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The Seaway was designed to mimic body action...
I'm sure that (Segway inventor) Kamen learned from his failure and is working on something else as his interests involve finding solutions to many of our world's problems in the medical and environmental areas. He is currently working on solutions to clean water in third-world countries, low cost, clean power generation, and many others. He invented the portable dialysis machine among many other modern medical devices that have improved the lives of many people.
No doubt, his next invention will be better.
I have only known well one great inventor in my life, that's Sir Clive Sinclair. He invented the pocket calulator and the Personal Computer - that's great going IMO.
But not all of Clive's inventions succeeded. The C-5 Electric Car never quite lived up to his expectations for it. I reckon it was too low, and hence those navigating it never felt safe in traffic. But if everyone was at the same height, it might have worked. Maybe some advanced community would ban cars, and allow only low electric vehicles, like Sinclair's. Then the C-5 might make a comeback.
Last edited by nei; 02-23-2013 at 10:55 AM..
Reason: copyright violation
Umm, well... I haven't actually read it, so maybe the Wikipedia article is completely off and you are correct which would be a complete 180 course change from Radiant City. Athens Charter seems to call from high-rise housing tower in the park with near by industrial/commercial buildings to minimize commutes. Precisely nobody in my suburb of just under 300,000 lives in a high-rise building, unless they're illegally squatting in some unused room in one of the few high-rise office buildings that are downtown. Commercial and industrial building aren't designed with any thought to being nearby. Also, they're nearly all one-storey.
And while I find Le Corbusier's ideas more worthwhile than most here, I've got to say, you're giving him way too much credit as far as the influence he had. Suburbs really have little to do with the Garden City movement or Le Corbusier's writings. Suburbs were to some degree influenced, but not really that much -- they're rarely made with any attempt to be self-containing, a fundamental necessity of a Garden City. Le Corbusier's limited influence is seen exclusively in cities, and mostly in public housing projects or slum clearance projects like Stuy Town.
"The cities will be part of the country; I shall live 30 miles from my office in one direction, under a pine tree.; my secretary will live 30 miles away from it too, in the other direction, under another pine tree. We shall both have our own car. We shall use up tires, wear out road surfaces and gears, consume oil and gasoline. All of which will necessitate a great deal of work. . .enough for all."
I have only known well one great inventor in my life, that's Sir Clive Sinclair. He invented the pocket calulator and the Personal Computer - that's great going IMO.
"The cities will be part of the country; I shall live 30 miles from my office in one direction, under a pine tree.; my secretary will live 30 miles away from it too, in the other direction, under another pine tree. We shall both have our own car. We shall use up tires, wear out road surfaces and gears, consume oil and gasoline. All of which will necessitate a great deal of work. . .enough for all."
- Le Corbusier, The Radiant City
Which is why it's important to actually read. And also to properly quote. Le Corbusier isn't supporting the Soviet propaganda; he's rebuking it. You need to do either a single quote (') or double quote plus single quote ("') to indicate that Le Corbusier did not ever say this. He is actually quoting or paraphrasing Soviet propaganda planning.
Here I found this which gives a bit more context. I'm not about to type in several pages from a book. Get the book and read it rather than relying on secondary sources and getting the completely wrong impression because you have no context.
Quote:
In Moscow in 1930 the fad of the moment was for ‘deurbanization.’
‘The murderous stone-cannon of the city, the stifling, the crushing of the city dweller is a purely capitalistic manifestation.’
Therefore the city must be smashed into ten thousand pieces and scattered across the countryside, in the woods, in the meadows, so that the houses will be in the heart of nature itself. Thus, man will have returned to the first wellspring of his inner harmony.
‘All well and good,’ I replied. ‘But what about the work of the city (for the question of rural exploitation is in no way involved here), the work that must be accomplished within the 24-hour daily solar cycle?’
Their answer was that they would build whatever roads were necessary to link all their scattered houses to the city center. Everyone would have a car. They were going to manufacture however many cars, however many roads proved necessary…
But to return to the U.S.S.R. Plans were drawn up, propaganda films were screened for the benefit of committees. People were encouraged to entertain an idle dream: ‘The cities will be part of the country; I shall live 30 miles away from my office under a pine tree; my secretary will live 30 miles away from it too, in the other direction, under another pine tree. We shall both have our own car. We shall use up tires, wear out road surfaces and gears, consume oil and gasoline. All of which will necessitate a great deal of work; there will be a titanic demand for labor; enough for all: no threat of unemployment looming in the future, never again’…
Then one fine day, authority, which is the door of reason against which all dreams, just and chimerical ones alike, must eventually knock, authority in the U.S.S.R. said: ‘Enough! It’s all over! And stop that laughing!’
