The Methodical Plan to Erase Chicago

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_Special Thanks_
+ Evan Montgomery: Co-Production, Editing, Motion Graphics
+ Allison Newmeyer: 3D Modeling of Hilberseimer's Schemes
+ John Southen (www.ryansouthen.com/): Aerial Photography of Lafayette Park
_Description_
This video explores Ludwig Hilberseimer’s radical urban vision for Chicago in the 1940s and 50s that reimagined urban living. His plan was to transform Chicago into a city of decentralized, self-sufficient islands. This concept was based on the idea of functional zoning and accessible green spaces, and it sought to enhance the quality of life and ensure sustainable development. Hilberseimer's ideas were influenced by the Bauhaus movement, and his theories were partially realized in Detroit's Lafayette Park neighborhood.
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_About the Channel_
Architecture with Stewart is a KZbin journey exploring architecture’s deep and enduring stories in all their bewildering glory. Weekly videos and occasional live events breakdown a wide range of topics related to the built environment in order to increase their general understanding and advocate their importance in shaping the world we inhabit.
_About Me_
Stewart Hicks is an architectural design educator that leads studios and lecture courses as an Associate Professor in the School of Architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He also serves as an Associate Dean in the College of Architecture, Design, and the Arts and is the co-founder of the practice Design With Company. His work has earned awards such as the Architecture Record Design Vanguard Award or the Young Architect’s Forum Award and has been featured in exhibitions such as the Chicago Architecture Biennial and Design Miami, as well as at the V&A Museum and Tate Modern in London. His writings can be found in the co-authored book Misguided Tactics for Propriety Calibration, published with the Graham Foundation, as well as essays in MONU magazine, the AIA Journal Manifest, Log, bracket, and the guest-edited issue of MAS Context on the topic of character architecture.
_Contact_
FOLLOW me on instagram: @stewart_hicks & @designwithco
Design With Company: designwith.co
University of Illinois at Chicago School of Architecture: arch.uic.edu/
_Special Thanks_
Stock video and imagery provided by Getty Images, Storyblocks, and Shutterstock.
Music provided by Epidemic Sound
#architecture #urbandesign

[@exp2745]

If I had a dollar for every city planner trying to replace every form of movement exclusively with highways...

[@fasdaVT]

Jeez that'd be a lot of money.

[@amadeosendiulo2137]

The sad thing is that didn't always end with just an idea...

[@xymaryai8283]

i am ecstatic that this is changing, orange-pilled city planners are becoming real, urban fabric appreciation is becoming an academic reality, designers are now learning that cooperative design isn't oppression, its expression of community. but its not happening fast enough, we still have highway drugged designers manning the council boards. urban destruction might have slowed, but it sure hasn't stopped, only greenwashed.

[@rck2214]

@@xymaryai8283 everyone around me still likes car dependent suburbs. I wanna leave

[@Edmund_Mallory_Hardgrove]

Detailed central planning just doesn't work. But that won't keep us from trying it over and over again.

[@JohnFromAccounting]

Cities should be partially planned, but partially chaotic. Individuals have a lot of influence over how cities evolve, but it should be the collective that has the final say. When everything looks the same, it feels isolated and inhuman. When everything looks different, it feels confusing. There is no "one size fits all" solution to how cities should be made, but we can all tell when a city is functional. Chicago's grid structure has been a success and play significantly into the city's feel. It's fortunate that Hilberseimer's plan was not implemented, or the world would have lost a great city for good.

[@pigeon_the_brit565]

yes, when a city is designed purely by one enterty, it can be diffuclt to include diversity among the buildings styles, so any new area should be a mixture of buildings built by developers and buildings built for businesses under their own design, of different but somewhat complementing materials and not in one bland 'modern' style

[@Nuclearbones]

Totally agree. Everybody wants to be the designer which is going to singlehandedly pave the way for the best ways of cultivating communities through urban design. The problem is that this is not something that can be solved from a totally top down perspective. Like sure, clustered planning is often pretty bad for your health, especially considering that before the 20th century you could just store hazardous materials next to a schoolhouse and nobody could do anything about it. But you also lost what the real essence of a city was. It's organic, it thinks for itself, it has needs that need to be met, and if you let it, it will feed itself. When you go so far into zoning laws you end up just stifling any possibility for a community to form organically. People end up being atomized because their closest community center is like an hour drive away. There's no possibility for local business to truly flourish. And everyone is segregated into large useless spaces which only serve to make you feel alone and trapped. I think that's part of the reason I wanted to go to architecture school. I think city planners need to start changing the culture around what is a "rational" solution to community development, job creation and economic growth. (If I end up using this subject as a thesis I'll credit this comment for inspiration, thanks)

[@loveandlight6436]

​@@Nuclearbones this is a fascinating topic!!! 👏 love your insights ~ however, the problems you have stated are strengths for big businesses (Amazon specifically) MY question is, who decides on funding for city planning, bc sadly (as I believe humans benefit most from how you put it) we have a mental health crisis already and it just doesn't seem like the best interest of humans are a priority (stupid and short sighted, or intentional...?)

[@Kevin_Street]

​@@Nuclearbones "When you go so far into zoning laws you end up just stifling any possibility for a community to form organically." Exactly! You describe that atomization or isolation very well in your comment. I like the idea that a healthy city is a place where "happy accidents" or unexpected encounters can happen every day. Ideally, every healthy city should have two things: 1. A private zone where an individual or family can feel safe and truly be themselves. Most people want a larger and larger private zone as they get older. You can see this in the progression of a child who has their own room, to retired people who need a backyard full of nature to rest in. The city needs to be flexible enough to provide for different sizes of private zones, although this is traditionally the area that is sacrificed first when density increases. 2. A "public" zone that includes a mixture of public, private and semi-private zones. This is where the urban planners like to separate things into neatly zoned areas, but aside from practical constraints (like heavy industry not being located right next to residences), I think it's better to mix everything up. This should be the place where happy accidents happen, where you run into people you might not ordinarily meet and interact with them. Those unexpected interactions are what make big cities desirable places to live.

[@pigeon_the_brit565]

@@Nuclearbones i hope you do well

[@Fourtune1]

Cities need to be human based. We aren’t robots. Look at nature.

[@TheFireGiver]

I agree, but what's inhuman about essentially artificial villages? That's how we're supposed to live. If you made this system less ridged it could actually work.

[@Fourtune1]

@@TheFireGivernothing wrong with “artificial” since that’s technically most things humans do, but it has to make sense and come from the inhabitants. For example a trail made by humans might not look the same as a trail created by an algorithm trying to find the fastest path possible.

