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Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

I'm very curious, have there ever been any "cities from the ground up" projects that don't turn out to be total shit that end up just reflecting the urban planning fallacies of the day? (Looking at you, Brasilia)

I mean, all of the cities that are most "livable" in my mind are old cities that were designed before the car and thus have enough density and public transportation to make things both close and also the kind of place where it's fun to just walk around.

These "master planned cities" always end up like houses that are designed with all these pretty rooms that nobody actually uses.

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Wikipedia has a really interesting world list of "Planned Cities" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_community)

It also has a decent rundown of modern American ones (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_community#Modern_plann...).

You'll have to use your own judgement on a case by case basis if they were successful or not and if they meet your personal definition of master planned.

But I found the lists a very interesting read.

Agreed that the most liveable cities really exist already, and they are all older, walkable, and predate cars. These new ecotechnic utopian proposals fetishize efficiency and convenience. They also completely fail to capture what makes a city great.

It's sad, because in the US, there are actually a lot of good templates for new cities, designed for growth on the outset, that strike a balance between dense and verdant. The oldest part of places like Savannah, Charleston, New Orleans, smaller college towns, streetcar suburbs, ... It's so weird that when new suburbs are built, why they are not just straight up copying those 19th century templates.

Almere and Lelystad come to mind, built from the 70ies onwards in the Netherlands on land reclaimed from the sea. They’re relatively small but still impressive to me, with decent public transport and excellent biking infrastructure. Of course many people prefer older cities with more ‘character’ but if it’s your thing the architecture really is quite nice.

Dutch urbanism is good but it requires a lot of trust in the government. Urbanists make top down plans, and then work together with property developers to create neighbourhoods. These property developers have to follow a lot of rules and guidelines and there are municipal committees that check whether the architecture is good enough for example. Top down urbanism is often seen as a recipe for disaster, but it seems to work there. I guess there are enough feedback loops in the system so that urbanists get a clue about what people like and implement that. For example, people like living close to water so constructing a neighbourhood often coincides with creating lots of canals and ponds.

I lived in Port Sunlight in the UK. It's delightful - I don't think it really has or had any planning or social issues. For the first few years there weren't any pubs due to the temperance politics of the founder, but it does now.

The English did planned villages really well.

Reston, Virginia ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reston,_Virginia#Planning_and_...

If your idea of the pinnacle of a planned community is a big, car-dependent suburb with big office parks and a wide away of chain theme restaurants...

Washington, DC, sort of.

Poundbury by Prince Charles [1][2].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poundbury [2]: https://robskinner.net/2020/09/03/poundbury-prince-charles-m...

>have there ever been any "cities from the ground up" projects that don't turn out to be total shit?

Irvine, California (current population, 300,000) was developed by a private corporation.

Development started in the 1960s.

Saint Petersburg

Have there been master planned cities of any reasonable size, designed in the modern era, but minimising the role of cars?

Suburbs most likely. They are close to places people want to be. Cities in the middle of nnowhere don't work.

Dubai? Not really something to emulate though. Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taipei also kind of fit.

> Dubai?

I have heard that Dubai does not have street names, so giving directions and arranging deliveries can be… challenging. Is this statement accurate?

I think "missing street names" is probably #2879 on the prioritized list of things that make Dubai the best example of a complete modern dystopia.

These are not private initiatives. They were the will of powerful, bright and respected people.

Private people can't be powerful, bright, and respected? Plus their example was Brasilia, not a private initiative either.

>They were the will of powerful, bright and respected people.

Not the first adjectives I'd use to describe imperialists, colonialists and warlords personally.

The "fathers" of Dubai, Singapore, etc are highly respected and loved by the locals. Of course there are counter-exemples.

Daybreak in Utah is really good.

Daybreak [1] is just a big suburb. It's a far cry from a self-sufficient city built from the ground up.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daybreak_(community)

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