City Design Efficiency Thread

No, but reading bullshit pipe dreams IS boring to me.

Baron Max

 

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The problem is that you are regarding human beings and human nature as a hurdle. The only real characteristic of human nature is free will.

You act as if acting towards one's self-interest is wrong, and needs to be overcome before anything can be done. Nobody is talking about a dreamworld or common sense. There can be no discussion on methods of acheiving an objective without first defining the present situation, and the ideal situation. In order to proceed towards anything, the outcome must be defined. When the method is the outcome and the outcome is the method, the brain shuts down.

It is important for the individual to act in their own best interest. It is actually common for people to act in opposition to their actual best interest. It is common for people to act in opposition of their believed best interest.

Say there are 3 people in a group. They go to get a toothbrush. There is only one toothbrush left. All of them want it. Unfortunately, only one can have it, and the other 2 have to wait till tomorrow when there will be more toothbrushes. It is in self-interest to be the one to get it.

In a social setting of dire poverty, oppression, and social disfunction, this is a problematic situation. In a social setting of abundance, intelligent education, freedom, and efficiency, either a shortage of toothbrushes is never heard of. Or it simply isn't a big deal to anybody in the group.

What some would say are drawbacks of human nature, is nothing more than a human unconscious response to lack. A society of lack breeds desperation. A society of abundance breeds fullfillment. I'm not talking about abundance of material nonsense. I'm talking about abundance of essentials and fullfilling activites.

 

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Hey, that's fine.

I'll go tell the shepard that it's lunch time. You're probably hungry, right?

 

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When I am king, all cities will eliminate at grade crossing and thus not need traffic lights or any reason to waste fuel waiting for the green light (or sophisticated controls that stop and restart the engine)

Most quasi intersections will have the natural ground level reduced by about a 3/4 of a bus or standard truck height at the deepest point and the "over passing" cross road will be elevated about the same amount at its peak elevation. The earth excavated from the depressed road will make the land fill ramps leading to the central "bridge section" of the "over passing" road. The span of this bridge will be only a little greater than two standard bus widths. All essentially parallel roads of an essentially rectangular grid will alternate their direction of one way two lane travel. One lane is the "no stopping" lane and only trucks and busses are allowed to stop in the slow lane(s) but that is very rare. -See second paragraph below about the off slow lane stop points. (Only two lanes pass under the over-pass bridges, but between bridges there often is a slow land on each side of the fast no stopping lane. Some times busses and trucks may need to wait a few seconds to change from one slow lane to the other as fast lane traffic never stops. Again, all roads are one way only.)

There are no private "cars" in the city. The municipally owned vehicles, included in your monthly tax bill, are available in 2, 4, and 6 passenger sizes, at different charges which encourage multiple passengers in each. They do not stop in either lane - they turn into the mid block tunnels for discharge and pick up of passengers if that block is a destination desired by an on-board passenger; Or when going out of service in their exclusive, ground-level, center of block parking area. You normally "pre-drive" these vehicles at the time of requesting one by specifying at the center of block terminal kiosk you destination. (The computer "knows" where the request comes from and tells you the color and number of the unit responding to you request. It prints your bar code like "key" and also advises you of the delay if one is not already waiting at the pickup point for you.) There is cost of about 10 rides if during the trip you change your mind and want to get out at the nearest permitted center of block stop instead of the pre selected destination. There you can request a new vehicle and new destination, or just walk. Trucks and these computer controlled "autovehics" run on batteries. The city is "fume free." (Smoking is allowed only on the roofs - very few still smoke - this also lowers medical expenses.)

There are also 8 truck / bus "pull completely off slow lane" areas* for trucks to load / unload and busses to "respin" their flywheels in scheduled stops (bus drivers get break then to). One on each side of the four "autovehic" tunnels, which are really mainly at natural ground levels, but called "tunnels" as they are enclosed. (No person or dog can enter except inside a locked autovehic.) Bus passengers are "pre-boarded" in the passenger wait compartment, very much like the Brazilian city of Curtiba's buses have done for years. (That city is widely recognized as having one of the world's best public bus systems. A full bus load of pre-paid passengers can enter the bus in a few seconds as there they have already paid for the ride.) The buses use a schedule, with only reschedule for emergency, just as the gates of an airport are scheduled today.

Except for these indents and the autovehic tunnels, the ground level perimeter of each block has glass like wall (keeps people and dogs off the roads) and allows light in for the plants of the ground level perimeter gardens every block has. The width of these perimeter gardens and the type vegetation in them depends upon the exposure to sunlight (no power is wasted on artificial illumination and they often are subdivided and rented to block residents who wish to grow their own vegetables etc. Their maintaince is a community project of the building for resisident interested with "green thubs" with annual prizes etc. Where the perimeter gardens are not so deep (North side in Northern Hemisphere) there are other recreational and exercise facilities, some of which do have "you pay for illumination" lighting available etc. but are otherwise "free" (cost in the rent of all) to building residents to encourage use. (You are paying - why not use and stay in better shape. - this reduces total medical expenses.)

