In reality buildings like this have a mailroom where packages are dropped.
Correct, and the drop-off and pick-up is done through QR codes over WeChat, here is a (German) documentary about this very building showing the process:
Problem is that mailrooms are useless for food delivery drivers.
Seems like an easy problem to fix. Have a designated meeting/drop location
mailrooms are useless for food delivery
You’ve clearly never had snailmail stew
Sorry mate, elevator is out of service because someone pulled the fire alarm
Imagine the parking required if this were in the states
I long for mixed used housing without an automobile parking requirement in an area with ubiquitous mass transit.
Certain areas of NYC is what you want. Expensive though. I lived a block from a 15 minute train ride to work at one point. Every type of food you could want within 15 minute walk. Bus up the block took you to Costco.
Maybe you could make part of the rent A. First floor car rental place. Mass transit for everyday stuff and maybe a thousand cars for immediate rental for people that need to do strange things. Include box trucks pickups, yada, yada.
The building would probably extend like eight football fields underground
eight football fields
How much is that in recumbent giraffes?
probably half of Texas
Something weird and amazing about China is the changes in verticality. You can walk into a building off a plaza, take the elevator DOWN ten levels…and walk out onto a street.
I remember watching some stuff about cities where it feels like you went out on street level but really you’re still XX floors up.
Odds are it was a video about Chongqing. It’s an engineering miracle that a city of that scale can even exist on such challenging terrain.
You can do exactly the same in Wellington, New Zealand. There’s a bunch of buildings with street frontage on the Terrace and Lambton Quay, with something like ten floors of difference.
There’s something incredibly cyberpunk about that. Give it a few hundred years and people won’t know where the bottom is where sunlight never reaches.
some cities are built on mountains.
If you can put a city in one building that beats driving in snow
You can also just build trains
whynotboth.jpg
and trams and buses and subways…
I want to see dead malls turned into mini cities.
Oh my sweet fuck yes this is exactly what I had in mind.
The sewage pipe at the bottom must be ginormous
Sewage? …pipe?
If there is tofu dreg in the construction, the architect and builders are gonna charged with a genocide. (if building collapse, thousands die)
And this is not because American propaganda or whatever. My family is from mainland China and my mother told me about all those tofu-dreg stuff. To be very clear, this is not the people’s fault, its not individuals being “lazy”, its a systematic issue. There’s so much corruption and bribery.
Food safety is another one of the big issues. For a supposedly “socialist” government, they sure are doing quite a lot regulating food, by “a lot” I mean jack shit.
I’m suspecting if my older brother is being an asshole because he lived there like approximately 5 years longer there and suffered some food poisoning (like maybe lead) or something and totally has zero empathy. Parents are also shitty. I mean there has got to be lead or something.
(No I did not live in one of these mega buildings lol, mine was more like a 10 story building, no elevators, lackluster of safety barriers. I hate that place lol, so much bad memories of my abusive older brother.)
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that China is more capitalist than the United States right now
Exactly lol, this is what I’ve been saying.
CCP is extremely reluctant to provide any kind of social welfare, in the belief welfare will make its citizens lazy
That’s my parent’s view on welfare. These views carried over to the US too. Its why they see a headline about “illegal immigrants” to the US and they start blaming welfare and think that “illegal” immigrants are somehow getting welfare and they think its taking away resources from legal immigrants. Its why they think me having depression is “weakness”. My mother told me she hates autistic people because she thinks they are “dangerous”. Like people with disabilities get would disowned by a lot of parents. If you have any disabilities, you don’t get viewd as a person, but a 廢柴 (I’d say it’s equivalent to “useless eater”). Its so messed up.
China is more capitalist than the US?
Is this the new liberal line: capitalism is bad but China is doing it more than us, so we’re good?
Read some god damn Marxist theory, holy shit.
Food safety is another one of the big issues.
They cracked down on people cleaning cooking oil and reselling it as food oil again, they executed the people responsible for poisonous baby formula, they seem to do something when it becomes noisy.
I got mild food poisoning in China less frequently than in Korea or Vietnam.
I can’t compare to Japan, because while the food safety seems very good, its not because of regulation, restaurants there don’t even have regular inspections.
