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Why not? Masonry would be a great skill for young people to acquire. Traditional buildings are designed to last forever unlike the throw-away manufactured boxes of today that are disposable within a generation or two. Traditional buildings are also very green. They don't require great inputs of fossil fuels to build and maintain.
Don't get me wrong... I would LOVE to see the quality of yesteryear's construction come back... but damn would it be expensive... so expensive, in fact that only multimillionaires could afford to live in such places... which means I wouldn't be enjoying it.
4. I don't think very many new cities will be built. Even in China, I think many of the "new cities" are more like appendages of existing cities, so I'm not sure if there is that much value in trying to design a city from scratch. In all cities in North America and many cities elsewhere, what you'd want is to basically adapt/improve existing cities, and in a few countries like China, design appendages to existing cities. Are there any major new cities built from scratch in the last 40 years or so that aren't attached to existing cities and are still successful anywhere in the world?
As population is rapidly increasing countries and states are going to have to make choices about how to accommodate millions of new people. California for example is expected to increase population by 50% over the next two decades according to the Census Bureau. If the state simply keeps building on existing sprawl patterns it will be a recipe for disaster. California is already like the sprawl capital of the world. This model is simply unsustainable.
Don't get me wrong... I would LOVE to see the quality of yesteryear's construction come back... but damn would it be expensive... so expensive, in fact that only multimillionaires could afford to live in such places... which means I wouldn't be enjoying it.
I don't think they would be cheap to build. You don't always have to use stone or masonry. The kind of materials used would depend on what is locally available to you. Modern single family houses aren't necessarily cheap either. The cost of a more traditional building could be offset somewhat by their compactness. They don't require as much land. The compactness is more important than the actual materials used. The ultimate goal is to keep sprawl to a minimum by making things more compact.
As population is rapidly increasing countries and states are going to have to make choices about how to accommodate millions of new people. California for example is expected to increase population by 50% over the next two decades according to the Census Bureau. If the state simply keeps building on existing sprawl patterns it will be a recipe for disaster. California is already like the sprawl capital of the world. This model is simply unsustainable.
Who said you had to choose between sprawl and new cities from scratch? Building a new city from scratch like this will consume a lot of land too, and if it is built from scratch, you'd either have to build it in the middle of the desert where there's nothing (doesn't sound like a good idea), or destroy a few existing cities to make room for this new city... California could just intensify it's existing cities, and maybe some smaller cities will become larger.
Who said you had to choose between sprawl and new cities from scratch? Building a new city from scratch like this will consume a lot of land too, and if it is built from scratch, you'd either have to build it in the middle of the desert where there's nothing (doesn't sound like a good idea), or destroy a few existing cities to make room for this new city... California could just intensify it's existing cities, and maybe some smaller cities will become larger.
You seem confused. Read the OP and title of the thread. Get back to me when you grasp the concept of walkability, sustainability, population growth, minimizing (or eliminating) car dependency and sprawl. Get back to me when you figured it out.
btw, 50% population growth within 20 years would not be considered sustainable either. most every developed country in the world is trying hard to control their population growth, while the US population or at least states like California appears set to explode. Are we trying to become the next China? The age of dystopian sprawl and happy motoring is made possible only because of massive amounts of cheap oil. But what happens when oil is no longer cheap? ...Scary thought. Whatever it is, it won't be pretty. The last thing the country needs is another baby boom.
You seem confused. Read the OP and title of the thread. Get back to me when you grasp the concept of walkability, sustainability, population growth, minimizing (or eliminating) car dependency and sprawl. Get back to me when you figured it out.
I know that cities as they are today are not suited towards a world without cheap oil, but that doesn't mean building new cities from scratch makes sense. Many of the ideas on walkability and transit in the video are good ones, but I think it makes more sense to discuss how existing cities can adapt to a future when oil is more expensive than how to built entirely new ones.
Quote:
Originally Posted by cisco kid
btw, 50% population growth within 20 years would not be considered sustainable either. most every developed country in the world is trying hard to control their population growth, while the US population or at least states like California appears set to explode. Are we trying to become the next China? The age of dystopian sprawl and happy motoring is made possible only because of massive amounts of cheap oil. But what happens when oil is no longer cheap? ...Scary thought. Whatever it is, it won't be pretty. The last thing the country needs is another baby boom.
I agree that the US doesn't really need more people and likely wouldn't benefit from more people, but I think it can support more. I don't think California will grow by 50% in the next 20 years though, for the last two decades, California has been growing at about the same rate as the US as a whole, or roughly 20% in 20years. Where did the census bureau say California would grow by 50% in 20 years? Also, if it weren't for immigration, the US population would stabilize once the baby-boomers start dying of old age assuming life expectancy continues to be relatively constant.
Also, it's not as if oil prices will suddenly skyrocket, they'll gradually get more expensive and people will gradually find auto-dependent lifestyles less and less attractive, and cities will gradually become more transit and pedestrian oriented.
1995 to 2025: California population jumps 55% in 30 year period.
Its actually 30 years not 20 (I read it wrong). But still a huge spike in population growth. If people think freeway congestion is bad now, wait until 2025.
Quote:
Originally Posted by memph
Also, it's not as if oil prices will suddenly skyrocket, they'll gradually get more expensive and people will gradually find auto-dependent lifestyles less and less attractive, and cities will gradually become more transit and pedestrian oriented.
We can only hope this will be turn out to be the case. The oil markets are extremely volatile right now (when haven't they been?) and seem to be getting more unstable by the day. So you never know what can happen in a few years, or even a few weeks or months from now. There's lots of talk in the MSM about gas heading above the $5 mark by start of this summer.
Last edited by cisco kid; 03-02-2012 at 07:08 PM..
btw, 50% population growth within 20 years would not be considered sustainable either. most every developed country in the world is trying hard to control their population growth, while the US population or at least states like California appears set to explode. Are we trying to become the next China? The age of dystopian sprawl and happy motoring is made possible only because of massive amounts of cheap oil. But what happens when oil is no longer cheap? ...Scary thought. Whatever it is, it won't be pretty. The last thing the country needs is another baby boom.
13 years of your link have not yet happened. I don't think the population is "exploding" anywhere in the developed world. The birth rate in the US is barely at replacement levels. No one predicted the drop in birth rates in Europe and Japan until they actually happened.
According to the World Bank’s 2007 Annual Development Indicators, in 1990 Mexico had a fertility rate of 3.3 children per female, but by 2005, that number had fallen by 36 percent to 2.1, which is the Zero Population Growth rate.
What does population growth of Mexico have to do with the US?
Current US population is already too high imo. Especially since North Americans use far more energy per capita than anyone else in the world including the EU and Japan (not including a few small wealthy outliers such as Qatar). Not taking into account immigration, replacement birthrate of 2.1 is still too high and will be unsustainable in the near future. 1.1 would be better. We need negative population growth as in the EU and Japan.
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