[@andreyradchenko8200]

@@TheFireGiver They're glorified cell blocks. Anyone with the ability to visualise those 'bold and innovative' plans will tell you it's some backrooms kind of thing, only serving to drain people's sanity and crush their souls.

[@TheFireGiver]

​@@Fourtune1Barcelona had mega block buildings and is on a grid, is that not a beautiful city? You don't have to sacrifice beauty for efficiency. Cookie cutter commie blocks over and over again is a bad idea, but if you have a little variety there's nothing wrong with efficiency.

[@pbldiaz28]

We arnt nature, look at robots. We made them, we also make our society.

[@rosezingleman5007]

Scratch any architect and you’ll find a frustrated philosopher.

[@CrankyHermit]

You spelled despot wrong.

[@fasdaVT]

And a little deeper you get a dictator.

[@starventure]

@@fasdaVT I was literally just thinking that. Being an artist or architect is a bit like playing god, so a dictator is not a stretch...

[@perfectallycromulent]

philosophers just want to find a tenure-track position at a decent university, architects are the people who want to destroy cities just so they can rebuild them in their own image.

[@beback_]

@@fasdaVT a philosopher king?

[@michaelimbesi2314]

The sort of planned, designed arrangement championed by Hilberseimer, with different uses segregated by zoning, is actually really inefficient. Not having various uses all intermingled together ensures that residents will always have to travel much further to get to work, stores, and recreational destinations. It ensures that most trips cannot be made on foot, and it also means that commuting traffic on whatever transportation corridors exist will always be heavily unbalanced, which requires twice the transportation infrastructure because in the reverse-peak direction the trains run empty and the highways have nobody on them, but they still need to exist. And of course, a decentralized city means that every supply chain is stretched much further, because individual nodes aren’t going to be able to have the entire supply chain for every single finished product. Especially because not every single activity can be accomplished everywhere. Marine transportation, existing ground transportation links, and every natural resource except air are unevenly distributed across earth, so you physically can’t build a self-sufficient city.

[@fasdaVT]

Yeah plans like this are usually done up by authoritarians with limited knowledge of anything else outside of what job they start with.

[@perfectallycromulent]

It may be inefficient at many things, but it is a very efficient way for an architect to make himself feel more powerful and important. that's really the main goal of these schemes, feeding the narcissism of the man making the plan.

[@mick0matic]

@@perfectallycromulent Very true!! I can already see the massive mandatory statues at every junction.

[@sparksmcgee6641]

Didn't even have to get a paragraph in before my standard line. "How about a nuclear power plant next door?" Small powerprduction is safer and would be cost effective if everyone didn't sure and block it. I priced out putting a power plant on about 10,000sf downtown Denver. It was in a heavy industrial zone district and thw city council changed the new zoning code to block any nuclear power in the city. Your flexible integrated zoning should have power included and if it doesn't include what you're saying it targets. Nuclear batteries are plug and play and 1990s technology. They have a few here in Colorado but the o ly locations are on federal sites where they don't have to deal with state, county or city officals.

[@BatteDR0ID5]

You can actually see this idea manifest in what happened to the Paris suburbs

[@sandrahiltz]

It looks so dystopian to me, that would be the type of area I would never want to live.

[@ericlotze7724]

I think it lacks a lot of “character”, which this top down type of stuff ends up being. The way to go, at least in my opinion is all the local Architecture and Cultural Bits, *but* also focus a bit more on People. Look up “complete streets” and some of that kind of stuff. Basically you can go on a nice walk or bike ride to *anywhere* without it being difficult due to giant roads and whatnot. Also have lots of parks and public free places (Third Places). It’s a whole rabbit hole to go down, and some people get a bit too “everywhere must be terraformed into Amsterdam”, but once you start thinking about it, and think about what makes you *like* places it really clicks. Granted there still will be Urban-Suburban-Rural areas, just not “ooooops all Corperate Skyscrapers and Cookie Cuttet Car Suburbs (built on farmland)”. That’s my take on all this i guess, thanks if you read this far lol.

[@Trafficat]

Lafayette Park is really quite nice, but it's the park/greenspace doing it for the most part.

[@MegaDuras]

In the Netherlands they built something similar, but it had major crime problem. If you separate the living and working spaces, you make it easier for burglars. If you are at work, theres literally nobody around to disturb the thieves. These days they added shops and services, to the housing areas and it became a favourite place to live.

[@ericlotze7724]

@@MegaDuras Mixed use Zoning is the way to go! Granted here in the USA short of the very inner city it’s essentially illegal in most places.

[@bubblez_x_beast8721]

You definitely need to visit, the people that live there make it their own truly like Stewart says. It also has a lot of subtleties to the designs for the townhomes specifically that make it great

[@craigbenz4835]

The hubris of planners can be absolutely staggering.

[@lipingrahman6648]

I do swear architects seem just to hate the people that they are nominally trying to help.

[@daveb3910]

Bingo

[@johnathanclayton2887]

Why separate districts? Mixed residential and light shops seem very nice like in old town in Europe. Separating everything needs lots more transpiration, usually by cars, which split up everything badly.

[@starventure]

Control

[@Game_Hero]

"transpiration"? I'm sure they sweat less by staying in their car islands rather than walk but ok.

[@Fco_Arana]

The architects at that time believed that the way those old cities had developed and grown was arbitrary and inefficient, and through the use of reason they could develop a new rational form of architecture and urbanism. Now we understand that they were horribly wrong in almost every way possible, the Athens Charter reads almost like a shopping list of what NOT to do.

[@shraka]

It's a good idea to separate heavy industry, but you can and should run rail / cycle from mixed residential / commercial areas to the industrial ones.

[@truth884]

Depending on the time/era part of the separation was fueled by racism(not all of it simply part of it) the rest had to be because of money and who owned what.

[@Dennis-vh8tz]

Hilberseimer's plans are similar to those proposed decades earlier by Le Corbusier. The problem with such exercises in centrally planned micromanagement is that the planners are human and imperfect, and thus, their plans will inevitably overlook or undervalue some needs and groups. On it's own, Lafayette Park is a distinctive neighbourhood that suits some people well, while people who don't like it have other choices. But scale the plan to entire city, and it becomes a totalitarian dystopia where every neighbourhood is virtually identically, leaving no real choice, and forcing everyone to conform to the plan mandated by those in power.

[@starventure]

Le Corbusier was the chief pusher of the soulless brutalism that duped the US in the 1960s and 70s, especially with the college campus developments.

[@nosdalgic]

Barcelona though. Doesn’t matter if you make it beautiful 😊

[@YaMansYAMS]

I completely agree. Ive heard of plenty of Bauhaus stuff from my architecture friends and the history of Chicago's "Urban Renewal" Plan. Just watch The Batman and you will see what I mean. There is a reason they chose New York and Chicago as filming sites...