It’s locust mentality, same thing happens in India or any country with high density + a culture of low trust.
If the CCP wasn’t headed by morons like Mao (and Xi by extension, who for some unfathomable reason wants to emulate him) who brought the destruction of Confucius teachings and heritage through the cultural revolution and terrible economic policies, they had a baseline culture to foster a more cohesive and trusting society.
“800 million people living in the ruin of the old world and the mega structures of the new one…”
Awesome OST intensifies
Think it’s composed by Hans, Goransson, Jackman, or Djawadi?
We have builds like this, but not as big in Taiwan. They almost always have an area downstairs that the food is placed so people can come down and get it.
I imagine they also have the same thing in China.
D’you place the order before or after heading downstairs?
I order first, then wait until the UberEATS or food panda person says they are close and take the elevator down to get it. Usually I take down my trash at the same time since the trash area is close to the main area.
We need this in North America if we ever want to solve the housing crisis tbh. I’m talking Soviet-style, grey concrete commieblocks. Yes the buildings are ugly, probably lack amenities, cheaply constructed and not well maintained, but we desperately need cheap, dense housing if we’re going to bring down the costs. Building more luxury Manhattan condos and suburban single family abominations does nothing to bring down housing prices.
We don’t even necessarily need those, fucking row townhouses like old Chicago or New York would be a massive improvement in space usage and density alone. Just modify the design to have a garage in the back and make the alleyway larger. Hell you could narrow the front road if you do it right.
Hell you
couldshould narrow the front roadif you do it right.and turn it into a pedestrian plaza with a few shops and restaurants.While I like the enthusiasm we are still talking about the US here, even just for controlled semitruck or emergency service access it would still need to be wide enough for say a firetruck even compensation with utility alleyways and back end garages. But you could set it up to be relatively easily converted to such a thing if the required modifications to infrastructure and emergency services are done, but even then it’d be twenty years off even on a rapid timescale.
To be fair, I didn’t say make it impassible, I said narrow it. It’s easy enough to make a pedestrian plaza that a box truck or a firetruck can fit down. It works in the majority of the cities and towns in Scandinavia. They’re not going to build affordable rowhomes or high density housing in the states anytime soon so this is literally allll wishcasting from top to bottom.
Fair enough, though my point was moreso to do with how absurdly massive American fire engines and semi-trucks there are smaller tanks. A Stuart tank from WW2 or fuck even a M60 Patton are smaller than a standard American fire engine.
Tanks are pretty small, even European fire engines are bigger.
What’s fucked up is that tanks get better frontal visibility than American pick up trucks lol
3-5 story housing with no parking works in France/Europe. No elevators/pools is huge cost savings. Room for cars ridiculously expensive where land is ridiculously expensive. Bikeable/walkable communities FTW. 5th story units would be cheaper, but young people need cheaper.
elevators are required for ada compliance
3 story houses/buildings exist without elevators. There is no proposal to outlaw ADA compliant buildings.
The percentage of poverty among people with disabilities is much higher than in the general population, so if you’re building for low-income you really need to make it accessible. Also there’s a lot of old folks who can walk, barely, but not climb stairs.
That’s how you create undesirable neighborhoods which eventually turn into ghettos. Many cities in Europe tried that and many of those neighborhoods quickly became unsafe and derelict. Like many of the banlieus in Paris or the Bijlmer in Amsterdam. Because people who eventually have the means to move out will leave asap. Nobody wants to settle in such a neighborhood. So only the poor and desperate stay. Which in turn means local business will leave as well.
I agree with the general mission of FuckCars, but it always seems full of people who don’t care about anything of what goes into a prosperous city that isn’t the amount of cars on the road.
Look at how Vienna works. Contrary to other places, they did government housing blocks really well there.
- The blocks are spread throughout the whole city. That means, there’s no really bad place where all the undesirables are concentrated. This mixes the population. For example, I went to a school in one of the inner districts. In my class we had fresh immigrants that could hardly speak German. We had kids from poor families. We had middle class kids. We had kids who’s parents were immigrants but who were born there. We had a kid who’s parents played in the Vienna Philharmonic. We had two really rich kids descending from former nobility. We had a kid who was the son of a well-known lawyer.