Above the autovehic tunnels on the second level (where the stores are also) are the bicycle lanes in an apporximately rectangular grid that extends thru out the city. This grid does have "at grade" intesections at the center of each building (above the autovehic terminal) but they are "traffic circles" around the free, central, access-controlled via ID card, to the "lock your bike" posts area. Bikes are privately owned - and quite an important industry as in Holand today. This grid has enclosed bridges over the roads. (Nothing of significant size can be thrown down on the roads via the tiny ventilations slot/holes and bike riders never get wet by rain.)

Because the autovehic rarely stop more than once per entire trip, recovery of braking energy is not worth the energy loss due to greater weight. Likewise accidents are nearly impossible as only highly trained and responsible professional drivers of buses and trucks are on the roads and then only normally only in the slow lanes, so these autovehics weigh less than twice the passenger load they can carry. Most healthy persons prefer their bikes. These factors make transportation energy requirement less than 15% of the current system and faster with less than 1/10 the cost than either use of taxi or private cars have as in use today.

The top cover of the bike path grid is the floor of the walkway grid thru the entire city, with light-weight, rain-protecting, enclosing security walls and rails for those who want to walk a few blocks to visit friends or have large meetings or go to some four-block-large, roof-top, sports event facility etc. (Again nothing can be thrown onto the roads below. Also the floor has very shallow groves and periodic raised "coding dots" that few even notice but permit the "white cane blind" to have complete independance of travel thruout the city, even when walking.) The autovehic delays are excessive if 100,000 or more people all want to leave at the same time so many walk or bike to the large events. This is encouraged as the autovehic trip charge is proportional to the trip duration as well as the trip distance and the localized demand factor, which make for a significantly larger bill when 10 of thousands want to use them to leave or arrive at the same point simultaneously.

The higher levels of the buildings are mainly residential, but may include quiet facilities such as a hospital, art center, library etc. Manufacturing facilities are above the store levels and below the residences. These buildings are nearly self sufficient complex for most needs as most workers live in the building where their job is and "commute" work by elevator! If one did not want to leave their block's building they could probably do so less than once per year on average. The buildings are of course with multiple high speeds internet services and there is no TV broadcasting, with the "ghost images" building reflections make, but that is enough of details for now.
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*Half of the blocks in a regular pattern like the black squares on a checker board are "turn blocks" and half, like the white squares, are not. Four of the 8 "off slow lane" areas, the 4 just before the "quasi intersection," continue around the corner. By using one of these turns you can change, for example, from east bound to south bound travel. If you also use the next turn you have made a U-turn and are going west. If you use three then you are going north. In conventional current two way streets with at grade intersection to go from east to north bound you must stop and wait for a gap in the west bound traffic and cross in front of it - hoping no idiot runs the red light, if there is one. (Traffic light that is - not idiots - there seems to be an unlimted supply of them, especially when traffic is slow and frustrating.)

There is never any crossing in front of the traffic. The autovehics never stop prior to arriving at the destination you selected in when ordering one, unless you abort the trip. Then you pay more and get dropped at the closets available block center terminal. Half of the turn blocks are “right turn blocks” as the one just illustrated and half are “left turn blocks”. To fully understand you probably need a simple drawing, but you can get from any point A to any point B and never need to stop or cross in front of on-coming traffic.

This along with the still save, but low separation between autovehics, and their high average (never stopped) speeds makes travel very quick, cheap and convenient compared to the current system especially at rush hour. (Traffic jams are impossible, but the computer may route your trip a slightly longer distance to achieve this.) The capital cost for these shared, light weight, autovehics is much lower than the cost of the private single user cars, even if only half the population can afford to own a car. If some user makes a mess in a car, the automatic "sniff tester" at the return terminal determines this, and sends it, unoccupied to the nearest un-busy manual clean center. The computer bills the last user a stiff fine.

SUMMARY:
Once transportation (including bike paths and separate walkways that are both car free and rain free), is safer, cheaper, faster, and maintaince free to the user with only monthly bills, automatically deducted from your bank if so authorized;
And every one’s daily needs, including parks, recreation, exercise facilities, food and other stores and most jobs are only an elevator ride and/or less than a block's walk away, living in a quite, fume-free city can be very safe, pleasant, and economical - both in monetary terms and environmental costs.

 

When I'm king, I'll get rid of all humans ....so that Earth and the other animals can actually and truly live in peace and harmony, and not destroy the planet.

