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.
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.
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).
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.
Wind towers are part of Middle East heritage and I always wonder why they've gone into building all those a/c energy wasting offices, malls and homes, instead of simply adopting this technology from the start.
Second of all I'm waiting until someone counts how much inefficient energy resources will be used to build these 'green' cities in UAE or China.
America is a young country. I think that contributes to how short-sighted Americans can be about some things. And America is essentially the "alpha male" of the world, so a lot of what gets done here gets exported, for better or worse. America tends to see new technologies as "better" across the board. In some cases, there is merit to that idea. (I am thinking of how popular cell phones are in some parts of the world, like China, where they have no plans to try to play catch-up with putting in landlines.) But, in other cases, it clearly misses the mark.
Wind towers are part of Middle East heritage and I always wonder why they've gone into building all those a/c energy wasting offices, malls and homes, instead of simply adopting this technology from the start.
I didn't say anything about "shortcomings". When I used the word "short-sighted", I meant that Americans tend to have a short-term time frame in mind. For example, American companies tend to focus on the next quarter. In contrast, Japanese companies tend to have a 10 year plan. I've had foreign friends or American friends who lived for some years in an older country/culture. They think different than the typical American. They have a longer view than is the norm here.
Also, I don't see how remarking that there are good things and bad things about a particular approach is some kind of attack..or some such.
For example, American companies tend to focus on the next quarter. In contrast, Japanese companies tend to have a 10 year plan.
This is a commonly repeated trope, but I don't think it's true. The time frame a company targets is primarily a function of it's business model, not it's country of origin.
Many US companies have a long term (30+ year) focus; Pharma (long drug development cycles), some Big Tech (Oracle, IBM focus on relationships with big business), many financial companies (Berkshire and Lehman Brothers make long term bets in securities markets) and all oil companies (finding oil takes time).
Most companies with a short term focus primarily focus on rapidly changing markets. Apple is is focused on building a shiny version of whatever is hot right now (or about to be hot) and Goldman is focused on short term speculation/services. It's not hard to think of foreign companies with a short term focus - L'Oreal (next big thing in cosmetics) and Bandai (next big thing in toys) are two such examples.
This is a commonly repeated trope, but I don't think it's true.
Thanks. I know it is a commonly repeated trope, which is why I gave it as an example -- knowing that someone was likely to argue the specific example but hoping it would suffice as an example of the point I was making. Relying heavily on AC strikes me as a short-term view kind of solution. It is cheaper (in the long run) and more effective to rely more heavily on passive solar design.
Maybe because I spent 14 hours yesterday throwing up, so I'm not exactly at my best. Besides, I think I did give a real example of it: Personal firsthand experience with individuals I have known. However, I know that anecdotal evidence is not generally considered strong evidence, so I tried to also reference something commonly said in hopes that would be better understood/accepted. Apparently, those hopes were in vain.
Oh, I see your point. However, "technology fetishism" is not a U.S. specific phenomenon, so making the conversation about American comes off as parochial, and is off putting.
FWIW, foresight is not a Japanese only quality, and to be frank, Japanese culture has its own technology obsessions that would seem weird to anyone who chooses to see Japan strictly through the "robot wife" lens ;-)
At this point, I am simply baffled at how you are interpreting my remarks. Japan having a long view is just an example and was followed by this comment:
I've had foreign friends or American friends who lived for some years in an older country/culture. They think different than the typical American. (For clarity's sake, I don't think Japan plays a big role in such personal experiences. Europe and the Middle East play much bigger roles.)
Again, I was replying to a remark/question by another member. I think the fact that American culture is highly influential globally is relevant (for example: the city is compared in the article to Disney's Magic Kingdom). I don't see how that observation is "parochial" or "off-putting".
pretty much every technology is new before people decide to try it. and a lot of technologies, old or otherwise, suck and get replaced and disappear and we are left with only those old technologies that are great. so distinctions based on whether a technology is old or new are meaningless
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.
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
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).
A city, by traditional definition, doesn't contain empty spaces. The outside of a city is where the empty space lies.
Empty spaces degrade the city because it takes time to walk through an empty space just to get somewhere. And a city is meant to be walked around.
A traditional piazza or a square is fine because they occupy one city block, blocks are traditionally small, and they're surrounded by dense array of buildings: shops and apartments.
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.
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.
I live in Florida, and yes, we switched to the modern American style after WWII. That is, build any box we want, and let the central heat and air make it livable.
The old cracker houses here are substantially different. They are wood frame, 2-3 feet up on masonry pillars, with a shotgun floor layout. They have high ceilings with ceiling fans, large porches, roof of sheet metal roofing with large roof overhangs and high slopes, and are usually sited under the shade of live oaks.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Depends, inland Florida, Georgia, high humidity locations in general yeah, there's only so much you can do.
Down here in New Mexico and Arizona, on the other hand, you can get really really far with passive design. In a desert shade and a stiff breeze will keep you nicely comfortable even when it hits 40 in the sun. Combined with good insulation and high thermal mass and a house can stay under 25 even in the dead of summer.
Of course in a desert even if you can't swing shade and a breeze you can use swamp coolers instead of ac which are so nice.
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.
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.
This is not a trivial question when you touch on mining-related issues. One can only become that rich by an artificial scarcity that is created when one person/company "owns" a part of land it bought way below value (since the true value should include all the billions of mined material). Also, anyone could mine the land, so it's not like farming, where skill really matters.
I don't think there can be a trivial answer to this question of who has the money that, in practice, is just lying there for the taking
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).
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.