode of travel for thousands of years.

Don't think about how to create new cities. That problem has been solved many times already.

Instead, think about how to create new planets. If you do a good job, the cities will take care of themselves.

1. Building from-scratch cities that are optimized for quality of life.

2. Evolving current cities into more nearly optimal.

Which direction will this effort go? Is there a risk of from- scratch cities being built so fast that and being so desirable that they cause historic cities to empty out?

And... what if the optimal solution is not cities at all, but, say, small towns?

Importance of network effect is increasing faster than advantage of tech allowing distributed work. I wonder if this trend will be permanent or will shift at some point.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcology

People love cars!

So make sure that something like a zipcar is present when someone feels like taking a drive to the mountains on the weekend. Or, make sure that rental vans are available when someone needs to move something too big to carry on the bus.

https://blog.thehomeshare.com/were-on-a-mission-to-make-citi...

I think a very effective way to design cities is to have the following:

1. A densely developed urban core that sets quotas on what % of apartments must fall within whatever's considered middle class pricing, as well as a quota for a minimum % of apartments that must be for purchase rather than rent. The former prevents cities from being turned into ghost town banks for the wealthy to park their money, and the latter gives citizens an opportunity to build equity if they desire/have the means to.

Also, there should only he height restrictions on buildings if there's a structural reason for it, not because "it'll ruin the character of the area" or "my views of Central Park will be blocked".

2. Suburbs should be a healthy middle ground between densely developed and suburban sprawl. Living in houses the size of a box isn't appealing, but neither are mcmansions that are 15-20 minutes to the nearest retail center. The concept of strip malls and office parks should be completely scrapped in favor of walkable town centers with multi level parking garages on the perimeters. These town centers should be mixed use, so that people have plenty of options to work, shop, entertain themselves, dine, etc within a reasonable distance from their homes. The town center layout promotes a sense of community and socializing. Suburban towns should have a size limit, and each town should have a light rail station that runs alongside the main road/highway so citizens can easily commute between towns and to the city center without traffic congestion.

When a town becomes fully developed, rather than progressively building smaller and smaller houses to increase density, a new town should be built at the adjacent free land with its own town center. This results in the hub and spoke model of suburb towns that are mini cities surrounding the main urban core, rather than sprawled bedroom communities that have no economy of their own.

3. Between each city should be a low cost and high speed transit option like a maglev or Hyperloop, so that citizens have the option to live in neighboring cities and commute to work in a reasonable amount of time.

4. Zoning should be designed to quickly and easily adapt to growing cities, so that what is zoned as suburban can change to urban as a city grows, and the perimeter of suburbs would grow to account for that. This would occur to a certain limit, and when a city reaches a max size where sprawl is a problem, a new planned city must be built in an optimal place in the state to start the cycle all over again.

In addition to underground subway systems for urban cores and light rail for suburbs, there should be uber style shared car/bus services to fill in the gaps.

As for energy, there should be a heavy emphasis on wind, solar, and nuclear.

The role of regulations should be quality of life protection, not special interests. That means a reasonable minimum square footage for apartments and houses depending on the number of bedrooms, but not a limit on tower heights.

People. People will have to live and work their, so people should be the focus.

could you have a city that is a mix of private / public and be a public company listed on a stock exchange.

Would be interesting if one could buy stock in the nyc or San Francisco or even a Singapore of the future.

Also, new cities' rules should be automated and software driven. See iot, decentralization technologies, etc.

Burning Man creates a 70000 person city in the middle of the desert from scratch every year. It's exactly what you want to prototype any number of urban design theories.

A shoutout to a new video series from WIRED on Shenzhen.

Episode 1 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hp6F_ApUq-c

Episode 2 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3r4kdHxdcE

Episode 3 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4wbFdePb-k

I came upon these videos through Andrew "Bunnie" Huang's blog. http://www.bunniestudios.com

Enjoy.

Why did she think that the main criticism she had to get ahead of was that they would make a city where people were too free, as opposed to making an Orwellian surveillance state, or a company town or something?

The United States is less aware of this issue due to high rates of migration, and higher birthrates in certain subpopulations.

The nuclear family is a brand new social experiment of the 20th century, and one of the primary causes in the decline of the production of people. Without traditional support networks, women have to choose between 24/7 baby-care and not having children. Daycare is extremely expensive, and in fact not the ideal environment for a 3-month-old. The traditional notions of a trust-based larger family unit (siblings, grandparents, aunts) and community-unit are non-existent in the modern urban environment.