[@dfinlen]

A skeleton with beautiful architectural focal points seems legit, but micromanaging is extremely hard and self defeating. Fractals are nature's solution to maximizing area usage in that same way self repeating at different scales is how capitalism (not crony capitalism) with its diverse input evolves a city into emergent optimized self. E.g. NYC 1900s. Central planning is the suggestion that gives the city some cohesion. Capitalism and free economics is the invisible hand that drives the self emergence of optimized services.

[@andreas4010]

@@nosdalgic but there the neighborhoods are mixed use housing is above restaurants and stores

[@starventure]

This is what an architecture teacher of mine in college referred to as fascist style, and used to comment that the movie "Conquest of the planet of the apes" was filmed in a brutalist development to reinforce the overall theme of fascism. Planned cities, like Brasilia are intended to be organized but end up being soul crushing.

[@gabrielclark1425]

Nah, the Soul Crushing feeling is not accidental.

[@Nostalg1a]

Mies was, like Corb, a fascist. His beliefs are as clear in his designs as in he way he signed "Heil Hitler" in his letters.

[@MalachiCo0]

>fascist style Your architecture teacher sounds cringe

[@jameshorton3692]

Not fascist….Bolshevist

[@stevengordon3271]

@@jameshorton3692 Tomayto ... tomahto.

[@Bonserak23]

Pretty sure a messy city is a more social one lol

[@jonc4403]

Yep. This is a concept for creating a dystopia.

[@whisperingsage89]

Messy can mean unwalkable, and orderly can mean walkable. The amount of reduced car traffic and increased green spaces seem like they would matter more than how similar the houses are or if they're laid out on a grid. The average suburb is far more dystopian.

[@VestedUTuber]

@@whisperingsage89 "Can" does not mean "is". Chicago is actually a pretty walkable city, at least by US standards (it still lags behind Europe). And many European cities themselves are EXTREMELY chaotic in layout and yet are some of the most walkable cities in the world, due to the preservation of pedestrian-focused infrastructure predating motor vehicles. Connection availability matters far more than the shape of those connections. A slime mold grows in the most efficient pattern, even if those patterns look like total chaos to a human.

[@dfinlen]

Messy is beautiful, messy in the frenatic chaos of NYC is beautiful. Unplanned without the controlling grip of a any one influence but the peoples. Yes have your architectural highlights and traffic corridors but leave the messy bits alone.

[@jonc4403]

@@dfinlen In NYC, the plan is the grid. The chaos is what happens inside the squares. And it works. Where things break is when cities let the developers control the streets themselves, you get a mess of unwalkable dead ends all connecting to a stroad.

[@reluginbuhl]

What a nightmare! The hubris that they thought that they understood the complexities of cities and their multiple problems! Their "solution" would have solved nothing and at the same time have ripped the soul out of Chicago. Just because you claim your design has solved all sorts of problems does NOT make this true.

[@jeremyandrews3292]

I just had an interesting thought. Part of why our cities are so car-centric is because a lot of them were designed when the automobile was still a fairly new idea, and in their mind they were building the city of the future by designing everything around the car. Are we potentially repeating this mistake with the Internet, social media, and smartphones? Designing everything around the Internet and letting everything offline fall by the wayside, only to eventually realize decades from now that maybe making everything depend on the Internet was a bad idea with a lot of major social consequences we didn't anticipate because we were caught up in the opportunities to save money and bask in technological progress?

[@LancesArmorStriking]

Well there isn't much designed in the real world explicitly for the Internet, because it's a completely separate space. I guess you could say that slowly erasing public spaces is 'designing for the Internet' but it's subtracting not adding, so it's hard to point to the absence of a thing as being a design.

[@jhodapp]

100%, but also the internet is very different in nature. I would also argue it creates a diverse set of solutions to many problems whereas car based transportation is a single concept.

[@chriswhite2151]

Most definitely. In this time when we are supposed to "drive less", we instead have people bringing us a sandwich from 20 miles away. In the future when they outlaw gas and electrity is scarce, the Amazon/Uber/Doordash model will not work

[@EmyN]

There’s also lobbying from car companies, more roads = more dependency on cars!

[@christopherstephenjenksbsg4944]

I live in a neighborhood in Providence, RI, that was slated for "slum clearance" immediately after WWII. Fortunately, preservationists of the time, led by Antoinette Downing, prevented this from happening. The neighborhood is made up mainly of 18th century houses, most of which have been divided up into apartments. (The house I live in was built in 1837, and it's the newest house on the block.) But there is a considerable downside. The neighborhood has been gentrified within an inch of its life. Formerly a low-income, African American neighborhood, it is now a high-income neighborhood and almost entirely white. Most of the current residents are students at Brown University or the Rhode Island School of Design -- a notoriously transient group -- and the owners of these now subdivided 18th century houses rent out apartments to them (or their parents) at very high rents. There are no corner stores or community gathering places like those I grew up with in 1960s Manhattan, so there is little sense of community. Hilberseimer’s "diagrams" horrify me. I get the feeling he had never heard of Jane Jacobs. But I'm not thrilled with the gentrification alternative either. There's got to be a better way!

[@jaredhamilton8694]

As long as people can move from one place to another, there’s going to be gentrification. Trying to regulate it away just leads to redlining and restrictive zoning laws. The real path forwards is going with the motion, instead of trying to fight it. Zoning is what prevents the kinds of neighbourhoods with corner stores and meeting places from existing anymore, and why upper-middle income suburbs are the only thing getting built. Get rid of that, and things can finally flow in both ways again, instead of only in one.

[@a_bich-]

fox point?

[@peterwelby]

Typical anti white racist

[@FTBAFT]

@@jaredhamilton8694 I don’t think anyone is against freedom of movement. Local stakeholders and politicians play the long game using grimy tactics. Those same zoning laws that were put in those neighborhoods decimated the commerce and QOL within the communities. People struggled for generations due to that along with various ordinances, policies, permits, etc. Now people flock into the blighted neighborhoods to buy it up (because the suburbs are too far & expensive) then all of a sudden the city/county have the motivation to switch it back to the way it should’ve been, pave roads, fix sidewalks, build bike lanes and schools.😂

[@tortosvideos]

probably the "simplest" step would be to reform the CTA - right now, it's only *really* useful if you're trying to get downtown because of the spoke network - if the community started building more loops scattered around the city, it'd allow those areas to reinforce themselves. If the loops overlapped, even beter

[@fasdaVT]

Yeah there was plan for an outer loop that would help with that and it mostly uses existing rail so it wouldn't be to hard today

[@perfectallycromulent]

I'm pretty sure there are zero US cities that have created a decent loop system for their mass transit that reflects the population growth of the inner suburbs.

