Comment by simonebrunozzi | Hacker News Reader

Comment by simonebrunozzi | Hacker News Reader

Cities of the future. Here's my 1-minute pitch [0]:

Cities are inefficient, expensive and unsustainable.

We could build cities in a better way. Ten times better. But why it’s not happening?

$COMPANY will allow millions of people to pool money, resources and great design to build better cities.

Our first milestone, or Tesla Roadster, will be to collect 100 million dollars in pre-orders for the first $COMPANY village.

Builders, home buyers, and a 10x great design, as if you were building a city on Mars. And maybe Elon Musk will like to help us too!

Eventually we will build entire cities from scratch, to make housing affordable and clean for everyone.

I tried to build something like this already once, and failed, but I really want to make this happen, and I want you to believe in me. So, let' talk!

[0]: https://youtu.be/GtMybYBGCwc

(please don't share this video elsewhere for now, if you can be so kind)

Edit: I will soon apply to Apollo [1] with this. Suggestions are welcome :)

[1]: https://apolloprojects.com/

Are you aware of Christopher Alexander's work?

https://patternlanguage.com

A set of patterns for creating vibrant living spaces.

How do you avoid the sorts of issues that plagued Milton Keynes?

Social infrastructure is inordinately complex; I am not aware of a planned city that is pleasant to live in.

Good counter; however, what I have in mind is less of a "rigid" model of a planned city (Le Corbusier is possibly the worst example of that), but rather a very "elastic" model, where there is rigidity and opinionated approaches on the infrastructure, but hopefully a lot of freedom up the stack.

Planned cities were a thing since renaissance and some of them worked quite well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideal_city

I've only been to Zamość out of these and it's grown out of the starting plan in last few centuries, but it was operating as designed for a while.

> Jan Zamoyski commissioned the Venetian (from Padua) architect Bernardo Morando to design the city, based upon the anthropomorphic concept. Its "head" was to be the Zamoyski Palace, "backbone" Grodzka Street, crossing the Great Market Square from east to west, in the direction of the palace, and with the "arms" embodied by 10 streets intersecting the main streets: Solna Street (north of the Great Market Square) and Bernardo Morando Street (south of the Great Market Square). In these streets, the other squares were placed: Salt Square (Rynek Solny) and Water Square (Rynek Wodny), functioning as the "internal organs" of the city whereas the bastions are the "hands and legs" for self-defence.[13]

http://villiagehomesdavis.org

Check out https://culdesac.com/ - their first project is a clue to the scale of ambition that they're thinking with regard to city development.

And they are traditionally VC backed.

I know about them. Interesting idea, but not a strong focus on the 10x design, which I think is a requirement to make housing affordable.

Doesn't mean they won't succeed - just that it's not the particular model I have in mind.

After the last farm bill and the estimate of "1 hectare of hemp to build a 135 m2 (1,450 sq ft) house", I really thought we would have seen a "rural metropolis" growth boom (aka new cities) by now, but I think the autonomous vehicle infrastructure realm is the last legislative hurdle left to build something that maintains 1st world standards for the next leg of growth.

Without the convenience of an avi, it would just be Grizzly Adams cosplay in the woods.

Good luck on the project!

Please don't call your company "UseLess".

Personally, I like the name. It makes it memorable, funny, and also conveys the meaning.

Thanks! That was the intent.

I am not sold on it. But curious: why you don't like it?

If you're wondering why this doesn't happen, well I'd argue that that's because a large amount of people see a big difference between taxes and investments. There's good reason for this, because taxes do more than invest into projects, but it definitely is a component and as soon as you add the T word people are no longer with you.

You didn't actually say how you'll make it better, though! What about it is the problem currently?

Incidentally, are you familiar with BauGruppen? It sounds in the vein of your interests.

You're right, but that's supposed to be an initial pitch, not the whole thing :)

In short, it's going to be about rethinking how we build and consider innovations in materials, in use of spaces, in reducing customization to improve efficiency. I am planning to write a long essay about it. But a lot of it is already in my head. Sorry I can't share anything more meaningful here at the moment.

BauGruppen: super interesting. Didn't know about them. Thanks a lot for sharing.

Won't work. Most popular cities today have grown organically, and were not designed by a small number of people.

Where are you going to get all the aggregate for the concrete to build everything again from scratch?

Concrete? Why not use cross laminated timber instead?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keystone_Wye#/media/File:Keyst... Wow!

How does this make money?

It doesn't. Thus not VC-backable. But it should exist.

Why not?

Forgive a bit of optimism (and maybe arrogance): imagine AirBnB, making a cut on transactions between hosts and guests.

This specific company could make a cut acting like a marketplace between builders and homebuyers. Defensible? Not sure. Still many things to figure out.

So... like taxes?

So I'm paying taxes to the government, and then fees to some business, on top of fees for every service provided by the business?

We already tried company towns (look up Disney, among many other examples), and it's kind of fucked up. I don't think we need more of that.

Yeah, no thanks. Good luck with the idea

EDIT: btw, your site www.brunozzi.com is down. You might want to figure out CDNs before you try to disrupt cities

Data and selling information. There's a reason why big companies are researching building "smart cities".

> Cities are inefficient, expensive and unsustainable.

According to whom?

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