There's going to be a lot of this about

[hirez]

(Via the Viable Paradise mail-list)

http://ocw.mit.edu/ans7870/11/11.001j/f01/lectureimages/6/image5.html

'Garden cities of to-morrow.' Featuring children's cottage homes the far side of the allotments, a farm for epileptics, more allotments and industrial schools for industrial people the wrong side of the railway tracks.

A lovely idea, and no more mad than Le Corbusier's Radiant City that I was looking at this time last week.

They had a crack at the idea with places like Letchworth and Welwyn, and I think on a smaller scale with Hampstead Garden Suburb. It still seems to me that they don't quite work as places (I shall start waving 'The geography of nowhere' and demanding an updated edition), if only because they've become dormitories for London where all the good gigs and strange shops are to be found.

(Oh and: http://ocw.mit.edu/ans7870/11/11.001j/f01/lectureimages/6/image14.html is certainly not July '01. I'd guess an October afternoon in 1973, myself.)

Comments

[operon.livejournal.com]

Radiant City -- is that where the Alien Sex Fiend song name comes from then?

There was a big feature in New Scientist about designing the eco-cities of the future a few weeks ago: http://www.newscientist.com/contents/issue/2556.html

Andrew.

[bluekieran.livejournal.com]

I dunno. Milking an epileptic sounds like more trouble than it's worth.

[sarah-mum.livejournal.com]

Try it an I'd rip your arm off.

[specialunclet.livejournal.com]

depends how drunk you are love

[steer.livejournal.com]

For a while I was involved with the "Transport Visions Network" which was great fun

http://www.trg.soton.ac.uk/research/TVNetwork/reports/reports.htm

While I wasn't an editor for their Land Use Planning report I was involved with some of the brain-storming.

http://www.trg.soton.ac.uk/research/TVNetwork/reports/report3.htm

Try pages 15-26 of the above report. You might enjoy them. It was a fun project.

[sarah-mum.livejournal.com]

Oi! I resemble that remark.

[sarah-mum.livejournal.com]

Farm for Epileptics. featuring the eco-friendly threshing machine - Corn in one end, strobe light in the other and epis in the middle.

[goth-twiglet.livejournal.com]

It's all a bit Atlantis really, but with railways instead of water:-

[reddragdiva]

God love city planning. Even when they try to design a city to be interesting, they always make it a sanitised version of interesting then are surprised when it doesn't work.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

I would guess so. The Radiant City was a popular idea with the utopian Modernists, it seems.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Quite. All the planned ones come out boring, apart from Paris. For the sake of wossname, (and cribbing wholesale from 'The geography of nowhere' again) I think the US notions of city blocks and zoning, while coming from the best of intentions (the pre-railway New York sounds like a grim place to live), have essentially tied their economy to oil. Imagining London or Bristol (or pretty much any European city) w/o the car isn't a horrible concept. The world would be quieter and filled with fit cheerful people. I just can't see it working outside of the older east coast US cities.

[reddragdiva]

You have inspired me.

[eljaydaly.livejournal.com]

I live in one of the biggest and oldest and can't imagine it working even here. Which is depressing -- not only for the noise and unfitness and lack of cheer, but because gas prices are through the roof. To fill my car now costs me three times what it cost me in 2002. I was hoping it would drive people to bicycle, but I'm still not seeing much evidence of it.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

That's a great shame.

It's been regularly said that the congestion charge in London was the first thing that worked. And the Tube bombings.

I also note that I was living in London when we had the fuel blockades a few years ago, and by the second and third day in the place was becoming (relatively) peaceful and friendly.

I don't know what the answers are, though there's some Plot in my head that plays around with a lot of this stuff. That's probably why I'm banging on about it so much.