In Best-Laid Plans, the Antiplanner argues that cities are too complicated to plan, so anyone who tries to plan them ends up following fads and focusing on one or two goals to the near-exclusion of all else. The current fad is to reduce per capita driving by increasing density and spending money on rail transit.
The logical end product of such narrow-minded planning is illustrated by a SimCity constructed by Vincent Ocasla, an architecture student from the Philippines. His goal was to build the densest possible SimCity, and the result is a landscape that is almost entirely covered by high-rise towers used for both residences and work. There are no streets and residents travel either on foot or by subway. There is little need for travel, however, as most residents live in the same tower in which they work.
Magnasanti, as Ocasla calls his creation, does have a few down sides. Dirty industry allows for higher densities than clean industry, so the air is polluted and the average life span in the city is only 50. A strong police force keeps residents from rebelling. As Ocasla says, residents have been “dumbed down, sickened with poor health, enslaved and mind-controlled just enough to keep this system going.” As another blogger points out, Magnasanti “teaches us the pinnacle of urban planning is a totalitarian death state.”
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Naturally, urban planners will emphatically deny that they want to build magnasantis. But Ocasla’s creation raises important questions: if driving is so bad that we have to reduce it, where do we draw the line? If single-family homes are bad because they waste land and encourage people to drive too much, why allow people to live in single-family homes at all?
Planners respond that they just want to provide people with choices. But Portland planners (and planning-oriented politicians) are letting roadway bridges fall down even as they spend $1.5 billion or more on a light-rail line to a community that has repeatedly voted against light rail. (Portland planners even claim to have “found” $20 million in savings from the unfunded Sellwood Bridge project to spend on the light rail.)
Meanwhile, planners are perfectly happy for people to live in single-family homes as long as they can afford to buy them. But the same planners see nothing wrong with using urban-growth boundaries and onerous permitting processes in California to make such homes cost five times what they ought to cost.
There also seems to be no limit to what many transportation planners and rail advocates are willing to let other people pay for high-speed rail. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood has vowed that nothing will stop the Milwaukee-to-Madison moderate-speed train (which initially at least will be slower than the existing bus), even though it will require $130 in subsidies per rider and compete against an unsubsidized bus whose average fare is less than $20. Just how ridiculously expensive does high-speed rail have to be before transportation planners say, “this makes no sense”? Instead, it seems most would support anything, no matter what the cost, if it would get even one person out of his or her car.
Not only are urban planners across the country overly focused on one objective, it is the wrong objective: because alternatives to driving are either slower or more expensive or both, reducing driving unequivocally means reducing mobility, and reducing mobility means reducing economic productivity (not to mention recreation, social, and other opportunities). Magnasanti shows, says Ocasla, “that by only focusing on one objective, one may end up neglecting, or resorting to sacrificing, other important elements.” The Antiplanner hopes that planners and planning advocates learn this lesson soon.
SimCity is a video game, though at the same time you & Koch only want people to drive!
Choose a home & work-site that are very close, for those who desire. Duh! That’s how personal miles traveled are reduced.
People usually have a certain distance & time maximum to travel 10 times per week, usually during the most congestion. That “max” is a sliding scale, that varies with many other factors.
Transportation is not a huge priority in choice.
And public transit fails in about every category for aspects of transportation.
However, that obviously limits opportunities severely.
The choice to live near frequent transit routes exists now, but those areas are few, due to a high density requirement for “scales of economy”
Public transit could even be expanded to cover twice the area, but that would need about double the money. Passengers might increase by 20%. Energy per passenger mile would increase by about 80%.
Koch makes many products. One’s choice of transport makes no difference. This is beyond the 3rd time that I’ve gone over this. But then Highmy doesn’t care much for reading or learning or reasoning. The staff don’t offer him many books & his allowed computer time is limited.
http://www.kochind.com/IndustryAreas/default.asp
http://www.kochind.com/kochfacts/default.aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koch_Industries
http://reason.com/blog/2010/08/25/the-official-koch-industries-r
Oh, Highman, in reference to what you typed. “…you & Koch only want people to drive!”
Who else would drive? Aliens?
No other animal is capable.
Computers as drivers?
That technology exploration was just covered.
Who is even seriously “wanting” that a non-human be a driver?
As far as what I think that you are meaning:
The issue is not for people to not use transit.
The issue is for the financing by random, general & non-use taxes that apply to 100% of people, on average, to finance 65% of the public costs that are used by <4% of people. And it's about 40% of all regular transit riders that live in the NYC area.
Of course, “alternatives to driving are either slower or more expensive or both, reducing driving unequivocally means reducing mobility, and reducing mobility means reducing economic productivity (not to mention recreation, social, and other opportunities). ” are all good results according to the planner’s deprived philosophy.
To a planner, people are evil, waste too much of nature’s bounty and the world needs to reduce economic activity (de-industrialize). Actually that is only a compromise – to them people really should be eliminated entirely.
As the article suggests, planners are two bit dictators at heart and completely out of touch with reality.
Thanks
JK
Scott said:
Oh, Highman, in reference to what you typed. “…you & Koch only want people to drive!â€
Who else would drive? Aliens?
No other animal is capable.
Computers as drivers?
That technology exploration was just covered.
Who is even seriously “wanting†that a non-human be a driver?
But then Highmy doesn’t care much for reading or learning or reasoning. The staff don’t offer him many books & his allowed computer time is limited.
THWM: Dude you must have a lot of foil on your head! lol =)
BTW, don’t be like O’Toole, get off you ass and find a job!
