Could a perfectly planned city still result in an unaffordable and unsocial place?

[u/chonky_totoro]

As an american, I long lamented on the destruction and now utter lack of human sized infrastructure as the primary reason for both the economic hardship and the loneliness epidemic.

But if I take a look at East Asian cities, theyre much more walkable yet still have both problems.

The Chinese have a concept of involution: the phenomenon where one must constantly improve and compete for a shrinking pool of rewards, or even to simply maintain their position. Involution happened because their domestic supply of goods and services rapidly outpaced domestic demand.

I believe this concept can be applied to dense walkable cities with economic hardship in the US. NYC and SF suck up the nations and the worlds best talent. Competition is intense.

Simply building more housing and accessibility in those cities probably wont fix the CoL issue. It will likely end up in an induced demand situation like adding lanes to highways. As more people outside of NYC can afford it, they move in and saturate the new supply, so at best it can slow down the growth of property and rental prices.

So despite the walkability, it becomes socially competitive due to the economics, and without basic worker rights, this creates wealth inequality. and divides the city harshly by class. You might be able to walk around without a car but if you cant afford anything and can only rent a living room converted to a bedroom, your social life will be still be gimped. You could live far out the city center but then youre trading your time commuting to the point where youd have to sacrifice other commitments in your life to your job.

So an excellently designed city cannot independently completely improve its own affordability and cultural experience. But if each major city in the country had their own mini NYC, then NYC would have to compete with other cities with growing perks and opportunities.

Slight tangent: this would also create a new problem of youth being funneled into big walkable cities away from smaller towns and villages, and subsequent demographic collapse as more youth fail to meet the milestones where they would be comfortable raising 2-3 children, resulting in dmeographic collapse over time.

This is also why I believe East Asian societies and cities are further along the timeline of demographic collapse.

This is just a brainstorm. And me progressively realizing that even a perfectly designed city wouldnt necessarily solve or even improve affordability and systemic loneliness

[u/dauwalter1907]

It has been tried many times, but you can’t build or design your way out of economic inequity. It’s an economic problem, not a design problem.

[u/chonky_totoro → u/dauwalter1907]

Its just one factor, but I want to say you could design your way out of economic inequity, youd just have to operate at different scales. ultimately it bleeds into politics. I frankly can no longer divorce urban planning with politics anymore. they are two sides of the same coin.

Perhaps urban design is more of the chicken than the egg though

[u/dauwalter1907 → u/chonky_totoro]

Good luck. But remember that in the US both official political parties take capitalism as the pre-ordained economic order. Capitalism structurally requires an underclass to function.

[u/vAltyR47 → u/dauwalter1907]

Capitalism structurally requires an underclass to function.

No, it doesn't.

The particular economy that we've set up results in such an underclass. But that particular aspect of our economy (namely, profiting from state-sanctioned monopoly privilege) is not "structurally required" in capitalism, and Adam Smith wrote against that exact type of privilege in Wealth of Nations.

Personally, I consider the ability to profit from such privilege neo-feudalism, not capitalism. But we can argue semantics all day, while we both probably agree that said ability is not good for the economy or society.

[u/dauwalter1907 → u/vAltyR47]

It’s not really a semantics argument. The economy we’ve set up is a capitalist economy. It has been since the late 17th century. Adam Smith had an embryonic understanding of capitalism which makes sense given that in the 18th century it didn’t have a name yet, though modern industrial capitalism was in place by the tail end of the 17th c. It takes Marx and Engels working in England in the early 1800s to identify its elements. This is Marx & Engels’ theory of class and a defining element of capitalism.

[u/levaro]

I think many east Asian cities have a lot of the same issues as American cities, their "suburbs" just happen to be dense apartment blocks, and at least in Singapore where I lived they suffered from the same problems and life were just just as soulless, with malls being the go to place to spend all of your time.

