How The War On Shadows Shapes Our Cities - Cheddar Explains

The war on skyscraper shadows has been passionately waged for years. Between light and shade, their significance is intensely debated. But in the shades of gray, what else are we losing in our cities?
Further Reading:
Atlas Obscura
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Harvard Law School Library
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Curbed
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AP News
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MA Legislature
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San Francisco Recreation & Parks
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San Francisco Chronicle
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Architect Magazine
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Washington Post
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Prevision Design
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Kron4
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Boston Herald
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[@jasonbailey9139]

A Cheddar video that acknowledges that there are cities outside of New York, LA, and San Francisco? Congrats Phoenix!

[@lilrocky2640]

That's just a myth. We all know that Phoenix doesn't exist. It's a fable like Bigfoot or the loch Ness monster.

[@randybobandy9828]

Lmao I have only seen NYC cheddar videos.

[@HoodieProduction]

​@@randybobandy9828 Also good on them to give a shout out to one of New Yorks lesser-known suburbs, Boston certainly has been up and coming in the last couple centuries.

[@EroticInferno]

Didn’t they say Chicago?

[@Erez-the-Berez]

I’ve never seen something that seems so boring being explained so interestingly

[@cheddar]

Thank you?

[@Erez-the-Berez]

@@cheddar LMAO it was a compliment :]

[@josecarvajal6654]

It´s funny because being from the Caribbean, you would always prefer to be in the shade. I would love to have taller buildings so it´s more confortable to walk on the street

[@ANTSEMUT1]

Here in South East Asia we do the same.

[@nunyabiznes33]

Here in the Philippines, I'd like shadows too. I saw a vid of a town in Iran with roofed streets and I thought, "Why don't we have that?"

[@ANTSEMUT1]

@@nunyabiznes33 if the Philippines is anything like Malaysia, it's because it rains a lot and the rain is super heavy horizontal rain.

[@nunyabiznes33]

@@ANTSEMUT1 Yeah, I hate it when the rain bypass my umbrella by hitting me horizontally, right on the face. 😭🌧️

[@ScienceTechComputers]

I feel like more medium density housing could address this and the housing shortage. Basically have more multi unit condos, apartments, and homes that are both shorter then sky scrappers and cheaper.

[@tgosuke]

Urban shadows are underrated, the days be getting too hot 🔥

[@TheDefB]

YES CHEDDAR! This is what me, as a big Chedhead has been waiting for, love these infrastructural videos, truly my favorite stuff. I'd love to see more on roads as well, but great content!

[@cheddar]

Any story ideas??

[@TheDefB]

@@cheddar Well it'd be very fun to see some differences in road design between EU and US, maybe how culture and infrastucture *paved* the roads or stuff like that. Food for thought!

[@faedraemberhart5500]

Cities should get rid of these stupid rules and build enough housing, and not just luxury condos. We more than anything need low income housing in walkable areas (like near workplaces, grocery stores, parks, public transit etc). A little shade doesnt really hurt anyone but not having an affordable condo/apartment to rent or own is life changing.

[@Sinaeb]

That's not profitable

[@faedraemberhart5500]

@@meiko_kaji Affordable housing with public transit and walking distant work places, shops and mixed use zoning? Where?

[@Sinaeb]

@@meiko_kaji affordable housing is not affordable if you have to spent 3k on transport 🤡

[@youcansave15ormoreoncarins75]

@@meiko_kaji chiraq then and not to mention that apartments in New York are literally walk in closets apart of a historically 20 person tenement. And said walk in closet costs 2 thousand dollars a month. Nobody wants to spend 2 thousand dollars a month on a public storage unit.

[@akadanielmaia]

Damn you missed the Balneário Camburiu case in Brazil where they brilliantly let sky scrapers be built facing the beach which crated a massive shadow. They just finish a ridiculously expensive beach extension to the sea so it’s “fixed”

[@CaptainFSU]

Boston's skyline is capped because of both that sunlight law and downtown's insane proximity to Logan Airport (the FAA vetos any building there above 600'). It's pathetic that we still can't get above 800' let alone having a 1000' building.

