Welcome to Metropica, a Supposed City of the Future (2019) | Hacker News Reader

Welcome to Metropica, a Supposed City of the Future (2019)

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My wife and I argue a lot about the mall in our town.

Our mall has had the same problems other malls have had, and it is "suburban", but it is within walking range of an airport, medical center, a lot of other shopping, medical offices, a huge assisted living facility and lots of townhouses. The bus runs two to four times an hour to the downtown and local college campus.

The crowd at the mall seems a lot more racially integrated than at the Ithaca commons downtown.

These days the mall has the COVID-19 testing center and just opened a racket sports center where Planet Fitness used to be. The people who run the mall definitely want to be part of the solution, not part of the problem.

Brazilian Portuguese speakers would have a blast living in Metropica.

The 5th grader in me salutes the 5th grader in you.

why?

Because it's made up of a word for meter and another more vulgar word for penis I guess

Twinned with https://getoutside.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/local/yard-wood-nort...

I grew up in the rural swampy area about an hour inland from Sawgrass Mills and the idea of new city popping up in the Everglades, far from any coastline, is fascinating and very weird to imagine. 15 minutes from this location is just swamp, alligators, and sugar cane.

I find the notion of planned communities fascinating. We'll need the skills to build these small self-contained communities in the future as we build lunar and martian cities where thousands will spend most of their lives.

They tend to fail. Turns out humans don't like being pressed into a fixed life. These communities usually die with demography changes. Most of the past's projects like this, are now desolate and unattractive. Ultimately, it's always down to someone having totalitarian lust building these, but not anticipating changing demographics and lifestyles.

In Berlin the <~1920 buildings seem to be the sweet spot for city development. Over the course of a century, they managed to adapt perfectly to a changing city. The living spaces can house a family, luxury minded singles, shared flat collectives, a doctor's office, ... . In the basement you get shops, bureaus, or cheap apartments. Historically, there were livestock living down there sometimes. Berlin once had about a million more citizens living in these buildings. The complexes span economic classes and mix realities, de-ghettofy. And people actually love living in these old buildings still today.

They are not the most energy efficient for the high ceilings (huge on living quality and versatility, tho), but the thick walls prove to be not bad at all for isolation. Same for the old windows (Kastenfenster).

Turns out humans don't like being pressed into a fixed life

Not sure, but demographics change over time. We can't really plan them down to the individual lives, but we can plan them to be versatile enough that changes in usage can be easily accommodated. The Berlin buildings you mention are a perfect example of such change even though some behaviours would probably be less tolerated when the environment is extremely harsh. On Earth we can consider air, water, and space inexhaustible, but that probably won't be the case on any space colony.

See also Pruitt-Igoo, as Wikipedia says:

an icon of failure of urban renewal, public-policy planning and public housing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruitt–Igoe

That apartment building is terrifically ugly, and I'm not sure who anyone young in Florida would move anywhere but outside of Florida.

Don't dismiss Florida entirely. There are millions of people living there, proof that not everyone, but someone likes it enough there.

Florida is the 3rd most populous state in the USA. It is overflowing with young people, many of whom moved here from elsewhere. It's also a very diverse state, ethnically, economically, ideologically. There is absolutely a "frontier spirit" vibe here, partly created by the hands-off republican controlled state and local governments. I think it is quite honestly a good representation of the USA, certainly more complete than places like San Francisco or New York.

I also think those condo towers look terrifically ugly, but they are in good company in that department.

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