Even without the issue of children, most people struggle for connection and meaning in their lives more-so than before. They enjoy fewer intimate relationships, and spend less time with people they love or trust.

So if you are designing a new city, design it around fostering genuine communities, and is inclusive to all ages and educational backgrounds. My ideal city would be composed of mini-villages, each mini-village centered around communities of a few dozen families, sharing a courtyard "public" to the community+associates.

It would be an environment where I wouldn't have a bitcoin-based smart contract to 'enforce' something that my neighbor would do anyways.

In general, the city would aim to minimize total commute / on-the-road time for as many people as possible.

It would be a city where work is co-located with child-care for young mothers, who can take 30 minute breaks, walk-over, and breast-feed. This means completely different things for zoning. This would mean work would also not happen in a context completely isolated from rest of life: Perhaps the "work day" would last 10 hours, but with 3 hours of interruption for family, food-preparation, etc. This doesn't mean people would "work at home", or the "workplace would be full of kids", there are innovative ways to combine the two -- which was the natural state of things only a century ago.

Perhaps each person would make less money, but we'd need to spend less as well, giving each other the things one is now forced to buy in a city. It would be an environment where one could have 4-day workweek, perhaps taking two afternoons off, so men would be more present in their families.

I think a city needs to optimize for random interactions between diverse groups of people, which often is where that feeling of serendipity or je ne sais quoi feeling in a city comes from. There's no magic to it, you really just need to lay out your infrastructure to help allow for it.

In NYC we have it because of our public transit, mixed use/zoned buildings/neighborhoods, high density, small public parks spread out around the city, walkability, and a diversity of industries. We're losing some of that with the creation of bland spaces in the city [1], but I don't fear that NYC will lose itself anytime soon.

"How should we measure the effectiveness of a city"

It depends on the goal of the city. Are we attempting to make it a cultural capital of the world, like NYC and LA are, or a business capital like NYC and SF/SV are, or both? Or do we just care about providing a great place for people to live and work without much care for the city's perception in the world? Can it be just a nice second tier city like Boston or Seattle?

Personally, I'd aim for an NYC because there really is nothing like it in the states.

The effectiveness measures would also include some vague things, like influence of the exports of its cultural creations (art, music, fashion, tech). International desire to live or visit the city would be another metric. Then of course regular things like employment rates, educational standings, health of citizens, robustness of public transit, retention of citizens, racial/cultural/age diversity, surveyed happiness of citizens, etc.

Start with the art though. If your city doesn't produce a great diversity of culture it'll just stay a second or third tier city.

"How should citizens guide and participate in government?"

If you're building this city from the ground up you have an opportunity to immediately do away with the majority of the bureaucracy that holds most governments back. That'd encourage citizens to actually want to work with or for the government.

I'd avoid having armies of contractors and subcontractors. Create city organizations and workplaces that talented people want to work at, not stifling bureaucracies. Don't pay a consulting firm $600 million to build a payroll system that could be built by a small internal team of talented engineers, designers, and product managers. You probably will still need to pay an outside firm to, say, bore sewers and subway tunnels, but make sure the organization designing and overseeing it is staffed by talented people. That'd mean paying wages that match industry.

[1] https://aeon.co/essays/why-boring-streets-make-pedestrians-s...

We can define a "balanced area" as having roughly balanced proportions of residential, office, retail, schools, hospitals, (light) industry, etc. The effect of an area being balanced is that the net flow of people across the areas boundary at any given time of day should be roughly zero - if you live there but work elsewhere, then you need to commute out, but someone else needs to commute in to fill the job in the area that you're not occupying. Same for other uses. "Area" could be anything from neighborhood, to part of city, to city, to region, to state - the analysis is roughly the same regardless of geographical zoom level.

Hypothesis: you can create a scalable city by constructing it around balanced areas.

Scalable = can expand indefinitely-ish. While not precisely true, it's probably a lot more true than for the current star topology.

So what about public transit? The reason we have the star is after all (in part) to make it possible to use public transit. Answer: increase density and switch from star to grid.

The star is hopelessly plagued by having everyone going in the same direction at the same time. This means that we're using roughly half (60%?) of our transportation capacity at any given time.

If we build our cities as dense, balanced cells (= 0.25-0.5-1 mile by 0.25-5-1 mile chunks, depending on density and other design criteria), with grid-oriented mass transit (buses, light rail, subways, whichever, all of the above), then we will naturally double our transit capacity (people going in both directions at all times), and shorten the distance people need to travel to get where they're going. The relevant metric isn't so much "miles per hour" as [density of people]*[linear distance per unit time].