Baron Max

 

and a huge requirement for corn to feed all those pigs, which in turn will create a much greater need for farm land, fertilizer and fresh water, etc.

Your heart is in the right place, but your brains are not.* Your are not only planning the least efficient society mankind has ever had, but still are avoiding my only and most important direct question:

How are the decisions made as to who gets what and which of earth's limited resources, like fresh water, phosphate for fertilizer, etc. gets used for what?
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*I will let others speculate where they are, but I do have an opinion and if your brains are where I think your head is, then all that pig shit would not bother you. (As it is already, there is a section of the NJ turnpike you cannot stand to drive thru on a hot summer eve with windows open and with no wind. - Thousand or so pigs are eating boiled garbage from NYC etc, I think. Your plan would have the whole US smell that way, but fortunately it is so idiotic that it can never be achieved.)

 

Well, Billy, when he uses the word "IF", then he's safe from worry about such minor bullshit issues as you've mentioned. He, and people like him, can jut "IF" those issues away without a seconds thought.

I love the word "IF", don't you?

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Baron Max

 

For starters, the first step would probably be a transition situation in which a business hires a company to provide a living environment for workers. I would consider First World to be the first model with improved models to be deployed afterwards.
http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=87456

 

That is the way it was back when I was a kid in West Virginia. The coal company provided the simple wood frame houses, paid in script, which only had value in the company store. Everything was over priced in it so the longer the miners worked the deeper in debt to the coal company they became. They even had to buy the coal they dug (except for a small lump or two they could hide in their clothes at the end of the 10 hour, hard labor, shift). Consequently by the end of winter the front steps and often some of the floor boards of the front porch were missing. Every one was robbed by someone else of this fire wood, but he company just put it on the occupant's growing debt tab.

The No 1 tune on the hit parada was "16 tons." for several months. In part it went:

You load 16 tons of No9 coal and what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt.
St. Peter, don't you call me, 'caus I can't come
I owe my soul to the company store.


Are your really longing for those "good old days" when the company owned, controlled or chose the house you lived in and the stores you shopped in? We had that even before I was born in Dixie, at least for all with skin that looks like that of the next POTUS or darker.

PS Do you not feel a little bit stupid to post a link to a post that is only a link, instead of giving the second link directly? That demonstration of your "intelligence" discouraged me from bothering to read the second link you think worth reading.

 

Listen. All the things I say are things I read and truely believe. If you want the primary source just read this small article and you will understand my point of view. Please don't skip it like Mr. Baron Max.

http://www.thevenusproject.com/intro_main/essay.htm

 

I completely redid my webpage description:
http://www.geocities.com/caliditta/index.html

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cf1g...e Future&rls=com.microsoft:en-us&ie=UTF-8&oe=
Interesting show. This guy uses a term that I started using awhile back. "purchasing power". I started using it when people kept talking about money. Money this and money that. It didn't make sense because money is very relative. Thus, I realized it is more relevant to use the term "purchasing power".

 

Of course. How many dollars you have with you means nothing if they are worthless, if they have no "purchasing power."

Did you read the whole article, and if so, what did you think of it?

 

Here is a quote from the article: "Presented here is a straightforward approach to the redesign of a culture, in which the age-old inadequacies of war, poverty, hunger, debt, and unnecessary human suffering are viewed not only as avoidable, but totally unacceptable."


I tell people that every single day. A few years back, I wrote that the fundamental purpose of city design is not necessarily to design the ideal city, and present it as the way the truth and the light. All the naysayers that hate my city design topics don't seem to know that city design is really more of a pursuit towards cities of more and improved designs. Whatever doesn't work can be improved. But the root of it is the same throughout. To continue improving on designs.

The Venus Project obviously has done tons of in depth research in city design. There is absolutely no difference between what they are doing and what I am doing. Designing physical and social systems and principals for highly efficient city design.

They are actually not too far away from where I'm staing in South Fla. While they do have some amazing insights on various technologies which are amazing, my own personal principals and organizational standards I've designed would actually be an improvement in their designs. Starting the Venus Project fresh from the ground up with some of my fundamental prinicpals would make for much more amazing city designs.

The Venus Project actually looks very familiar. I think I ran into it in SL.

 

Good. At least you are capable of learning, but don't stop now. You have a long way to go. Some will come just with age, some requires effort (thinking, research, evaluating others POV'* prior to rejection, etc.)
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*For example, my post 24, present the point of view that at grade intersections are a very major reason why cities are not very desirable places to live. They make for traffic jams and waste huge amounts of energy (as well as time). I first noticed this about 45 years ago:

Then I worked at APL/JHU which is about 1km west of US route 29 in Howard County MD and connected to US29 via a cross road. North of that intersection US29 descended steeply into a river valley and one had to continuously break to avoid speeds in excess of 100mph back then. After being at APL a few years, the road engineers decide to lower that intersection, perhaps 30 feet. (Small compared to the greater than 100 foot deep cuts thru tops of mountains that many new roads make.) The job was done in a few months with a few trucks, bull-dozers and front end loaders. I watched them work, while APL's several thousand employees waited in line each AM to get their turn to turn onto the cross road - three or four minutes ususally. Many were aware of the lost of highly educated manpower, but one day I wondered how long it will take to save the energy this equipment is using by less dissipation in brakes going down the long steep north slope of US29.

