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Comment by prawn | Hacker News Reader

I'd like to see a smart city with grand infrastructure (subways designed ahead of time, the garbage system outlined in this article, etc) but designed on a human scale.

That is, not bulked out by endless roads and parking allowances. There are many charming and walkable cities around the world but so often these "designed" cities are created on the scale of cars and end up feeling so wrong.

If you need service roads and parking, hide them underground perhaps.

Images of Houston are often used to demonstrate the sprawl you get from giving way to the convenience of cars and parking: http://blogs.crikey.com.au/theurbanist/files/2012/06/Houston...

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Come visit Tokyo. Most of the people I know do not own a car. The train is the most popular form of commute. I either walk to my destination, or walk to the nearest train station to get there. It certainly does not have the same garbage system as described in the article, though :)

I have travelled a reasonable amount (30+ countries) but not yet to Japan. Definitely on my list.

I've never been there but I heard in Houston the human-scale areas are actually underground. It's called the Houston Tunnel System.

Picture: http://www.downtownhouston.org/site_media/uploads/photos/201...

Montreal has something similar: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_City,_Montreal

I guess that has advantages protecting against the elements, but then I wonder if you lose a lot of the charm of open air streets? Al fresco dining (areas near İstiklâl Caddesi in Istanbul), getting lost in windy residential alleys (Kotor in Montenegro), narrow Parisian streets, the lost hutongs in Beijing, etc.

Toronto has PATH - 29km of underground pedestrian tunnels: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PATH_(Toronto)

I do think working vertically is a solution, whichever way it's approached. Just needs to be a little more organised than areas with urban monorails like Bangkok or Kuala Lumpur where your walking is constantly interrupted with stairs to cross streets, or vistas are blocked by raised train lines.

I live in Houston, and have been in the tunnels a few times. They connect a lot of the bigger office buildings downtown with a lot of assorted restaurants and fast food. The thing is that the tunnels, and most of downtown Houston, are very business-centered, and have almost no activity outside of normal business hours. Downtown in general has been picking up some in the last few years, but activity in the tunnels is still basically nonexistent on evenings and weekends.

There are some human-scale areas here with more regular activity, but they're relatively small and widely separated, and public transit is pretty limited.

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