This is not a master-planned community. Rather, it is a series of organic responses to evolving operational needs.
over time i have become more and more convinced that this state of affairs is _better_.
over time i have become more and more convinced that this state of affairs is _better_.
the problem happens when somebody decides a design that was arrived upon by spontaneous growth is perfect as-is, and when needs change instead of just fixing it, you need a 6-month study and a planning commission to make a change to existing infrastructure that only had five minutes of thought put into the original design.
I might just be bad at Cities Skylines.
I'm not sure even this is true. The city may not build up in the way the planners anticipated. Even if it does, it will change over time.
In the cases I know of the density followed upon building the line, but that may not be universally true.
You build your infrastructure to, or just past the edges of what you know is being built, and make sure you reserve space past that to accompany further expansion.
The lets you expand the ~factory~ city while still allowing some sanity to the underlying infrastructure.
* This will likely apply to anything that needs both preplanning and unknown future expansion such as codebases
Bus lines instead tend to follow where the traffic wants to go. Around here, many shopping malls double as bus stations because the primary aim of transit seems to be circulating consumers around places they will spend money.
This is circular reasoning though. Bus lines go to the mall, but malls are built where the bus lines go. Malls use a lot of space, so carving out a little bit for transit is easy.
Trying to avoid painting yourself into a corner without over thinking is the game.
It might not, but planners have a lot of forcing functions.
For example, if they build a transformational backbone, and nobody uses some part of it, they can fix it, by say, moving major government offices to that area. Residents, other businesses, services will follow suit.
What doesn't work is half-assed planning, where you have a grand, but myopic vision, implement it, and never adjust after-the-fact.
The out-of-address-space v4 that wasn't future-proof enough to conceive of more than 4 billion computers?
Or the reinvented ipv6 that seems to have gone way too far in the other direction (and not just in terms of address size)?
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/09/the-new-...
Or are there any preplanned great cities I'm not aware of?
Also, once you go beyond Eixample (except to the east) the city's not a regular grid anymore. In the end, Eixample and other, newer neighbourhoods built on a grid probably represent a (substantial, of course) minority of the city.
— Donald E. Eastlake, ITS Status Report, AI Memo 238, 1972: https://its.victor.se/wiki/aim-238
A place I used to go to as a kid used to have a giant throw switch which said it would turn off the waterfall if thrown which was a joke they played on kids. It was in fact just the old Master throw switch for the house when they originally electric it up.
If you lack that financial security, you may be stuck next to all sorts of undesirable properties, like a busy 24-hour shopping center. I saw that sort of thing frequently in Texas.
Of course, poor people get less desirable properties even in cities with zoning. But zoning does discourage some of the more haphazard "jigsaw puzzle" construction where residential buildings frequently abut busy non-residential parcels.
The part I liked about it was the city was able to adapt to change. I saw the inner-loop part of Houston as a hellscape as a kid. Then ~2000s when inner-city gentrification began, it went quick. Neighborhoods tend to support more local business than the big box strip centers that proliferate in the master planned world. Also, master plans are just copy&pasted every couple of miles so it all just looks the same[0]. I liked having neighborhood restaurants and other quirky stuff inside an old house in the neighborhood, you actually knew the owner and it facilitated a sense of community. It's rarely ever actually in the neighborhood, just on a main thoroughfare that pretty much is high traffic regardless of the business use. I see living on a high traffic road not very different than living next to a busy shopping center.
The other thing I've noticed now that I live in Dallas (which is pretty similar to Houston except with zoning). I frequently see an undeveloped parcel of land and I think, "wow a X shop would do well in this location." I look up zoning and it's not allowed. What is allowed, IMO, wouldn't do well in that location. That's why it's still undeveloped land. Some map drawn 50+ years ago probably made some bad assumptions. Typically the neighbors will fight any zoning change because they actually like that nice undeveloped lot next door. Developers with bigger pockets pay the neighbors off so they don't fight the zoning change.
Hard to explain, but Dallas is known for 'lack of culture' and having lived in other Texas cities prior (Houston and Austin) I think it's largely due to with how it was designed. It's difficult to build anything unique or artistic here. Until it was banned a couple years ago, many of the city's in the metroplex building code would mandate exactly what brand and color of brick you could use. So we have entire small cities in the metroplex that are red brick (it was a trend in the 90s when that area was being swallowed by sprawl, and it's exactly what's off trend the last decade+) Actually, most cities still mandate it and if you're a developer you'd have to file a lawsuit to get your non-conforming design permitted (you'd win because State of Texas banned this a few years ago, but many municipalities have conveniently not updated their building codes).
Which segues to this;
> If you lack that financial security, you may be stuck next to all sorts of undesirable properties
But at least your in the mix of the city and somewhat able to interact and have social mobility, access to the core business districts and jobs that service the higher income citizens. In Dallas, the economic core/center of gravity is moving north towards Plano and those lacking financial security get pushed further and further south (usually). This essentially is a ghetto, food desert, high crime yet over policed, etc and provides little access to social mobility. It also reinforces a lot of the race issues that exist in our country. Dallas is very segregated compared to Houston.
[0] Most of Houston is very guilty of this, most of it also has defacto zoning by another name. I forget what it is, ordinances on noise and traffic impact or something. The inner loop area is pretty organic and sense it's well developed, you pretty much know who your neighbor is going to be. If you buy a house next to an undeveloped lot, you're rolling the dice, but there's likely not any lots big enough to build an oil refinery or a shopping mall or whatever. If you're in a residential area, it's likely a small lot and will eventually be built as residential.