Depending on the level of density you're willing to go to, different tiers of public transit will unlock: at lower densities, you can only really rationalize buses. Medium density = light rail, high density = subway.

Some additional points:

- Zero surface parking, but plenty of drop off / pick up spots.

- Organize the balanced cells around center squares, which are pedestrian only. Squares are focused around restaurants / retail / commerce; they're not parks, though they would likely have some trees. Make it the primary public space. Regulate building heights such that there's limited shading of the square.

- Smaller, pedestrian-friendly blocks around the center squares: stop signs for cars, no thoroughfares to other cells.

- Variable height zoning: stop making neighborhoods uniform. Allow vastly different heights within short distances of each other. This will create both views and natural variation in land and housing value = naturally more inclusive, and much more interesting.

- Turn the towers: don't build two 700' towers across the street from each other. Instead, space them out more, and rotate them so the tower doesn't face the street, to create longer corridors of views from the tower windows, and an "airiness" in the city.

- Between cells: focus more on surface traffic, limit pedestrian use. Yes, this will create "islands between traffic corridors". That's ok - zone light industry, gas/recharge stations, parking structures and office towers on these corridors and zero residential.

- If you're willing to up-zone and build as of right, you can start lower density (= buses), then as the city grows, you can up-zone and graduate to light rail, and then if you go truly dense, retrofit a subway. If it's in the city charter from the start you might be able to fight off the inevitable nimbyism.

- A pragmatic sister project to the study of cities would be the study of how to make public transit projects not cost so much. Taboo subject, and perhaps "boring", but super-important. If it cost half as much, would we have four times as much of it?

So the parents want schools easily reachable on safe side street sidewalks, the recent grads want those sidewalk accessible zones to be bars and all night dance clubs. Some people go out every night to drink (probably a bad idea) and want the local bar. Other people want an enormous plot of parkland to drop the country fair and other activities on the weekends only for their "going out". Some regions have a tradition of scarcely larger than one room churches, others have a tradition of megachurches. Others have mosques or temples, how do you make the Buddhists, the tiny church Baptists, and the megachurch prosperity gospel people all happy?

How about history? People who lived in high crime area will prefer a police station to a public library. People who lived in the country will prefer a park over a shopping area. People who recreationally shop will want shops for the sake of shops even in a time of Amazon and UPS delivery. Or worse, they'll demand the little shops, then not shop there.

Some cultures don't see education and learning as very important or worth funding... just put a small dumpy school in the giant park reserved for it? Everyone has to say they love the arts, as a rounding error nobody goes, so do you build a concert hall for the symphony that no one listens to, or not?

How about hobbies and social clubs. Do you zone the freemasons temple and the model railroad club like a church? Or force that stuff into the basement of commercial areas so the sidewalks aren't rolled up and put away at 5:30pm every night?

How do you handle social signalling vs real life? Like you need XYZ to be socially acceptable, but real world requires ABC instead. Do you build for XYZ to get funding but no one lives there, or build ABC and be hated but people fight to move in? Hardly the first time in the history of humanity where what people say and what they want diverge.

The midwest has an interesting zoning solution to loud and obnoxious industry of which we have a lot (although more automation and fewer employees every year) and lack of parking, and thats taking advantage of border zones and raised highways. My retired mom lives a block from the border of a shopping mall, sounds awful according to "I hate cars" people, but its actually incredibly walkable, calm, quiet almost all the time, perfect for both pedestrians and car owners.

You can even run into psychological issues. Do you ban introverts by banning residential border fences to force people to interact even when they just want to chill? You could zone mandatory front porch onto residential to encourage porch culture in summer evenings. Or if the locals are the type you don't want associating, maybe ban porches and decks if they're just going to cause trouble and crime and noise and get arrested.

  The world is full of people who aren’t realizing their potential in large part
  because their cities don't provide the opportunities and living conditions
  necessary for success.

• The guy serving you your hamburger isn't realizing his full potential because he grew up in a lower-middle class family who didn't encourage him to do well in school or go to college, he grew content with his boring life hanging out with his friends and working paycheck to paycheck, and he honestly has no good reason to try to achieve more.

• The single mother with the two kids and a heroin addiction isn't realizing her potential because when her high-school sweetheart husband left her she had trouble getting a job, so generations of misogyny & patriarchy convinced her she can only turn to stripping to pay the bills, got hooked on drugs and alcohol, and is now locked into a slow circling of the drain.