[@beback_]

> reform the CTA Not with Dorval in charge you won't :D

[@LancesArmorStriking]

So, crescent (ring) roads. The CTA already rejected those plans in the 2000s. Good luck second time around

[@adamkern3689]

I love the variety of architecture in Chicago! Ludwig's plans seem very akin to Soviet central planning architecture.

[@TheFireGiver]

If it means being able to afford a condo and having good public transportation I'll take the commie blocks.

[@michaelimbesi2314]

@@TheFireGiverYou don’t need that. The thing making housing expensive in US cities isn’t cost or the free market. It’s the heavily restricted supply caused by excessive zoning laws. Tokyo has very cheap apartments because Tokyo’s laws allow the city to grow as needed. The only reason that American cities don’t is that a some wealthy homeowners figured out that if they fought development tooth and nail, the resulting housing shortage would significantly increase the value of their property at the expense of newcomers.

[@birdrocket]

@@TheFireGiverChicago already is affordable though

[@robbicu]

I agree. If you look at the suburbs of St Petersburg or Moscow, it's miles and miles of ugly nondescript apartment buildings. Silberheimer would love it.

[@Dennis-vh8tz]

@@birdrocket That's the benefit of a declining population.

[@docjanos]

I got quite a laugh when you stated that conditions in Chicago during the 1950s and 1960s were dire. I grew up there during that era and it was wonderful in every way. We lived in a then modest north side neighborhood of single family detached homes interspersed with 2 and 4 flats (those homes now are in 2-3 million range). Small scale commercial areas were a short walk away (those have all been converted into characterless gentrified shops--gone are the Greek pharmacists, the Jewish baker, the German butcher). The lake was 4 blocks away. Traffic was minimal as almost no households owned more than one car. During the day, the fathers would be off to work and the streets were open for play. It was all quite safe. You developed street sense to avoid problem people and problem areas. Wrigley Field, the museums, the zoo, Orchestra Hall were an L ride way. The L was so safe that by age 9 most kids were allowed to go aobut town on their own. You mentioned smoky skies. Yes, air pollution was an issue that was in no way unique to Chicago. This was before the EPA [ironically, championed by Republicans] came in with smokestack regs and auto emissions were regulated. It was a nationwide problem. Of course there were parts of the city that were quite bad. One of the responses was to build brutalist housing blocks that created their own dystopia. I am also quite familiar with the Mies designs at IIT and on the near north side. Long before ever taking a university architecture class I recall seing those buildings and shivering. Like most of the Bauhaus ethic they are perfect in their symmetry, rigorous in approach, and completly devoid of any human nuance. Cities are living, breathing entities. They are imperfect, creative, lazy, inertia-driven, surprising, dull, exciting just like the people that inhbit thme. And just like people, cities need discipline, constraints, encouragment. Mies was great wit the Crown building at IIT, 900 LSD--not so much. A little bit of Mies, Hilbersiemer, Le Corbusier is fine--too mcuh and you have an urban cage.

[@beback_]

Which neighborhood? Lake View?

[@gregoryturk1275]

North side is the nicest part of Chicago though

[@pietervoogt]

These videos about old ideas are somewhat interesting but even when the ideas are criticized or presented as outdated, giving them so much attention means they still have too much status. The architects are treated as fallen heroes, but there are no other comparable heroes, so we just keep discussing these guys. But there are other heroes. The whole 19th century was a triumph of city building and and city planning. But teachers don't know much about this so they can't teach it to their students, who can't teach the next generation. The result is that 19th century cities are seen as a beautiful mysteries that can't be repeated, which isn't true.

[@Nostalg1a]

Precisely! Too many architects fetishize XX century and XXI century modernism and ignore everything else (vernacular, traditional, classical, post modern, etc), leading to the repetition of mistakes and boredom of most of today's architecture.

[@perfectallycromulent]

The problem with always making big plans that stir people's blood is that people don't need that all the time. Most of the time, they just need to go to the CVS to get their prescription or find an ATM without walking 4 blocks. This is about easy access to the daily needs of life, and it shouldn't be stressful. That's the thing about "stirring the blood," it's a form of stress, and will result in medical issues if it is a permanent condition.

[@RockitFX1]

I live in Detroit, and it breaks my heart that Black Bottom was demolished to build an extraordinarily boring neighborhood.

[@anthonylulham3473]

The beauty in the models is often from the perceived green spaces around the units. looking at London, those green spaces quickly get swallowed into the built environment, a coffee stand first, then a few shops, then shops and apartments, and whoops there goes the green space and we have soulless towers next to each other. back gardens get sold off for development, plots combined for bigger buildings etc. Welcome to Hive City 9.

[@bombocrusty4251]

And hell even if the green spaces do stay, or idk they build those awful garden towers, people forget that for like 1/3rd to 2/3rds of the year in alot of climates all the beautiful green grass and trees will suddenly look not that pretty. Which is fine for most cities, but if your hyper planned mega block city looks like a dystopian nightmare without it (which it is) then you should probably go back to the drawing board, or idk do the sane thing humans have done for thousands of years and encourage organic mix used development with planning being more of a general guideline for how the city should flow rather than a totalist uniformity

[@joshk5686]

I feel like we've come full circle in terms of once again valuing the traditional organic messiness of cities. It's what makes them dynamic and antifragile compared to master planned single use pod zoning.

[@bob_._.]

Perhaps it's the modelling used (though probably not) but this reminds me of nothing but Soviet brutalist high-rise apartment blocks that are still seen throughout the former Warsaw Pact countries. And the philosophy that one man should design a grid in which to lock the lives of millions based solely on whatever metrics of efficiency he decides is best for everyone... well, that seems to fit right in, too.

[@LancesArmorStriking]

To be fair, the Soviet blocs weren't built because of some megalomaniac, but because of the needs of a population devastated by WWII. The Nazis destroyed most residential buildings along their warpath to Moscow, and the commie blocs were a great way to rapidly increase housing and avoid mass homelessness. Stalin did say that they were meant to be temporary until 'Palaces of the Proletariat' could be built, but.. nothing is more permanent than a temporary solution, after all.

[@CarsteneZ]

2 words : Mixed Zones

[@scottwood928]

Downtown Chicago is one of my favorite places on earth! I visited in 2022. It is full of dazzling skyscrapers and has a beautiful river. Decentralizing Chicago is a terrible idea.

