

In Arabian Desert, a Sustainable City Rises, Walled and Lofty - jsm386
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/26/arts/design/26masdar.html?hp

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rajat
Do you value the various Chinatowns in cities like New York and San Francisco.
To me, these unplanned, spontaneous developments is what makes a city
worthwhile. Modern urban planners seem to want to make such spontaneity
impossible, and will end up as sterile and uninviting as a strip mall.

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dopkew
We could have empty places interspersed in the city in which people living in
the city could use as their spontaneity desires. It would also leave some room
for upgrading etc

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alextp
But these places arise precisely from the fact that they're not empty. Most
chinatowns/koreatowns are in places where, back when the immigration wave was
happenning, there was cheap housing that was close enough to local commerce.
As soon as one or two immigrants went there, friends and family followed, and
soon there was a powerful support network for immigrants, and the community
thrived. You can't build that in an empty space.

And upgrading is handled well enough today by (a) knocking down old buildings
and build new, bigger ones (except this doesn't sit well with planning) and
(b) expanding the city to a different direction that can be developed
according to market values and needs, which also undercuts planning (since
these new areas won't at first have the infrastructure of an urban center).

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phugoid
I heard a radio interview about this about a year ago in Dubai.

This is the land of SUVs with tinted windows, maids to do anything that
remotely resembles domestic work, and wretchedly excessive bling. When asked
about who would want to live in this experimental community (there ain't no
hippies down here), the developer said that it would start with the employees
of the companies who get the contracts to build out the town.

Now that's what I call synergy.

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prodigal_erik
Reminds me of a few things I've read about how fancy new houses in the
southern US have omitted design features which cleverly deal with heat in the
absence of air conditioning, so an energy crisis is going to put those
homeowners in hell. It's important architectural technology to preserve.

~~~
billswift
There are two problems there: first, most of the features that make a house
comfortable in hot weather without AC, like huge windows for good air
circulation, make it _more_ expensive to cool with AC. Second, while the
various features make a house more comfortable than many houses without them,
they are still nowhere near as comfortable as an air conditioned house.

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wazoox
You know, still today a ridiculously small proportion of houses have A/C in
Europe, including hot places like Italy or Spain. You just don't f*cking need
it.

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jasonkester
Indeed. Spain has it right.

Pamplona would get up to 100 degrees in the summer, but it was still cool and
breezy in the streets. Everything's made of thick stone, which takes a lot to
heat up. Streets are narrow and shady so they never get enough sunlight to
heat the stone. Balconies have shutters to completely block out the sun for
the few hours a day it's directly on you.

We didn't have AC, and it was pleasantly cool even in the heat of the summer.

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ubercore
I don't disagree with your point in general, but I would point out that
humidity can put a serious hurt on passive cooling options like that.

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billswift
Especially since high humidity keeps things from cooling off much at night. I
grew up in the Washington, DC suburbs without AC - it bothered my father's
sinuses - but I would seriously try to avoid living without it now. I remember
all the crap I had to do to keep from dripping sweat on my schoolwork in the
early fall and late spring - not fun.

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davidmathers
I see this column is called Critic's Notebook, but I was mildly irritated by
the author's relentless and pointless negativity.

Other than that, fascinating.

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exit
pointless negativity? you don't think there are genuine social issues at stake
here?

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Mz
Excerpt:

 _He began with a meticulous study of old Arab settlements, including the
ancient citadel of Aleppo in Syria and the mud-brick apartment towers of
Shibam in Yemen, which date from the 16th century. “The point,” he said in an
interview in New York, “was to go back and understand the fundamentals,” how
these communities had been made livable in a region where the air can feel as
hot as 150 degrees.

Among the findings his office made was that settlements were often built on
high ground, not only for defensive reasons but also to take advantage of the
stronger winds. Some also used tall, hollow “wind towers” to funnel air down
to street level. And the narrowness of the streets — which were almost always
at an angle to the sun’s east-west trajectory, to maximize shade — accelerated
airflow through the city._

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maigret
That's exactly the most interesting point in that article. Not the "green town
BS" I expected. Rather a "folks, let's return to the basics". And what if we
applied the same in Europe by rebuilding a medieval town model with modern
technologies? It's already happening in Germany, where medieval houses get
renovated with better isolation etc. You'll never see these houses for sale on
any agency or newspapers because it's all sold to friends or family - the
demand for these is just too high because of the incredible quality of life
and the feeling to live in a special place.

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gbog
They are just doing exactly this in Beijing, rebuilding those square houses
around courtyards called siheyuan, in alleys called hutong. They progressively
renew blocks one after another, imposing strict architectural rules. I live in
one of them, I get traditional Chinese village life, but with Internet
connection, cars and toilets inside the houses (for some of them).

~~~
maigret
That's really cool! Out here in Europe we just hear how the Chinese government
is demolishing traditional quarters for making roads and big buildings, so
that's definitely great news.

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houseabsolute
It seems like there is an entire industry that's been built up in this country
selling rich oil barons things they don't need, paid for with money that
doesn't really belong to them.

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mahmud
A) It's not "something they don't need"; they can easily write it off as a
business expense doing PR for their country and attracting more outside
investors keen to discover this 'green' oasis in Arabia (please ignore the
Dubai behind the curtain, move along, nothing to see here ..)

B) The money belongs to them. They don't even advertise their crack; people go
out of their way to seek it, pay for it dearly, and sometimes even mount
belligerent invasions to get it :-) Only thing worse than a dealer is an armed
crackhead.

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houseabsolute
I would say it belongs more to the people and less to the sheiks; that was the
point I was trying to make.

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jackfoxy
This article lacks a summary of the capital and maintenance costs per
resident. With the government as landlord it will be an elite enclave as long
as the right people in the government are interested. When interest is lost,
watch out for deterioration in the "custom" infrastructure (e.g. the personal
electric vehicle infrastructure).

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albertcardona
_... and the rest generated by incinerating waste (which produces far less
carbon than piling it up in dumps)_

Anybody care to explain how is that possible?

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ajb
Methane.

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jackfoxy
Methane can be captured and used as fuel for power generation, as many modern
landfills do.

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samatman
Or the waste could simply be burned, without an intermediate "rotting-in-the-
ground" phase.

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tehgawdo
Orgrimmar in Durotar anyone?