[@dyslexiksteve2488]

In Canary wharf there was a very good suntrap where all the bars were. A skyscraper was built and it blocked all the evening sun and made this great place cold and just not as appealing

[@sabikikasuko6636]

Homeless people: I don't have a home and yesterday I had to fight a rat for a piece of American cheese; the rat won. But hey! At least if I go to a park, I can enjoy the 5 minutes of sunlight before a police officer takes me to jail for loitering! :D Thank you, city council 😉👍

[@NamelessProducts]

Would you rather live in the shade or live on the streets?

[@edwardblair4096]

This is the other side of the story about the building in London with curved surfaces that actually focused sunlight and caused cars parked in the wrong place to melt.

[@randybobandy9828]

Lol crazy

[@nunyabiznes33]

Free heating!

[@halycon404]

Funny thing about that building. The same designer put one up in Vegas before it that was melting deck chairs and scorching woodwork. After it went up he had another design go up in China with the same problem. Three buildings, years apart, and he just kept designing things that set the area around it on fire. Has to be his life's mission to scale up the magnifying glass in the sun trick to it's absolute largest. Architect is just the only job he found where they'd pay him for his mission. I kinda salute him if that's the case, shows extreme dedication to a goal.

[@nunyabiznes33]

@@halycon404 LOL that's epic. It's like a kid that burn ants with magnifiers decided when he grow up he'd burn people instead.

[@halycon404]

@@nunyabiznes33 Jokes aside. I think it's on accident. All his buildings are curved designs featuring concave shapes somewhere on them. Most of the year they're fine. But for a few weeks out of the year the sun hits the concave glass part just right... not something that could really be modeled for until recently. I mean. Who models the sun looking for that extremely specific problem and then runs the simulation for where the sun is on every day of the year. Well, now days everyone does, they built software now specifically for it. If he did do it on purpose though, then my hat really goes off to him. Cause that'd have been an amazing amount of work. :)

[@Voltaic_Fire]

A shame we can't build elevated walkways over whole cities, people could have an entirely walkable city on the upper level while cars and other vehicles can have an entirely unobstructed road system underneath. Kind of like Coruscant haha. I think I would like to live in the shadow level during summer, to be spared the heat.

[@shanekeenaNYC]

Well, the primary goal of urban planners should be to get through traffic off of local streets, regardless of which form it may take. The important thing is to ensure that people who must go through the cities and off to the other side are out of sight and out of the minds of locals. Build more roads like Wacker Drive in Chicago, which has multiple levels for different traffic forms.

[@snowfox7110]

@@shanekeenaNYC Ring roads are more cost effective.

[@TheFoxyBard]

So, Right to Light Law in 1663, eh? The Great Fire of London happened in 1666. Imagine obtaining the right to uninterrupted sunshine only to have to restart the clock and wait another twenty years because your house (and half your neighbors' houses) burned down a mere three years after this law was passed.

[@HuhWhat101]

In the UK there used to be a profession called Daylight Designer. And you can always tell when a new development has had one on the development or not.

[@macy1066]

This is interesting. One thing to keep in mind is that if hard rules about what is and is not an acceptable shadow go into place, the areas where one can put up large buildings without running afoul of the law will shoot through the roof in price. And the price is very important to housing people because it's not housing by itself. It's affordable housing that matters. Having "housing" that's great for rich people to stash wealth is not what we need.

[@nunyabiznes33]

As a tropical dweller, I'd like shadows everywhere.

[@amazon4716]

Vampires 🧛‍♂️ 🧛‍♀️

[@johnnychang4233]

What the modern skyscraper take away by casting shadows its gives back by way of shooting dead rays with their parabolic glass facades.

[@Hiro_Trevelyan]

While I understand the point of protecting parks from shadows, imagining Central park surrounded by low-rise buildings to avoid any kind of shadow on the park would be ridiculous. (thought it's a very large park, so the setting is entirely different)

[@davidhanson4909]

So, could homeless people who live in a park or plaza invoke that shadow impact rule?

[@Nat3ski]

Cool topic. You assume that some planning occurs, but it's nice to know the process.