[@daveb3910]

Visiting and living are very different things

[@Soundbrigade]

I visit Chicago every year and my better half even lives there. Having visited a number of cities in USA we have noticed that Chicago is “alive” 24/7 and not just during work hours, thus reminding us of cities and towns here in Sweden. Different kind of service is just around the corner and no need for a car. This is a question I’ve often seen elsewhere; if Americans really appreciate our cosy European towns and cities, how come most places in USA is planned the very much opposite of that?

[@scottwood928]

@Soundbrigade Regrettably, many Americans are obsessed with living in a house with a yard; usually a large house with a large yard. That leads to quiet communities with lousy public transport. Many Americans think that staying in a hotel room, which are more similar to apartments than to houses, is fun for a brief time, but "want more space" where they live. I grew up in a sprawling suburb and had no social life because there was no public transport. I have heard Americans say I "want more space" to live in, despite enjoying staying in a hotel in a dense city in Europe or Asia, or The Las Vegas Strip.

[@Soundbrigade]

@@scottwood928 Since I was elected to the local town council in 2010 I got involved in housing poliucies, spening 8 years in the bord of our municipal housing company and am right now active in a tenants rights organisation. What I have learned is that, firstly mixed comminities (privately owned houses, condos and rental apartments) gives a more stable social structure and schools with kids from a mixed community tend to present better results. Besides adding shops and various services (restaurants, bars, libraries, youth clubs ...) gives the inhabitants a feeling of security as there's always people around. I just read that when designing streets in newly developed areas, it's taking in account the maximum distance you can make out the face of a person across the street. Can you see/read the face of someone - you feel much safer. But being a Swede/a European, I like the way our places are made up, but maybe because I am so used to it. On the other hand I love Chicago because there's always people around and shops are 5 minutes away. When visiting our daughter in Downers Grove I feel lost. I have a several mile long walk to a place to buy a beer or a candy bar or whatever ... Talking of dense ... you should visit a camping site over here 😱😱😱😱

[@generalwrecking]

Downtown Chicago mostly since covid is a SHELL of what it once was ! Very sad. It’s a ghostown of what it used to be

[@kaiquecf]

Congrats Stewart. As an urban planning policy researcher I love to watch and learn about mid 20th century urban planning. Your videos are true classes. Brasília, the Brazilian federal capital (built 1954-1960), was designed adopting the same principles.. It's a bit more dense in the central district than the Hilbersmeimer's proposals, but suffers from the same downsides of the rigid spatial specialization and dispersion. The commercial, industrial, institutional and hotel districts cannot have housing, limiting the offer while keeping vacant or underused land and buildings. Also the designated areas for shops and recreation in the superblocks do not fully satisfy its residents increasing car usage. The design and plans underestimated the city's success and rapid growth, what quickly made them obsolete. Meant for 600.000 inhabitants after 50 years, nowadays the city houses over 3.5 million. In a questionable effort to keep the city as planned suburbs with lower standards were built afar, increasing distances, creating leaving a centre, resulting in the opposite of the once meant socially diverse and integrated city for pedestrians. The design's still great, the use inflexibility may be the most limiting factor.

[@Sunday_Woodward]

Everyone has their Epcot.

[@edenicity]

I lived in a Lafayette Park townhouse as a young child in the late 60s and early 70s. It was wonderful! because the townhouses and buildings were arranged around a park, I could walk to school, a playground, a convenience store, a grocery store, and friends' places without ever encountering a car. This gave me a level of security and autonomy that no place I have lived since could possibly provide a child. BTW, the video doesn't mention this, but the parking was well interleaved into the neighborhood so that our family car was just a dozen or so steps from the door.

[@718EngrCo]

What many people overlook about German development in the 1950’s is that many cities were flattened in WW2 and they needed to build quickly in order to support their economy. Lafayette Park works because it is a unique development in the city. If every part of the city was replaced by these “developments” it would become a dystopian nightmare. People are different and want different things. Forcing everyone to live in places like this won’t solve anything except to make them resentful.

[@overthecounterbeanie]

This isn't just inhuman, it's actively anti-human.

[@kigas24]

I live down the street from White Sox stadium and I wish they'd redevelop the surrounding area to resemble what the Cubs are doing instead of moving to a new spot. Bridgeport is an underrated neighborhood imo (I live in Bronzeville).

[@jhodapp]

Couldn’t agree more. If we forget about accommodating most car parking a spectacular new stadium neighborhood could be born filling in the sea of parking lots around it. Same goes for the United Center. Car parking ruins everything.

[@leafbelly]

I just love this channel for so many reasons. First off, I'm not an architect or city planner; I'm a graphic designer/editor. However, a lot of the architectural principles you explain serve as metaphorical templates for how to design efficiently and aesthetically. Second, you use facts and logic to explain why cities, neighborhoods and buildings were designed the way they were. There is SO much emotion on social media now when it comes to urban planning. It's a nice breath of fresh air to hear a pragmatic approach to these concepts.

[@UltravioletNomad]

I think the problem with really agressive arguments for "human scale" projects is that the reality of many services and amenities have their own independent scale. Like it would be nice if every sector of a city had its own waste treatment plant and source of power, but its woefully inefficient to do that, a small powerplant would be producing more than a single block but not enough for the whole city. why build 100 tiny powerplants when you can build 3 reasonably sized ones. Theres also that issue of separate but "equal", which extends not just from legislation of people but to all aspects of our lived environment. If every block is entirely self sufficient then there isn't an incentive to be invested in the success of the entire city. ultimately some blocks will get neglected while others thrive, for reasons completely independent of the usual suspects of inequality, and with non of the benefits of diverse options.

[@jonc4403]

ideally you make every house a powerplant. Rooftop solar everywhere.

[@lukemauerman3734]

From my very humble observations as an old man, planned communities so often wind up as dystopian flops. But what is needed, sorely, is new housing, in whatever form it needs to take. From what I've heard, developers don't want to build housing because the profit margins aren't there. And we need housing!

[@MassiveChetBakerFan]

Builders want to build homes but government planners restrict them with a myriad crazy rules (ridiculously wide minimum street widths, parking minimums, street setbacks, bans on multi-family apartments, etc.) All the lovely places people go to visit in Europe would be illegal to build in the USA today.

[@MichaelTavel]

When OCD meets City Planning

[@UnkleGaga]

We already had the “Superblocks”. In Cabrini Green we had the mid to high level apartment buildings which were havens for crime. This whole plan reminds me of some guy’s love of Soviet style city planning. It’s highly un-American.

[@just.a.cube.]