The mystic belief in deurbanization had fallen flat on its face! Pg. 74.
I didn't realize Soviet planners liked auto-centric sprawl. Looking from google streetview, much of the city looks one giant version of Co-Op City, which I get a good view from the highway when I drive down to Long Island. Not exactly in nature.
Also, Moscow has a bizarre density profile, it's denser on the edges than the center. Unlike Paris, with a high-density core and relatively low density outlying areas, the center of Moscow is the lowest density. Moscow manages to have a higher overall density than Paris but on average the population is a longer distance from the city center:
Co-Op City's kinda follows the socialist model in that it has dense development in outlying areas, due availability of cheap land (towers in the marsh) rather than market demand.
I didn't realize Soviet planners liked auto-centric sprawl. Looking from google streetview, much of the city looks one giant version of Co-Op City, which I get a good view from the highway when I drive down to Long Island. Not exactly in nature.
This had to have been early as Radiant City was written in the '20s and early '30s.
I have only known well one great inventor in my life, that's Sir Clive Sinclair. He invented the pocket calulator and the Personal Computer - that's great going IMO.
But not all of Clive's inventions succeeded. The C-5 Electric Car never quite lived up to his expectations for it. I reckon it was too low, and hence those navigating it never felt safe in traffic. But if everyone was at the same height, it might have worked. Maybe some advanced community would ban cars, and allow only low electric vehicles, like Sinclair's. Then the C-5 might make a comeback.
That doesn't look very pleasant in England's drizzly weather....
I didn't realize Soviet planners liked auto-centric sprawl. Looking from google streetview, much of the city looks one giant version of Co-Op City, which I get a good view from the highway when I drive down to Long Island. Not exactly in nature.
There was tension in the USSR between a group called deurbanists and a group called urbanists in terms of planning. It was the deurbanists that Le Corbusier was mocking (though many modern treatments miss that!).
Not really different than a Segway, though. It's difficult to have a vibrant street scene when everyone gets everywhere by Segway. Segways and pedestrians have the same issue as bicycles and pedestrians. They don't mix. On a busy sidewalk, a Segway is a no go.
Well, with bicycles, you can see others biking and a bicyclist can stop easily. It's not as good for street life as pedestrians, but I can more easily stop and say hi to some I know to a pedestrian on the street or a pedestrian as a bicyclist. And in a neighborhood full of bicyclists, you can see the people going by much more so than with cars, it feels friendlier to me. Though Nathan Lewis argued that bicycles are anti-urban, though he's an extremist as well as a writer for economiccollapsenut.com. But in a truly busy pedestrian area, there isn't really space if everyone bicycled. A Segway would be similar, but the image of a neighborhood full of Segways is distressing. Bicycles and Segway don't have the space issues that cars do (wide roads, parking, etc.) Though bike parking spaces add up eventually. Still not that much:
Quote:
And the Tesla isn't really that expensive. Room for 5+2 (Model S) 300 mile range (claimed) for about $75,000. Segway, 24 mile range (claimed) costs about $7,500. They're both absurdly expensive for most people. You can buy a perfectly good used car for $7500 or a brand-new bicycle (a good one, not something from Wally's World) for $400-500. Unless it's obnoxiously hot, which it does get here, you can ride a bicycle at 12 mph without breaking a sweat.
That's what I meant, though a normal person could afford a Segway it's cheap a terrible deal. Didn't realize they were that expensive. Here in the summer, you can sweat from biking at 12 mph without it being obnoxiously hot, humidity makes big difference, which I don't realize is there until start biking and sweat. Shade, sun angle and clothing makes a big difference, I managed to bike in somewhat humid high 90s weather in shade in the evening without a shirt without being too bothered but I obviously got sweaty. I paid $850 on my bicycle and then added more to it, though I knew cheaper goods were available I wanted to spend more money on a bicycle for various reasons, since a bicycle means more to me than just budget transportation.
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