- The blocks do have an income limit when you get the flat, but that limit is very high (it easily covers everyone in the middle class) and it only applies when you move in. If your income increases afterwards you can still stay in that flat and still pay the same as anyone else. That means that you got a decent mix of people living in these blocks. There’s not only poor people there.
- Most of the blocks are actually really nice. There’s parks between the blocks with nice, old trees. Many of the blocks even have swimming pools or other special extras.
Check out for example this one here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alterlaa
It can be done well. It doesn’t have to be crap.
Yeah but that’s different from what the poster above is suggesting. They literally said cheaply build and no amenities.
Yeah, there aren’t really any Estonians moving to Lasnamäe. Some live there because it’s cheap, but you’re going to have to speak Russian to talk to your neighbours. Of course if you do, you can get drugs fairly easily, which is a plus.
It’s not actually unsafe or super criminal though, it’s just very undesirable and tends to attract the lower strata.
The problem is that, for the property owning class, the unaffordability of homes is broadly a feature and not a bug.
For the property investor class. I assure you, the average homeowner isn’t happy about the idea of increased property tax, nor having to spend more if the want to upgrade to a bigger home.
Of course if you’ve got a mortgage and property prices go up, you can leverage that into and easier upgrade because you can use the increased equity in your property as collateral. I know someone who got a huge boost during COVID that way. Tiny studio to 3 bedroom. But mortgage payment went up 2 or 3 times too, so that doesn’t work if property becomes unaffordable altogether.
Cheap construction and poor maintainability is more expensive in the long run, I think it’s possible to create affordable housing while still having longevity and a reasonable access to amenities in mind.
Yeah but I’d also like to see such huge buildings in the middle of nature. Imagine 10.000 people with their own daycare, school or even medic / doctor surrounded by fields and food forests so they can produce their own food. Generates it’s own power, centralized super efficient heat storage system for winter, cleans up it’s own water etc. And have a fast mass transport to the next hub, like a chain of such buildings a few miles apart linking to the next big city. That’s my solar punk.
It’s basically a whole city in a building. The big advantage for this is that the city is not taking up massive amounts of space.
American Fork, Utah, has 33k inhabitants on 19 square kilometres. The building in the OP has 20-30k inhabitants on 0.04 square kilometres, which would mean that if you house all of American Fork like that, you’d get between 18.92 and 18.96 of untouched nature in return.
Yeah exactly. Highly compact and energy efficient living while still living in nature and luxuriously, and little large scale infrastructure.
Restoring nature would be a major way to fight climate change too. Of course you’d want fields lined by hedgerows (Bocage?) and food forests to produce the food those 10-30k inhabitants needs right outside, so you save transportation energy costs. And it’s self sufficient at least in areas with water sources nearby or rainfall to capture.
I can also imagine a “mini-monorail” with single seats that run on a simple metal beam build by a welding robot to connect such buildings and transport people, carry internet and power.
I’ve seen fancy ideas for “arcologies” in cities but never one in nature with enough food calorie production right outside. I’d honestly love to live in a skyscaper where each apartment has a beautiful view on unspoiled countryside.
It’s kinda crazy to me that people want to “live in nature” and what they do is live in a suburb with their paved roads and fenced lawns that are biologically dead. They have some grass and that’s it. Nothing lives in there.
I think that’s where hyper-individualism leads us when people don’t want to share spaces but want their own little castle. But sharing spaces and parks would be vastly more cost and energy efficient (so I assume these countryside arcologies would also be very cheap way to live). Also you’d want an association that is geared to be more democratic than typical HOAs are (they are designed to improve and maintain property values for the whole project instead of living quality or utility). So even the individualism of suburbs are a kind of scam.
I honestly think commieblocks don’t look that bad.
What’s even the point of living if we have to live like packages sitting in a warehouse? Living for the sake of being alive sounds like torture.
I’d much rather a cleaner healthier city scape to live in than a slightly bigger personal home space. I’m a garden person though so i prefer to be outdoors.
Ok this is a soft rebuttal because I agree we need to fix affordability asap, but is intensification really the right path?
Like something else needs to be fixed or these super condos will just enable politicians to import even more people to maintain the unaffordability.
Do you live in an apartment, a condo, a townhome, a home or…?