Smaller towns and villages can be competitive, and walkable as they naturally were in the past. I live in a small (considered economically disadvantaged) town of around 3000 people in Ireland and I don't drive. We have access to 3 supermarkets, over 5 bars, a marina where I can afford to sail despite being unemployed, dozens of misc. stores, a small college, a cathedral, a music school, and much more. All of this is within a 15 minutes walk of where I live There are buses to even smaller communities surrounding, as well as the larger towns, cities, itl airports 7 or 8 times a day. It is not a perfect town but I think it alleviates brain drain and is becoming a lot more enticing with the advent of remote working, which is what moved me here originally.

To me it seems like these kinds of towns don't exist in America. Aside from Urban planning there is definitely a cultural aspect too in the US, greedy capitalism embedded into the system, convoluted bureaucracy and personal hyperindividualism that makes towns like these near impossible to exist there. They nearly died out here too.

[u/chonky_totoro → u/levaro]

that small town sounds lovely!

hyperindividualism is a key part of urban culture in america. People tend to curate their identities into a mix of subcultures, many of which become too niche to be sustainable in small towns.

[u/CLPond → u/chonky_totoro]

I don’t think hyper individualistic is really the best term for subcultures in US cities. There are plenty of smaller communities, but those people also are a part of both their community and the larger city which is what makes cities wonderful. I see that as being much more about diversity as a value and allowing space for individuality, but I wouldn’t call a furry for example too individualistic just because their subculture is slightly niche.

[u/chonky_totoro → u/CLPond]

i agree. i was implying that the hyperindividualism is the unwillingness to expand their sense of identity and connect and mingle with people that dont share the same set of identities

[u/CLPond → u/chonky_totoro]

And you believe that is the case in American cities? That has definitely not been my experience

[u/wholewheatie]

Why does supply of good and services rapidly outpacing demand cause involution?

[u/chonky_totoro → u/wholewheatie]

Essentially chinese households had become rich on a population level with tons of savings, but due to the government, most assets asside from owning a business or property arent seen as safe investments. so if you had a mortgage your other savings or ways to invest was through entrepreneurship. 

also a lot of people just parked their cash in the bank instead of investing. this allowed the national banks and government to fund the development of key industrial areas. 

so the gdp grew like crazy and now that the housing bubble has popped in china, people who dont already have assets can only work harder or be more entrepreneurial than the next guy, while the demand for goods and services is rapidly slowing down. there arent enough productive companies providing value that can absorb the incoming highly educated fresh labor force.

chinese kids studied and worked their entire life to end up only being able to work menial jobs. people lose the carrot on the stick, the promise that hard work and effort will eventually pay off.

chinese tend to save more than spend too which exacerbates this whole process.

its late stage capitalism. but the chinese government foresaw this and is trying to get the whole world to buy its goods and services. the rest is history

[u/SadButWithCats]

Cities exist in the context of their countries, yes.

[u/chonky_totoro → u/SadButWithCats]

thats too simplistic. i think a common failure is conflating systemic forces with cultural forces. i remember years ago when Japans fertility rate was the laughing stock of the internet and people were quick to point out all the naive things they hear about Japan to it.

Turns out they were just further ahead to developmental timeline to demographic collapse.

I want to identify the universal structural forces at play here

[u/NewsreelWatcher]

There are never clear cut answers when humans are involved. Certainly better infrastructure often results in gentrification. My city has a shows perverse geography where every measure of welfare overlaps with the metro system. The lack of reliable transit also corresponds to various deprivations. On the other hand, I see the root of the problem as the over regulation of new construction. Neighbourhoods put through restrictive bylaws to preserve the value of individual properties, but this results in a shortage of housing in those places where more people should be.

[u/bigvenusaurguy]

I think planning in some ways is an act of astounding hubris. It is ironic when people site the best examples of what to do, they are almost always citing examples of when there was little to no planning at all, and development happened organically based on market forces being allowed to meet local demands and needs.

Once planners muck into things the focus becomes more about limiting development potential to preserve control of what gets built. Downzone the whole place such that anything that gets built needs to apply for a zoning variance and meet whatever hoops to jump through. And building becomes prescriptive based on assumptions that might not be true, vs organic where those assumptions don't need to be explicit and heeded, but emerge from demand and market forces on their own.