The Antiplanner wrote:
> Not only are urban planners across the
> country overly focused on one objective,
> it is the wrong objective: because
> alternatives to driving are either slower
> or more expensive or both, reducing
> driving unequivocally means reducing
> mobility, and reducing mobility means
> reducing economic productivity (not to
> mention recreation, social, and
> other opportunities).
Not to mention the capital and operating subsidies for all kinds of U.S. transit systems that are collected from highway users – subsidies for systems that so many elected officials and planner types appear to enthusiastically support.
Transit advocates that call for an end to highways and the private automobile should consider this phrase:
Be careful what you ask for, because you just might get it.
At least in the U.S., and end to automobile use means the end of mass transit as we know it.
Here in Cincinnati we’ve done them all.
We started with the skywalk fad; which actually worked out pretty well until City Economic Development office replaced the hub building with a surface lot to attract a Nordstrom that never materialized.
We did the convention center fad. Still paying for that one which might break even around 2037.
We did the stadium fad. Tax fund is currently underwater and will need to bailed out in next 2 years.
We did the museum fad. National Underground Railroad Freedom Center promised to be self-supporting after $50 million infusion of taxpayer funds to get it going. It’s been suckling at the government teat ever since.
Now we’re doing the casino fad. City leaders recently held an illegal secret meeting to divvy-up the windfall from that, even though it won’t come in for another 3 years.
Next year we’re doing the trolley fad. In the 1920s the city constructed 3 miles of subway tunnels which were never finished. Finally paid off the bonds in the 1960s. Never carried a single passenger. The trolley folly promises to be even more wasteful.
People used to invest in downtown because that’s where the action was. Today nothing gets built downtown with massive subsidies or tax breaks (essentially government bribes). We’re drowning in boondoggles and everyone with money is moving to West Chester, a northern suburb that consisted solely of soybean fields 10 years ago. The biggest enemy of urban success is planners and so-called economic developers.
Cincinnati used to be such a wonderful, frugal, and livable city. Now they’ve ruined it.
Hman,
I fail to see any reference or relevance to gov monitoring brain waves (re: foil) or the source of any poster’s income.
Do you even read or understand any of the posts? You rarely have any connection & when there is some commonality (ie 2 words) it still is a non-sequitor.
You are almost comic relief for your rambling, but moreover pathetic.
I think most people can agree that persons can have their own opinions & ideas. The goal is discussion of various POVs & facts. You seem to weakly start that, but don’t make any full supports, lack evidence & mostly go to another topic, not even tangential.
You are welcome to try to make a case, for whatever you stand for, which seems to be for big gov to dictate how people should live & behave, and to confiscate property & money to build crap that few use.
For anybody interested in learning (seems doubtful for many posters here), see another glimpse at Federal redistribution towards coercing housing choices: Article about HUD grants.
Additionally: Japan’s “lost decade” similar to US situation: housing bubble & porkulus spending (Keynesianism doesn’t work).
I Want Your Money
That’s amazing. This student has re-created North Korea in SimCity.
I often astounded at the simultaneous reasonable criticisms of planning projects and the hyperbolic and total damnation of the planning profession. What if we applied this same logic to the private sector, say, investment banking, home building, defense contractors etc.
I suppose Mr. O’Toole feels that if all the hyperbole was eliminated, no one would read his blog. I’d like to put it to the test however. I think he may be surprised.
I’ve always wondered when SimCity would ever come up in one of your blog posts, Randal. I haven’t played SimCity 3000, but I played SimCity 2000 a lot as a kid and remember being hellbent on increasing my city’s population to as high as possible to maximize my tax revenue (which I then spent on an expensive subway network throughout the city and other urban monuments the game would let you build). You could build these self-contained biodomes that were basically uber-dense highrises and get insanely high population densities (I think the best I got was about 400,000 people per sq. mile). Air pollution and crime were always huge problems no matter how many police departments I built! This always seemed to cross my mind when reading about the relationships between population density, crime and air pollution in various literature (e.g. Newman’s Defensible Space) and your books.
SimCity 3000 must have gotten a lot more complicated compared to 2000, spending nearly 3 years to make Magnasanti sounds pretty nuts to me.
Antiplanner – if this post is more than a hack at us overworked and underpaid planners, then you may wish to check out Car Free Cities, by J.H.Crawford. This explains exactly how to build a high density city, with walking and light rail, which would be a nice place to live.
That Carfree thing is a nice fantasy. I’ve read thru the book before (10Yrs old).
The author knows exactly how?
Except for short on resources & enough people to desire.
Without tire-ed vehicles, I still wonder about goods delivery, trash pick-up, emergencies & such. Weather?
http://www.carfree.com/
Maybe someday you will appreciate mobility more & how it benefits all, even if not driving. Fine for you to be happy however, as long as there ‘s no force.
Scott wrote:
“Without tire-ed vehicles, I still wonder about goods delivery, trash pick-up, emergencies & such”
Yeah, there’s some detail missing occasionally. But it’s still a good and reasoned way of developing a new style of city. It is clear that it would work as advertised.
The car free city provides plenty of mobility. Every part is close to a transit stop, and there are no cars to block the transit. There are no awkward bits of the city that transit doesn’t access.
It would be SO easy to overtake Magnasanti, from a military perspective.
Hey Franny,
In regards to my previous typing of “Without tire-ed vehicles, I still wonder about goods delivery, trash pick-up, emergencies & suchâ€. Not to mention many other doubts on functionality.
You typed, “It is clear that it would work as advertised.”
Well, you sure cleared that up.
You didn’t even have to touch on money for construction & enough personal desire & jobs to live there.
You sure due have a lot of false hope to just make that fantasy change. You want to force social justice too? That is immoral, on many levels.