• The young black man in prison isn't realizing his potential because generations ago the systemic racism of our country pushed his family into a tightly impoverished community with no businesses, no access to transportation, almost no education, no access to family planning, and rampant drug and alcohol abuse, which the country then took advantage of by creating for-profit prisons and mandatory minimum sentences to convert most of the people in his community into a series of bad choices which only result in debt, incarceration, teen pregnancy, drug addiction, and crime as a survival tactic.

--

  A high leverage way to improve our world is to unleash this massive potential
  by making better cities.

• Why do we have too much traffic congestion and not enough parking?

○ Because the city - and its residents and taxpayers - refuse to pay for better public transportation.

• Why do cities not have better transportation?

○ Because politicians [and voters] fight over how to spend what little tax revenue they collect.

• Why don't the residents pay more tax money to fix the problems in their city?

○ Because a combination of high unemployment and low wages due to a concentration of wealth and corporate power refusing to raise wages while profits have skyrocketed have left citizens with very little left over money. Food and housing comes before transportation taxes.

• Why do cities not have affordable housing?

○ Because rich white people don't want to live next to poor black people.

• Why isn't there a diverse range of people living and working in cities?

○ Because first you have to create economic and social equality for a diverse range of people and grow an actual population thereof, rather than pockets of socioeconomically disadvantaged minority groups.

• Why aren't cities constantly evolving?

○ Because some are able to successfully resist housing price inflation and gentrification, while others have a stagnant economy, and others are simply consistent in their status quo.

--

If you need to make a better city to realize your potential (which is stupid, since we were still realizing our potential before we had "great" cities), you first need to solve your social and economic problems before the city can be better. But this is a boring, depressing, non-"startupy" answer, so never mind me.

The health and longevity of its citizens.

> How should we measure the effectiveness of a city (what are its KPIs)?

Minimizing disease, mortality, poverty, and crime.

> What values should (or should not) be embedded in a city's culture?

Active lifestyle, minimalism… courtesy, respect, appreciation of fellow citizens. Volunteerism.

> How can cities help more of their residents be happy and reach their potential?

People get jealous of each other very easily. Cultures that don’t promote the flaunting of wealth tend to be happier. The two most conspicuous examples of excessive consumption are large homes and expensive cars. As advanced primates we’re most comfortable in moderately forested land with ample water. Above all this, people require a safe place to live so effective means of crime deterrent are critical. Once the base of Maslow’s hierarchy is met, people will actualize on their own.

> How can we encourage a diverse range of people to live and work in the city?

If you build it they will come. It’s really that simple. There’s no magic formula, a diverse range of people is required to run a city.

> How should citizens guide and participate in government?

Citizens should enumerate the authorities of their leadership rather than allowing leadership all authorities not specifically excluded.

> How can we make sure a city is constantly evolving and always open to change?

It’s psychologically easier to move away from a rental than an owned unit. I know there is dogma about the financial security around home ownership, but leasing a residential unit is really not all that different from renting the money to buy a unit. So I think severely restricting or eliminating traditional home “ownership” might keep the population ready for quick changes.

> How can we make and keep housing affordable? This is critical to us; the cost of housing affects everything else in a city.

By restricting/eliminating outright ownership and zoning out excessively large units or charging progressively more per square foot for larger constructions (on a per occupant basis).

> How can we lay out the public and private spaces (and roads) to make a great place to live? Can we figure out better zoning laws?

Priority should be given first to the natural spaces, followed by living spaces, then the sidewalks, and bikeways/waterways. The automobile roads should be relegated to the outskirts of the city in an exterior loop with limited access to the interior for critical functions. Zoning out excessively large homes is critical.

> What is the right role for vehicles in a city? Should we have human-driven cars at all?

Probably shouldn’t have many human-driven cars in the city aside from possibly emergency responders. The vehicles should be utilized to serve human needs rather than display status of the owners.

> How can we have affordable high-speed transit to and from other cities?

The hyperloop sounds most promising right now. Musk is a modern day Midas.

> How can we make rules and regulations that are comprehensive while also being easily understandable? Can we fit all rules for the city in 100 pages of text?

Arbitration agreements and waivers for all residents. Not sure about the rules. I suspect that most cities are already subject to enough state/federal rules to require little in the way of local ordinances. We might look for the shortest examples on municode.com for inspiration.

> What effects will the new city have on the surrounding community?

People who are able to relocate are more likely to be young and depending on the success of the city it may attract the most talented. Prosperous cities have a way of draining the brains of surrounding communities. On positive note, former residents tend to benefit the previous communities when they return/visit.