Highly un European - or everywhere also. Just some asshole thinking he was a genius for recreating litterally every authoritarian governments wet dream

[@bombocrusty4251]

Yeah its pretty wild that people look at a thing the soviets did as a cost cutting measure because half their country got turned to ash and be like "oh we should replicate that". Like they did that because they had literally no other options to house people quickly, not because it was a good or efficient idea lol

[@mick0matic]

Nice, carcentric inefficient low density hellholes! Not even to start about the socio-economic segregation planned into these hellscapes. Hilberseimers plans look like some of the hellscapes mentioned in CityNerds recent video on: where driving consumes the most of your life. Those plans truly make my skin crawl and should absolutely be forbidden to even be mentioned in a semi positive manner. I truly believe citycenters like the Jordaan in Amsterdam is nearly perfect, compact, pretty, good mix of greenery and infrastructure. And most of all, pretty buildings that make people want to come visit and most important: maintain. Making those historic places some of the most enviroment friendly places in the world since they dont get dilapitated and replaced by new buildings with a short life span. Theres 400 year old buildings that still have original wooden structures, now thats using your resources efficiently. Also being able to go everywhere, fast and easy by bike or public transport is to me a clear winner in layout. My ultimate city is a spokewheel city where all cars and public transport are below ground with manufacturing spaces and shoppingmalls underground. Ontop of all of that parks, houses, small shops and canals (For leasure, being able to see water is good for mental health) Canals could also serve as cooling water for industry such as datacenters etc. Houses need to be pretty enough that people will want to renovate them in the future when needed. Preferably so pretty it attracts tourists.

[@kilrmonjaro]

What a terrible idea.

[@G-Cole-01]

all of the sameness of central planning with none of the benefits of mixed-use developments? bro subtracted first and second world architecture from eachother

[@jonc4403]

It's almost like it was designed by oil companies.

[@eamonnca1]

“Messy cities clog up social interaction.” Tell me you don’t understand how cities work without telling me you don’t understand how cities work.

[@andersonic]

Your new Nebula video about stadiums is just fantastic! I'd love a sequel to look at other stadia in other towns. San Francisco now has two within the city and I wonder how they compare to Wrigley.

[@7th_CAV_Trooper]

Works great in Sim City.

[@AB-gu1hs]

When settlement structures and Chicago are used in the same sentence I can't help but think about Carbini-Green and mismanagement.

[@memesfarsi3111]

Hello Mr.Hicks, I'm one of the old viewer of your channel(to be clear I wasn't a subscriber till recently but always watched yo videos as son as you released them), the thing that I love about your videos is that I always learn something from you and your video, your soft speaking voice and calmness makes it feel good to watch and etc. How ever I really hope you don't take the way that other great KZbinr took and ruin their careers by putting quantities over quality and choosing to upload more frequently to gain more money. I really appreciate it to have 1 video every 2 week or even 1 month but with better information and overall quality rather than getting 5-6 videos of month and no significant information and value in them

[@stewarthicks]

Thank you for your comment. I appreciate hearing your though. I've been doing one every two weeks for a couple years now. There is no chance of that increasing at this point I'm just too busy outside of the KZbin stuff. If anything, I aim to slow it down as I learn more so that I can incorporate more care into each video.

[@memesfarsi3111]

@@stewarthicks thank you sir I really appreciate your work and effort. I apologize for my bad English, English is not my first language.

[@peteyharr5470]

Lafayette park seems like a great place to live. I live between Lafayette park and the Detroit river and often walk, run and shoot hoops in the park. I love the architecture of condos and all three of the high rise apartments. I’d much prefer this layout over the modern suburbans. I think the vast green spaces are much more enjoyable than small broken up yards.

[@TheCyborgk]

I lived right there in Detroit, in one of the two Lafayette Towers that you showed at the beginning! My apartment wasn't bad as far as apartment buildings go, the light was really nice, and the park was decent to hang out and grill in.

[@SullenSecret]

What strikes out at me immediately is the reliance on one road for each cell. Why not connect them all in a grid format, making travel super easy?

[@herbtarlic892]

To quote the previous commentator, "cities should be partially planned and partially chaotic", else why would we even want to live there? Mies van der Rohe was an inspired architect, but designing a city of identical units as far as the eye can see is as dystopian as it gets. Every city has evolved over time and the leaders of the day must take this evolution into account, along with the history of the built city. Too many of our cities have been decimated by well meaning, but uninformed and insensitive planners have destroyed the very city they thought they were saving. You will find that the most interesting, most exciting cities are usually a jumble of streets and back alleys, interspersed with wide boulevards and processional main streets., all of which serve people, not cars. I want to stand in a massive parking lot in a strip mall with no sidewalks while I sip my coffee, said no one ever!

[@devon_pitts]

Steve, I've been following your videos for some years now. You've provided great insight on how important space and human interaction impacts our view of architecture. Coming up on my first year living in Chicago over in the West Loop and I must say University Hall is my favourite building within the skyline. Hope to run into one day. Thank you for your vids

[@computeraidedworld1148]

I don't think that an efficent city is really what people and businesses want. If it's supposed to benifit everyone, people have to cross paths and interact, which is inefficent.

[@wafflegear]

our cities in the US are older than the country, you can't reorganize cites and ignore the bones they rest on.

[@dratsi0117]

I actually think it is ok to take people's spaces lightly. It's ok to trust a community to build their own continuity around buildings and leaving life not as designed. Still a great video.

[@ajkandy]

They almost did something like this in Montreal. The residents staged huge protests, and instead, their neighborhood became one of the largest nonprofit housing coops in North America, preserving a historic neighborhood and ensuring affordability.

[@jonc4403]

Nice!

[@gavin-721]

If those dystopian esque city plans that are "maximizing efficiency" but just make everything identical have no haters, that means im dead

[@opie32958]

As a lifelong Illinoisian, I have been to Chicago more times than I can count, and seeing what you want to do to it gives me a renewed love for Chicago just the way it is.

[@damonroberts7372]

Ludwig Hilberseimer... sounds appropriately like a Bond villain.

[@Ren-1979]

As far as I remember from my studies, the Dutch have some of the best city plans based on the combination of uses. I hope you make a video about it one day. I love urban planning. My favorite in this regard is the Cerda Plan from Barcelona. Unfortunately, the building density of the original plan has been multiplied by those responsible out of greed, which is why the built reality is not as harmonious as the planning.

[@Game_Hero]

Mr Hicks, thank you for talking about architecture and urbanism that never was, I can't get enough of it. The city project was very interesting.

[@TylerF]

Stewart! You need to read the work of Strong Towns from Charles Marohn! "Make no little plans... but also make no large leaps"

[@joaquimpardal]

It's amazing to see how many of these concepts where applied to Brasília as a whole. The capital of Brazil is a very interesting case study on modernist cities.