So I got some data on fuel consumption of this construction equipment etc. which with the decrease in potential energy of the typical weight car when at the lower crest of the hill, and number of cars going North each day I answered my question with error not more than a factor of 3, as I recall. I was greatly surprised by it: As I recall it was less than two months to save all the energy expended to lower the intersection by at least 25 feet!

That started me thinking about intersections in general. Few realize how destructive of energy and productive time at grade street intersections are. I have not read your link or the Venus project link, but if they still stupidly have at grade intersection with traffic lights etc. then throw their ideas in the trash can. The ideas I outline in post 24 are vastly better than anything possible with same level cross road intersections in a city.

 

Can I be part of the Tiger killing team? (And let live until all the carnivores are dead?)

BTW, I did just skim the Venus project link, looking for the comments on "transportation." I found:

"All raw materials used to manufacture products can be transported directly to the manufacturing facilities by automated transportation "sequences" such as ships, monorails, trains, pipelines, and pneumatic tubes*, and the like. All transportation systems are fully utilized in both directions.* There would be no empty trucks, trains, or transport units on return trips. There would be no freight trains stored in yards, awaiting a business cycle for their use. An automated inventory system would be connected to both the distribution centers and the manufacturing facilities, thus coordinating production to meet demand and providing a constant evaluation of preferences and consumption statistics.** In this way a balanced-load economy can be assured and shortages, over-runs, and waste could be eliminated."

Everything else I noticed was equally implausible, idealistic, BS - nothing with any specific implementation facts such as I present in post 24. It seems they do not even recognize the huge cost of at grade intersections. The link's text neglects (at least in my fast skim) to tell what fuel is used for transport, makes no comment on the fumes released, does not tell what types of motors are used, how or where energy is stored, etc. - no technicals details - just wild idealized dreams! - What a crock!!! But I bet you knew that would be the case even without visit to the site. - don't bother it is an impractical, idealistic, non-specific, large pile of BS.
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*See technical stupidity on display: A bi-directional pneumatic tube would be very inefficient as the presure gradient along it would need to be reversed - a lot of wasted energy in the pumping to do this. These technically ignorant dreamers should stick to social criticism or go write poems etc.

** Sales data does this efficiently now, but these "fuzzy thinkers" want nothing to do with money or profits that motivate people so they will provide "experts" to judge what is needed and program the society's controlling computers accordingly. - I think I would prefer the old central planning by humans the USSR had but that was an extremely bad social system - hard to believe one could be worse, but I think the Venus project would be - Fortunately, it is not likely to be implimented (nor could it be, while so vaguely and idealisiticly defined). About the only thing I noticed in the quick skim that was clearly stated was the city was to be circular. That is how Washington DC was originally layed out (One cannon in each of the local circle was all that was required to control movement was why) Transport in that spoke and hub lay out was so inefficient that a rectangular grid was later added as an overlay. While cirular cities do very slightly decrease the average "crow fly" disance between randomly sellected points, people travel along roads. Circular cities are less efficient than retangular grid cities as a result. and very much less efficient than the design of post 24 a where there are "no need to ever stop" lanes available to go efficiently from any point A to any point B (You never need to cross against on coming traffic and not one traffic light is used to ever stop you.)

 

No, because the carnivores are a necessary part of the ecosystem. For the most part, carnivores attack the weak of the herds ...culling is a term that humans use for similar purposes.

And nothing that the carnivores do is even close to "destroying" the planet or the ecosystem. Of all the animals on Earth, only man is destructive to his own ecosystem.

It seems that it's really true .....Earth WAS a "Garden of Eden" BEFORE man arrived!

Baron Max

 

I tend to agree with all this but you did say "live in peace" - I don't think the, sick with cold, nose obstructed, zebra that cannot run as fast as the others so is pulled down by the lioness thinks that a "peaceful act" but do agree, that in the long run, despite some mistakes like this temporary disadvantage death, Zebras are better off.

I once wrote a short poem called "The WOLF'S TOOTH." It recognized the grace and speed of many animals was produced by the wolf's ugly, bloody, tooth and not by the animals.

BTW, visit post 36 again - there is more there now by later edit you will enjoy.

 

The Venus Project was probably the reason you started doing what you're doing!

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Environmentally-friendly sustainability.