How can we make and keep housing affordable?

This question is frustrating not only because the problem is particularly acute but also because it is completely self-inflicted and solvable using what we already know.

Take a look at the 7 American cities with the highest rent: SF, NYC, Jersey City, DC, Boston, San Jose, LA https://www.apartmentlist.com/rentonomics/national-rent-data...

Then look at the 7 largest American cities that still practice rent control: NYC, LA, San Diego, San Jose, SF, DC, Oakland, Jersey City http://www.landlord.com/rent_control_laws_by_state.htm

Why? It's not a coincidence and it is causal. Rent control: A. Disincentivizes new construction. Simply put, over time, long-term tenants might not be paying enough to make a keep a building profitable. B. Causes owners to take recently-vacated, perfectly-habitable units off the market to avoid these same long-term un-evictable tenants (30,000 units are empty in SF alone. That’s 8.3% of the housing stock! http://blog.sfgate.com/ontheblock/2011/03/30/why-so-many-vac...)

These both result in less housing in total. A smaller supply coupled with the same demand will cause prices to rise as the few apartments that are available go to the highest bidder.

In a 1992 study, 93% of surveyed economists agreed with the statement "a ceiling on rents reduces the quantity and quality of housing available." http://www.factcheck.org/2009/02/when-economists-agree/ For comparison, the consensus that global warming is anthropogenic among climate scientists is 97% - just 4% higher. We rightfully ridicule our elected officials for being skeptical of global warming. Why don’t we also ridicule elected officials who support rent control?

If the problem is keeping housing affordable, the solution is simple. We need to phase out rent control laws and remove regulations around the development of new housing. For now, in the Bay, rent control is not realistically going to be touched for a few years. For the latter, there is evidence that Sacramento is starting to understand that we actually need to build housing to bring down prices http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-brown-afford.... If we are lucky, they might take this new insight and apply it to existing housing for a complete solution to this man-made problem.

A good article on the subject in general: http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/RentControl.html

http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/soul-city/

It is better to be an adjunct to an existing city near a river or a seaport. Look at China and how they have Special Economic Zones, they are connected to existing cities, right?

I know China builds cities from the start but with their scale they're probably a special case and besides it's thought to be more organic the way they do it (e.g. they don't build some infrastructure like footpaths until they see evidence of how real people use the existing environment).

That's a special case though, nobody else apart from India has that kind of scale.

The best cities are pretty old, and mostly in Europe.

They figured it out 100's of years ago.

'Affordability' has nothing to do with cities - it has do to with regional economics. The Valley is a singularity.

Other cities with bubbles like Vancouver and London has to do with unrestricted purchases by foreigners.

Otherwise it's not hard.

Lost in any West Coast discussion of 'cities' will invariably be the most important thing: culture. Cities revolve around people, activities, and things that are hard to measure.

The best 'urban planners' fail because they are focused on wide roads, less traffic etc. - when in reality, cities that form naturally, around people and their communities, with individuals who act responsibly ... are the best.

There are 1000 100K+ cities in Europe that are pretty spectacular: clean, interesting, walkable, cultured, local, great for families, low crime, affordable. Surely there are many in Asia as well, though with differing kinds of economics given political instability lately.

I'd back off these political positions you guys keep on taking.

An amazon affiliate link to a 2.5 star book doesn't really establish confidence in someone's recommended reading list.

Sure, there might be a few -- a very small few -- bona-fide brown zones here and there that are virtually depopulated and where one can more or less from scratch. But by and large, and realistically speaking, the real question is how to redesign and rethinking existing cities. Which conceptually speaking is a much harder question.

The other elephant in the room is the inevitability of massive forced dislocations of existing populations in these "failed" urban areas (or so they will be declared) -- perhaps on a scale never seen before (that is, outside of modern China or the early decades of the Soviet Union). And BTW, there's no getting around the term "forced" here -- no matter how you try to incentivize it, some people just aren't gonna want to uproot themselves (and destroy the organic connections they have made with others in their "failed" or "poorly optimized" communities) for the sake your grand vision, slide decks and TED talks.

It's either that -- or build out in the jungle somewhere. But of course (with the earnest suport of a certain very famous YC board member) we've been down that route already:

  Honduras Shrugged
  http://www.economist.com/node/21541391

Isn't the reason cities are full the same reason they require this kind of thing?

Why not solve this first. If I can live anywhere and apply, maybe everyone else doesn't have to live in the valley as well.