[@myperspective5091]

These plans remind me of the planning of most modern college campuses. They also remind me of apartments complexes around beach amusement parks vacation villages where real estate developers try to capture a community to keep the people there focused on spending their money in a preferred area.

[@NerdsPsychoticInterlude]

never stop making historical chicago content

[@IsaacConejo]

I totally bawked at the idea of putting public spaces on the roof

[@olgas9970]

I'd be curious to explore the relationship between soviet style city planning to Hilberseimer’s development philosophies

[@luisostasuc8135]

I do like the overall grid we have in Lincoln NE. My own neighborhood is residential, with a school to the north and another to the west, there is low density commercial, and some industrial further north near downtown and a grain elevator along some train tracks and highway a mile or so to the southwest. I can take multiple streets from one side of town to the other north/south and east/west, and have plenty of opportunities to take slower streets during rush hour. We're also on the Chicago-lincoln-denver highway and rail line, and I can see the influence here in Lincoln and in Denver(and a little in Seattle) on architects and designers moving back and forth with their ideas over the past century

[@juliemac5604]

Brazilia, the government capital of Brazil, proves how "the zones" just do not work.

[@harmg937]

I like that you use an aerial shot of my hometown (Heusden) in the Netherlands in a video about Chicago 😊

[@lizcademy4809]

When I was a kid, just getting interested in architecture, the DuPont chemical company had an advertising slogan, "better living through chemistry". I changed that slightly to "better living through architecture". Many architects of the mid 20th century dreamed big. They dreamed they could change society through puttng people in different buildings, creating new models for cities, et c. The ideas in this video were only one of many, many visions. None of the visions would have ever worked. None of them took into account how much variety there is in different people - income levels, the need for space, family size, cultural patterns, and much more. Each vision would be a Utopia for a few, and a dystopia for everyone else. Give me crazy mixed-up cities, farmlands and forests and deserts that are "miles and miles of miles and miles" ... there's even a place for sprawling suburban tracts. People are all different, we need to echo that variety in where we live, work, shop, and gather.

[@The_Hagseed]

Instead of being stuck in traffic on your way to work, you'll be stuck in your own building, waiting for an elevator that isn't full.

[@j.aaronkambeitz9848]

At 5:29, have you got residences and industry swapped?

[@imac2209]

I lived in Lafayette park for 4 years and it was great until you wanted to walk somewhere besides Lafayette park. Awesome video!

[@ThundercatDarklion]

WOW!!!!! I like how Chicago is now with an mixture of historic and modern buildings. Rockford Illinois also has an mixture of historic and modern buildings.

[@brentdhedrick]

There was a German Maniac who pursued the same maniacal control of the landscape, he also decided the inhabitants in his perfectly laid out cities needed to be of a particular origin.

[@needamuffin]

The cellular structure proposed here is a pretty effective strategy in Cities: Skylines.

[@PMX]

1:36 separating everything therefore making it impossible to "just walk" to your destination, since it will always be far from your home 🤔

[@mrs.manrique7411]

I think cities (with a lot of mass) should act like mountainous zones. There are compacted areas and open areas, so that people are constantly drawn to move throughout their residence, explore new neighborhoods, and have a good mix of individual homes and apartments. If it echoes the previous planning (as it most naturally would have to, since you can’t just kick everyone out at once to change everything), with some changes, the city will become an interesting set of irregular zones, some more pedestrian and others more commercial.

[@packardcaribien]

I know a person - older retired auto executive - who just moved out of a condo/townhome in Lafayette Park. Moved out to a small house in a more traditional suburb after divorce/empty nesting.

[@frankduff18]

This video reminds me of a office joke, a messy desk is a symptom of a messy mind, a blank desk is a symptom of blank mind. One wonders what kind of mind a simple city will make?

[@lustearnz]

Holy shit. The beginning of the video was brutal dude

[@robertw0136]

yay a detroit mention! i love my city but ive never been a fan of that development, especially since there’s beautiful historic architecture all around it in surrounding neighborhoods. locals are not fond of it and mostly only enjoy living there for the much cheaper rent

[@glassedgrass]

Lafayette park is definitely a desirable place to live. The townhomes are going for north of 350K that is more than most other townhomes of a similar age. I personally like the area and think it has a lot of good locations plus its honestly one of the greenest and shadiest parts of the city.

[@robertw0136]

@@glassedgrass the townhomes can be considered aesthetic slightly pleasing but saying they are selling for “more than most of a similar age” means literally nothing 😂 any historical townhomes and most built after & especially recently are selling for a lot more. the towers are atrocious, cheap, and horrifically ugly on the inside. detroit is full of beautiful green space so while it’s nice to have at lafayette park it’s not some rarity in the region

[@AurediumRiptide]

Cities grow organically to suit the needs of the inhabitants which is why they don't look uniform in most cases. Building uniform cities lacks that catering to individual needs of area's en cities. If you want to know how such cities look like then have a look at Soviet city building. Uniformity creates egalitarian but also cold architecture. Living in one place or another stops being a unique experience as all cities are the same. We already experience this somewhat as we can find the same stores everywhere taking away the unique shopping experience you would often find in the past when visiting a city. Rather then going for uniformity I would recommand keeping cities unique but do focus on similar qualities; Access to natural light in all of the city, a lot of space, a lot of greenery, street level should be surveillance so its not cramped and can also be overseen for public safety. I do feel that skyscrapers are bad. They look cool but they create massive drawbacks such as big shadows that create dark spots in cities. Its better to have mid range high buildings and give them a light look. And yes, cities that cater heavily to cars are a place of evil.

[@glennac]

These short sighted cookie cutter projects ignore a significant benefit of diverse architecture - Character. If these Brutalist designs had been widely embraced for whole swaths of urban landscape then what would have made one region anymore desirable to visit or reside in? The attraction of the various neighborhoods of Chicago, New York, Seattle, etc is the diversity of atmosphere. Why go visit or vacation in another region or city if it’s simply going to be more of the same that you experience back at home? It’s the unique “character” of neighborhoods or cities that sparks adventure, creativity, and joy. And it’s that diversity that makes visiting these regions memorable and builds nostalgia.

