Also a huge number of people in the US travel to places that are walkable:
- Disney World
- Las Vegas (The strip is anyway)
- DC
- NYC
not gonna catch on as long as its sold with a price premium instead of a discount for what they save on not building and maintaining car infrastructure.
Ohh yeah the popular and highly desirable thing that people are willing to pay a premium for won’t catch on!
The rents are extremely reasonable for the area. Here’s a video where some residents discuss their rents: https://youtu.be/hf0L3blkNA4
car free community
cover photo shows both a car and parking lot
I’m just being pedantic but this just shows how ingrained cars are in modern society that even “car-free” communities need them
Also Disney is not designed for public use. It’s built to extract as much money out of you without leaving their property.
Why is the architecture and placement so bad tho? And narrow. Seems like a poor southern Italian village, but uglier. Or like a dark futuristic movie set.
Open walkable spaces can be pretty, does wonders for (populations) mental health.
I watched a YouTube video on it and they mentioned they designed the structure to maximize shade.
This combined with the white buildings knocked more than 20° off of the ambient temps within the neighborhood.Edit:
The video.
Kirsten Dirksen tours a lot of homes / areas that focus on sustainability or break the mold.
Yeah, I don’t understand, were trees or solar panels not available? Not to mention that maximizing shade could be achieved with a simple pattern and taller buildings or rooftop gardens/panels. Even a simple mesh tarp (mimicking leaves) over the allies does the same trick without claustrophobia :). At such latitude shading from the top is way more effective than from the sides.
And what walkable city/neighborhood doesn’t have a piazza for people to gather & eat, drink, shop, etc?
Dense structure placement like that def looks like developers maximizing buildings per land, not for the community.
A shade structure in Phoenix’s Civic Space Park
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/7757949/stringio.jpg)
I do agree with you this would be a very sensible and effective solution. I also was disappointed that seemingly no thought was put into integration of solar / shade plants.
However I do want to stress the importance of having access to a broad view of the horizon and sky.
That said they totally could have made little pockets with this lattice and 10x’d the environment on the passageways and generate power/food.
Have you watched the video and has it changed your mind? I’m curious if it’s just the article only giving that shitty overview photo. I only watched the video and thought it was quite nice for high density urbanism. An alternative to suburbia modeled after classic European cities.
Besides shade, narrow streets might also reduce amount of walking distance. So if you make it bigger you end up with less functionality.
I’m sure if they replicate the concept it could look quite different in other climates.
Yeah, seeing the main streets (like on the map) is what redeemed it a lot, however I do not understand buildings that narrow together, like from the personal space POV. A meter/few feet wider allies (or distances between front doors) would make a lot of difference.
Also I do live in a classic European (fairly) walkable city. Not that I’m comparing directly, it’s a different situation. But over here narrow allies or window views of only your neighbour are usually found in old villages, where money was tight & a lot of expansion was done over existing buildings. Or where other barriers exist (historic city walls, narrow peninsula, rivers, etc).
I’m not even saying I wouldn’t live in Tempa, it just seems like a really cheaply executed concept (albeit “classical”, yet new, but you are not getting old buildings).
But over here narrow allies or **window views of only your neighbour **are usually found in old villages, where money was tight & a lot of expansion was done over existing buildings.
Yeah hmm normally I’d think the same, but in the video it looked much nicer. It is a concept to increase urban density instead of suburbia. And each apartment has it’s own outer walls instead of merging 4 apartments into one larger building, and then have wider paths. It’s also build stick frame / wood and probably relatively cheaply. I’d love something like this out of stones with more natural walls and rounded corners.
Oh, yes, totally agree - but as I understand this wasn’t cheap to buy. That’s the issue. It’s def totally livable. But as you said, would have expected more, something that can last. Not to mention modern design niceties (not in the beauty sort of sense).
As to why tf suburbia is even a thing, idk (I mean, I know, the car lobby, but still fuuck, all that surface natural habitat lost just for the inconvenience of as inefficient commuting as possible).
This specifically is rent only but afaik rather affordable for the city.
The answer is to create shade. At those angles, you can find shade at any given time.
This is in frigging Phoenix Arizona. Nothing is walkable in 120 degrees.
Phoenix has a couple of these self contained communities already. The parking lot could be for people outside the community to come and visit the shops.
