{"id":744,"date":"2013-09-30T22:09:19","date_gmt":"2013-09-30T21:09:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/?p=744"},"modified":"2013-09-30T22:09:19","modified_gmt":"2013-09-30T21:09:19","slug":"the-future-of-cities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/2013\/the-future-of-cities","title":{"rendered":"The future of cities"},"content":{"rendered":"

My alma mater, the EPFL<\/a>, publishes the magazine Reflex<\/a>, which is free for alumni.\u00c2\u00a0 I usually read it, slowly and in chunks, on lunch breaks when I stay at work.\u00c2\u00a0 Recently I finished the March 2013 issue, which focused on the science of cities.\u00c2\u00a0 One article observed that cities, like organisms, benefit from an economy of scale: double the size of a city, and you’ll add 115% to the GDP, the wage bill, the number of patents and universities, but also to the number of crimes committed, flu cases, and the amount of garbage produced – but you’ll get it all for only 85% extra infrastructure.\u00c2\u00a0 (That’s a semi-quote from the article, paraphrasing Geoffrey West from the Santa Fe Institute.)\u00c2\u00a0 That explains to a degree why pretty much any restaurant in Tokyo survives: it’s part of the 85% extra infrastructure getting 115% revenue.<\/p>\n

What I found more interesting, however, was an article entitled “Seven ideas for future cities,” by Benjamin Bollmann.\u00c2\u00a0 These are the ideas he collected:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Don’t raze slums: use them as urban laboratories.<\/li>\n
  2. Attract yuppies to the suburbs – give the suburbs a culture makeover.<\/li>\n
  3. Build natural barriers to natural disasters (e.g. wetlands against flooding).<\/li>\n
  4. Spruce up industrial wasteland with gardens.<\/li>\n
  5. Design for change and adaptability instead of immutable structures.<\/li>\n
  6. Draw tourists with funky architecture (Bilb\u00c3\u00a3o effect).<\/li>\n
  7. Reduce crime with clever urban planning (“shaping the path”).<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Most sound good, if expensive; #6 and #3 might pay for themselves quickly, #4 and #7 more slowly.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m not sure what to think of #2: do we really want to urbanize the suburbs?\u00c2\u00a0 On the one hand, that might slow urban sprawl, if the suburbs get densified, but if it works, what will happen to the centers?\u00c2\u00a0 #5 has me worried that it will counteract the prettification #4 achieves, and #1 – well, I just don’t know enough about slums.\u00c2\u00a0 Is misery a fair price for innovation?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    My alma mater, the EPFL, publishes the magazine Reflex, which is free for alumni.\u00c2\u00a0 I usually read it, slowly and in chunks, on lunch breaks when I stay at work.\u00c2\u00a0 Recently I finished the March 2013 issue, which focused on the science of cities.\u00c2\u00a0 One article observed that cities, like organisms, benefit from an economy of scale: double the size of a city, and you’ll add 115% to the GDP, the wage bill, the number of patents and universities, but also to the number of crimes committed, flu cases, and the amount of garbage produced – but you’ll get it all for only 85% extra infrastructure.\u00c2\u00a0 (That’s a semi-quote from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=744"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":745,"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744\/revisions\/745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}