[@angelahornung8488]

While these structures are certainly interesting, I feel they were genuinely a mistake and I'm so happy they never took off in scale. I personally feel that some slight modification to our traditional methods (19th to early 20th century) ornate design and compact structures are the best with some modifications. Personally my so called urban "paradise" would probably look like the following: 1.) Ornate brick style structures (Italian Brownstone is a great example) with residential housing on top and commercial/offices at the bottom to encourage local shopping and working close to home reducing the necessity of personal transportation, which can help reduce traffic, noise and pollution 2.) Empty space surrounded by a block of these buildings should be present, that way a communal yard and parking lot can be shared by each set of neighbors, think an o shape where the line is the buildings facing outward towards the road and the empty space in the middle becomes a communal park and parking lot, the shape does not need nor should it be uniform, uniform shapes provide massive issues between the natural environment and repetitive design which can cause issues with a person's psychology as it can remove the challenge of exploring and discovery 3.) Main artery roads would contain three primary lanes and secondary parking/break down lanes, the middle of the three primary lanes would be for trolley transportation (bring them back, they were beautiful, worked great and weren't as pricey as subways) while the other two primary lanes would be for personal and emergency vehicle traffic 4.) Think of each neighborhood as another o just like we did with the block, the center of that o should contain emergency services for the region, schools, church and a Central Park for that neighborhood 5.) Direct center of the city would contain governmental bodies and any and all skyscrapers for office work all parking garages would be required to inhabit under neath the buildings themselves to make sure that no space in the city is being used as a parking lot where a building could otherwise go, these skyscrapers don't need to follow the ornate style but can instead take a modernist, brutalist or functionalist approach Note: I actually love brutalism and functionalism, but it has to be in small doses in my opinion and surrounded by more ornate styles of architecture, otherwise it goes from a fascinating departure of tradition to a boring dystopian landscape of grays and browns, but in smaller doses or in a central area surrounded by more traditional, it offers a refreshing departure from tradition that is fascinating to look at 6.) Underground or heavily sound barried highways (believe it or not cars are most of the noise in a city, otherwise they can be quite quiet and peaceful) What this would allow is for a city to have thriving communal neighborhoods while hiding parking lots, maximizing lower floor commercial and walkability and still have a modern centralized office district for the few jobs which can't be done at home all while making sure the city is a beautiful and interesting (because its not just a grid) place to explore. If I had to choose a city that I think would be the best candidate for this kind of revival, I'd say Hartford CT. Also another thing, smaller cities are better than bigger cities and we need to return to them and take care of them. Smaller cities allow you the conveniences of an urban life style without drowning in a sea of people. If I want to go pick apples in the country side with my family I can be out of the city in 15 minutes, not so much with our mega cities which I think are personally super overrated. Smaller cities like Worcester, Hartford, New Haven, Bridgeport and Springfield in my opinion are much more fascinating and beautiful places with much higher potential than places like Boston, NYC, Los Angelas, Houston, etc. Not that those places don't have their charm.

[@mico77720]

1:52 so, zoning. Didn't we experimented with it before and got traffic?

[@jonc4403]

Yes. This would be a traffic nightmare. Dead end streets are a fatal flaw wherever they happen.

[@PNWOverland]

Back in the early 2000's, I used to work at Lafayette Park in Detroit as a security guard site manager. It was an interesting place with a professional clientele that drove nice cars. That general area is considered to be a very nice neighborhood in downtown. City council, the mayor, police chiefs, professors and other local luminaries live there even to this day. I never knew it had that level of design to it. While the Brutalist style is pretty damned ugly, this area is not at all like that. It helps that lots of trees have been planted all around so it's more natural and human friendly.

[@AlbinoFuzWolf]

"Community engagement is lacking on every level." I feel that.

[@R2mkm769]

I lived in Lafayette Park when I lived in Detroit. I absolutely loved it!

[@deezynar]

Europe has a lot of cities that people really like. The U.S. has a lot of cities that people endure. Americans love to take vacations in places where they can walk from their hotel room to restaurants, and entertainment. They love that they don't need a car and can get around on foot without worrying that they will get ran over. When they return home, they go back to the city that forces them to drive everywhere, even to the grocery store that they can see from their front yard.

[@Kitten_TV8]

Loved the video, I’m from Chicago and Im thinking about becoming an urban planner. I’ve always felt the city was really segregated. Just blocks of homes with only strips malls.

[@sarahwatts7152]

What a wild idea, I'm glad a portion of it was implemented - but also glad the whole thing didn't get put in place.

[@JamesHalfHorse]

It sounds like the programmer(s) of Sim City leaned heavy on this research when they designed the game. A lot of it seems very similar to the mechanics of how the game works/how to play it even some of the wording sounds the same.

[@JonathanHoltOnGoogle]

It would be so great if you could do a deep dive on the non-euclidean zoning and design of japanese cities. I feel like the successes there are often overlooked by city planners and architects in the US but it seems like we could learn a lot from how they do things which elicits really organic growth in their cities.

[@WilliamHaisch]

The old dormitories built in the 1960s at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, namely Harper-Schramm-Smith and Abel-Sandoz, look a lot like these designs.

[@annonone93]

why does the island settlement layout give classism and separation. It's like take the worst of a suburb and trying to force it into a city

[@michaeltarasow4399]

My sister lived in Lafayette park in college. Loved visiting her.

[@bingbongmcgee]

Strategizing community development like this is basically just bonsai civilization. Sure, its pretty to look at and easier to manage, but it will never fully grow to its full potential. Natural growth with proper zoning/safety/etc regulations is the way. (Edit: sorry, meant "zoning/safety/etc that can be adaptable and bent for specific scenarios and not just standardized unforgiving nonsense like we have today* is the way) What's the point in living without culture, uniqueness, the ability to feel like a human and not a piece of a mindless machine? A good portion of humanity's greatest achievements/discoveries came by accident, not through heavy mandates. Why miss out on the things we wouldn't otherwise discover, just for some vain symmetry?

[@nobilesnovushomo58]

(erases remains of skyscraper version of Europe for giant boxes) Fire this man.

[@mikew9999]

I just watched a video about almost this exact sort of planned community in Amsterdam that turned into a complete dystopian nightmare, full of crime, poverty, disconnection of all the people. No one actually goes outside in these pre-planned communities because there is no "third place" for people to meet up. It is just insular. The place in Amsterdam ended up housing refugees from Suriname and is now a blotted eyesore on the landscape. Part of the problem is building these places with a car-dependency mindset, and an "enclosed within" mindset. There is no outward-facing commerce for the general populace. It is bleak and lifeless, like Crystal City, in Arlington, VA. Everything there is inside, and underground. Yeah, the pedway is a delight of shops, and people moving around, but it all shuts down at 5:00 and outside you feel like you are in a bombed out abandoned city. Chaos, and walkability, and external-facing public places is what makes a city vibrant.

[@xymaryai8283]

Landscape is what we build from, Materials is how we engineer it, Dreams are how we design it.

[@xymaryai8283]

you can't skip the first 2 steps.