Do you think our conception of "cities" needs to be renewed?
Imagine having to colonize another planet, a terraformed Mars for example, is it convenient to build cities like we did on Earth?
Cars can't be powered exclusively by electricity s
o combustion-based means of transport are necessary, if you don't create a continuous and efficient public-transport service, and this means air pollution.
Do we really need to put these vehicles
inside our cities?
A lot of cities, since the industrial revolution, have certain areas that doesn't allow the presence of vehicles like cars, but these ares are usually very small. This have been done to limitate the air pollution, but also because streets of these areas are usually very narrow so it would be very dangerous for pedestrians and uncomfortable for drivers. Cars are a danger, and programming cars to drive by themself inside a complicated structure like that of modern cities is very hard, it would be much easier to program them to drive through highways-like roads (like Tesla already do). So why not... having a structure like this:
In this utopian structure, cities does not expands in all directions but they follow the "main road", who goes
everywhere (it also splits to create a sort of "grid"). In modern cities to reach a place you need to know the
path but in this kind of city you just need to... count. Here is an example: you need to reach a place that is in the Sector 416 South, you are in Sector 394 North, the only thing you have to do is taking the main road at "increasing" direction (so the opposite of the one you're currently in) and take the 416th exit. Cars cannot go outside this main-road and the parking lot (that is preferably underground, with air locked rooms to avoid excessive damage in case of fire), the "upper" part of the city cannot contain cars of any sort so there are not "streets" full of tar or other toxic materials, just people walking and bikes.
There is a large space between one building and another, and some areas might actually be multi-level, like the utopian model of Leonardo Da Vinci. Outside the "city-line" there are forests and cultivation fields, so most of the area of the planet would contain forests and nature.
Still, there are a few problems that needs to be solved:
• You can't put your car outside the main road so you can't easily visit places outside the city (like natural attractions) if not using an helicopter/plane or by foot. This might be a serious problem for people who cultivate the land, they will be in planes for most of the time and they'll start thinking things like "Why couldn't I live here, outside the city?!".
• If the number of people is very high, there might not be enough physical space to put these people in, if not making buildings taller and taller or splitting again a section to create a new "line" of city.
• Having a delimited area around and a fixed structure means that you're limited on the architectural and visual-diversity level. Being in one place or another, maybe on the other side of the world, would always "feel the same", you wouldn't see too much difference because the structure of roads and cities is always the same. You can still build "large and unique buildings", there is no limitation in "how far you can go from the main road", but keeping in mind there will be only one entrance!
• There is no more a feeling of "belonging", you can give names to parts of this "giant net", also giving them an autonomous government, but borders doesn't even makes sense anymore. This is both a good and bad thing, more a good thing probably, even because wars wouldn't also make too much sense, but it would be complicated to decide how to manage politics, take decisions on the borders and many other problems that probably didn't emerged here.
I hope it was enough interesting to read, also I'm curious to listen your opinions on it!
(If the discussion continues I'll probably open a thread for it, but I doubt it will happen
)