Comment by syntheweave | Hacker News Reader

Comment by syntheweave | Hacker News Reader

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I shared this feeling when I was young, but a disillusionment with skyscrapers crept in as I increasingly recognized that although they are symbolically prominent and physically dense, they don't operate as communities that integrate in a broader sense. Office districts are ghost towns after commute hours; condo tower residents mostly stay behind their doors. The built infrastructure is reduced to the functional aspect of warehousing people like so many goods, and other types of spaces are found only by leaving the tower, turning walks into commutes. On many levels, they are industrial achievements, equivalents to the factory and railroad. And each of these structures has their beauty, but in all cases, they remind us of ourselves, and not of nature.

A world of steel-glass-concrete is incomplete in this sense, and I now see the appeal of low-rise neighborhoods that can distill a mixture of energies and create lively street scenes, quiet parks, and so forth.

> Office districts are ghost towns after commute hours; condo tower residents mostly stay behind their doors

Don’t blame skyscrapers for bad architecture and urban planning.

I live in a 76-story tower and people are pretty friendly and you say hello by the pool, etc. There’s more community here than in most of the blocks of 4-5-story houses I’ve lived on. You also have the staff around, so even when you are alone you can still say g’day to a few people, which is a big deal for instance in lockdowns.

And because the towers are surrounded by smaller buildings (not everyone can afford to live in the towers) there is plenty of vibrant life out on the street. Arguably more so than in the more spread-out areas, with the exception of Chinatown.

Sure, SF FiDi is an apocalypse after dark, but that’s not about skyscrapers, it’s about cynical and uncaring planners.

I live in a 76-story tower and people are pretty friendly and you say hello by the pool, etc

Admittedly I'm British so my view on things is a bit skewed but I'd definitely call that polite rather than friendly. Here in the UK we say a happy, cheery hello to people even if we actively hate them.

I love in a 44-story building (Warsaw) and people are definitely more friendly than just polite - I know more neighbours after 2 years of living here than in all my previous places of living combined (childhood excluded, I lived in 10-story building in a new neighborhood, and we had a ton of children in my age)

That's just the thing in Eastern Europe, definitely bigger sense of community than on the West. (Born and raised in the "southeast", lived in few eastern countries, as well in several western ones). I've never felt the sense of community in the northwestern europe like in the (south)east, and I'm fairly engaged in local ongoings.

Maybe that's because condos have windows that only face away from the building. Perhaps if they were built with interior common areas (like a town square) with windows facing them, that would change everything.

That’s an interesting point. In Europe at least a lot of buildings have big courtyards and windows face there. In Germany it’s less desirable to have a view of the street, unless you’re on a really high floor.

I currently am on the 40th with a view away from the building. I am trying to move to the 12th with a view across the facilities (pools mostly, it’s Asia). I’m curious whether that will change how I feel about the building.

We have a ton of those in Europe, and it’s a terrible idea generally - you have way too little privacy, lower floors have little sunlight, but above all - if anyone throws a party, or even has guests on a balcony, everyone else can hear it.

I lived for a year in 12 story apartment block that was U shaped, I lived on the inner part of the U and this was exactly my experience. If anyone of the 72 inner apartments was having a party or just some late night drinks with friends you couldn’t sleep. Happened about 1-2 times a week.

I was surprised that building codes allowed such construction here in the UK as there’s lots of rules about sound insulation between units.

I don't think the privacy would be any more of an issue than it would be if the windows faced the street. That works because the apartment windows are not at eye level, they are a storey up. The ground floor would be shops, a bar, a coffee shop, arcade, etc.

Think town square.

Sunlight could be dealt with by not enclosing all sides of the common area, have the south side be windows to the outside.

>That works because the apartment windows are not at eye level, they are a storey up

But in an enclosed courtyard, there would be apartments across the way at eye level. Though that's solved by scale. With a large enough complex, the courtyard distance isn't much different than apartments across the street.

Are windows that face adjacent buildings (same side of the street) that big of a problem?

They're likely much closer together than any opposing courtyard windows would be.

It's a bit different since you have two separate, not necessarily functionally or aesthetically compatible, structures. But that almost certainly makes it worse than if you were able to design opposing views simultaneously.

I've never seen a side-window designed for a view, just smaller higher windows designed for light.

I wonder if we could deal with sunlight by using mirror panels on the internal walls. As long as the internal place is not formed of curved walls, it should be fine.

If it is formed of curved walls, it could be a nice place to put a solar-thermal plant.

I've seen enough ghost town courtyards to know they don't change everything. If the building is completely devoid of any sense of community otherwise, the courtyard just feels like being in the spotlight of a bunch of strangers.

I do love courtyards though, and am always a little heartbroken when I visit someone at a place that has one and realize that no one really uses it.

Le Corbusier tried that but I think the prevailing agreement is that it didn't work.

Le Corbusier had a very specific view of towers though.

Tower social housing failed, mostly because it turns out concentrating poverty is a terrible idea, but that would be true if it were towers or two-story houses. And separating uses aggravated the problems by providing less diversity of people who could keep "eyes on the street" active. But none of that is really inherent to tower design.

I guess I don't really look to the building or the street for friends, but it is very nice when I meet people at work or other activities, and it turns out they live only a few buildings away from mine. That happens pretty often, because the chances of any given housing unit being within a few blocks of me is pretty high. Walking to and from dinners and parties is pretty nice. Sometimes I meet people who live in more internally close-knit low rise neighborhoods, and it's a big slog to go and see them.

> condo tower residents mostly stay behind their doors.

Where I grew up, where apartment buildings are very common middle class options, kids often socialised in the common areas - gardens, swimming pool, etc. Where I live now it’s a concern to buy where my daughter can have a nice community of kids to hang out with (we now live in a rented house that has a large common lawn connecting the backs of the block and kids play in this space all day long).

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