I live in a wildly overpriced studio apartment. I would jump at the chance to move into a concrete block apartment with no AC and limited hot water if it took $500 off my monthly rent.
if it took $500 off my monthly rent.
You think it would take $500 off your rent? Lol, they’re not going to make things cheaper, just life more miserable.
Wouldnt that just be supply and demand? Why would less comfortable housing not be less expensive?
If people want it, they’ll pay more. If they don’t, it will end up like the projects in Chicago.
Aren’t the projects subsidised housing? I would assume that most people living there would want out if they had a chance
How much do you currently pay and how much do you think these commie block apartments would cost? Because where I’m from, a 1br commie block apartment is as much as if not more than a modern studio apartment.
The lack of AC and poor ventilation really show in the summer too.
Apartment blocks are nice, but I don’t want to live in the commie ones, they suck in many ways.
Neighbors noises final boss.
Bugs and smells too
That’s my entire town in one building
that’s 2 to 3 cities worth of people
I’m always confused by where people draw the line between a city and a town
How do people live like this. Id jump.
Its sad. There’s enough land on earth for every adult to have 1.5 acres.
We just need to wipe out all the animals and forests first, but we’re on track for everyone to have their own real soon tho.
If you want your 1.5 acres, you better not complain that the bus comes twice a day and the only doctor in the area retired 3 years ago.
Bus?
They’re saying you’ll be living in a remote place with no regular bus
I was joking.
I already dont have a bus where I live haha
You can have 1.5 acres of Sahara desert. I’ll pass…
Iunno, ignoring concerns about the building being structurally sound, this seems pretty great. Assuming there are some amenities inside as well most of what you need is close by, and after going out the (admittedly probably 2-3 minutes away) front door you’re greeted by a small park.
20 to 30 thousand? That’s a pretty big margin for error.
They probably don’t know the actual occupancy. Some apartments might be empty. Some might be designed for 3 people but only 1 lives there. 30k is probably the design capacity
If the design capacity was 25000, it would mean that an assumption that 20% possible error would get you that range.
That seems like a decent “outside approximation” range. Yeah some 3 person apartments will have only 1 person, but some 1 persons will have 3
High density housing bad and dystopian. Homelessness good. Now build more single family homes with lawns pls. /s
Low-rise to mid-rise high-density housing, sure, but high-rises are bad, yes. They cost more to maintain, they either prevent adequate sunlight at lower levels or need to be spaced apart wide enough to defeat the point, and they tend to be worse for social isolation and anti-social behaviour.
High rises give way to urban density and walkable neighborhoods. Any costs in maintenance is easily offset by freeing hundreds of people from the costs of car ownership, medical costs due to sedentary lifestyles in unwalkable suburbs, provide more affordable and accessible community funded childcare, better access to healthy foods than in food deserts enforced by zoning, and reduction in homelessness related crimes.
Nothing is more socially isolating than car-centric suburban hell where anyone too young or too old to drive are deemed ineligible to leave their house independently and participate in society. Nothing creates anti-social behavior like forcing homelessness and desperation onto people who cannot afford to live in cities that are lacking in affordable public housing.
Speaking as someone who has lived in both urban highrise public housing and suburban hells in different parts of the world, the most socially isolating experience by far has been living in car-depedent suburbs with piss poor public transit, especially as someone who cannot drive often. Every will eventually become disabled and cannot drive. It’s just a matter of when. When that time comes, you better hope you can afford a retirement home or to have someone drive you, because if you can’t, you’re stuck right where you are. And that times sooner the less walking you find the time to do in a day.
Walkable neighbourhoods with excellent public transport are perfectly (and I would bet more cost-effectively) possible with low and mid rises as you can with high rises. Good examples are Barcelona and Paris.
America’s weird zoning laws are a problem unto themselves. Here in the Old World it’s perfectly normal to have a row of shops and cafes and whatnot in the middle of the suburbs or on the bottom floors of a block of flats. That is the biggest factor in creating walkable neighbourhoods.
Edit: I accidentally a word.
low rise and mid rise are ugly as hell compared to densely packed high rise buildings or single family homes
Have to agree to disagree. Most of the prettiest areas of London consist of Edwardian mansion blocks and Georgian terraces.