[@VirtusH]

It would be far cheaper and make the issue easier to deal with to just require buildings to either be a bright/white color or reflective, so as to bounce light around. Just like why it's far more efficient to "light" a room painted with white paint, instead of black. This also reduces heat absorption. A win-win-win. Beyond that, the only way to make this stuff reasonable is to force local governments to produce their report within 1-2 weeks. There are housing projects that get delayed for years. At LEAST give developers a 'no' quickly so they can move their plans elsewhere.

[@Kriss_L]

So build the skyscrapers with mirrored finishes to reflect the sun down to the ground.

[@mrkshply]

San Fran isn't just strangled by their shadow laws. The laws there for demo and building are so restrictive it's difficult to get anything new

[@alypixar4690]

Great video

[@patrickbarrett5650]

Fascinating, this never occurred to me.

[@ikeyshuster9801]

Love this content. No politics

[@dragorocky]

Is this a dumb question? Why don’t we utilize mirrors to offset the lack of light coming in due to said buildings? We could even angle numerous mirrors to refract so the mirrored sun-light comes from it’s natural direction. Let’s get it!

[@VirtusH]

White paint, reflective surfaces, and refractive light-spreaders are all cost effective ideas I think.

[@mysoneffa2417]

The shadowing problem can be mute, if heliostats are used to redirect light.

[@akir4388]

You should build pyramids to avoid shadows

[@S57771]

How enlightening!

[@yongchen4158]

Sunlight vitamin D healthy lifestyle

[@uhohhotdog]

NIMBY’s need to be abolished

[@thetommantom]

More spread out mine sweeper big sky scraper with both heavy shade and heavy sun areas of tall buildings and residential with green and trees parks everything

[@AJ_ghdhejsien]

San Francisco doesn't need to build 80,000 units. Stop building allows for continued growth. Our county is supposed to add 500 low income houses, and 3000ish new houses in the next 20 years per the master plan. Our board is fighting this "growth" requirement, as we do not want to add more people and the related infrastructure costs and congestion that comes with that. Our community wants to stay small, rural and without much in the way of public services not become some metropolis

[@HF7-AD]

San Francisco IS A METROPOLIS

[@thesilentone4024]

We need more trees lining roads why they reduce speeding drivers wind damage and heat bad air and lots more. They produce shadows desert states theres also hundreds of desert native trees and succulents like baobab trees isn't a tree but a succulent mesquite tree is a desert native tree a real tree.

[@XRaym]

03:40 It is not about proving why people are "wrong" because they dont want a skyscrapper near their park. It is about that they want for the city they are living in. Shadow is only one aspect of building. What is the most required here is democracy.

[@VirtusH]

Then you get the tyranny of the majority, made up of people who generally just are not educated enough on economics to make decisions like this. Can you imagine trying to put billions of dollars on the line, just to have to wait months for a public vote to be held? NOTHING would ever be built.

[@XRaym]

@@VirtusH This stereotypical vision of democracy, people education and collective intelligence tells way more about your political views than anything else. I didnt say science has no part in it taking decision. I say it can't be only science based and dismissing any public opinion. Science should inform people, not take away their power of decision. This would be the tyrany of the tyran. There are developed countries where these questions are less of an issue cause building dont go other a certain heigh by law (see Paris for eg) and landscape protection policy. But in the end if people want a 500m skycrapper in front of their house, they can do it.

[@ThePowerBunny]

I love Cheddar!!!

[@adhoccosine9614]

Title of this video should have been 'shadow fight 3'😂😂

[@uhohhotdog]

I want to live in the darkness

[@ShadowHwkX7]

Am I insignificant?

[@awoiwh]

#JusticeForBrandon

[@jimsquire-chestnuts8381]

6 story height restriction - almost ever beautiful city in the world does this. And you can have serious density without American sprawl. But America doesn’t want nice things.

[@Erez-the-Berez]

First like & comment!

[@politrzysta]

Come to Poland, see how shitty modern city planning can get.

[@andyc9902]

Me as a vampire

[@clintcountryman4849]

Shady

[@macbuff81]

I was never a fan of those ugly oppressive sky scrapers

[@Skibidy_rizzler_]

They are not ugly

[@goodsocksproductions9397]

First

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[@FloridaMan69.]

I'm afraid of my own shadow