I had some ideas related to urban design and I posted them to an art website I frequent, but I didn't get much of a response, so I thought I'd post them here as well. My first attempt to post it had a link, which from what I read as a new user it will likely not be posted, so I'm copying and pasting it here as well. I can imagine the ideas would be controversial, so frankly in a way I'm surprised I haven't gotten a response, but here they are anyways (oh and as a note, I don't actually have a background in design, but I come up with ideas for just about everything all the time, which is why I'm running them by people who might hopefully be able to critique and possibly make use of them):
I live in a city that has a dark sky ordinance, which means that street lights can never be bright enough to make the stars overly difficult to see. That got me thinking, if I were to design a city, how would I make it different from the way cities currently are? Now, there are a lot of things to consider in a design like this, but what I'm going to present are some ideas that if well researched and planned, could be feasible concepts.
The first thing I would do is to put all roads AND all parking lots underground. Walk ways and bike lanes would still be above ground, meaning that these groups would actually be safer because they would be less likely to be hit by cars. Not only that, but they would be able to breath fresher air because they wouldn't have to worry about breathing in the gases from cars. Those gases would be channeled through filters in the walls of the tunnel. Those walls would also have padding to absorb shock of car crashes, similar to race tracks. Made with the right material, it could also absorb some of the sounds from the cars in order to produce quieter tunnels. These tunnels and parking lots could also double as fallout shelters or shelters from more common threats like fires or tornadoes. Going back to the pedestrians and even for people in their homes, they would also be able to enjoy more piece and quiet because these things would be underground. Meanwhile above ground, more plants could be grown over the roads, so after the initial resources used to make the change, it could actually help to mitigate global warming. Especially since like I said, there would be filters in the tunnel to clean gases out of the air. Some of the gained land above ground could also be used for wind sailing as a form of travel in some of the windier cities. Another consideration of putting the roads and parking lots underground is that animals aren't as smart as humans are and often die simply by getting hit by a vehicle. Some smarter animals are learning to avoid them, but it would help out many species by eliminating the threat altogether. On that note actually, the outer layer of the tunnel should probably be made out of some material that is self repairing or of a level of density and strength to withstand the threat of many bugs possibly attempting to eat it. Note: Putting the parking lots underground also leaves room for putting them underneath buildings and thereby saving a lot of space.
Secondly, primarily again to do with sound, I would limit train and air traffic to a short distance from the city. These companies often already provide shuttle services to their customers, so they could just extend it to giving rides all the way out of the city. It would be a slower system, but it would also save them money that would otherwise be spent on more airplane fuel. On those lines, it would be an unorthodox idea if some of that money was used for things like, paying employers to not fire workers that were late purely because of this shuttle system slowing them down.
Thirdly, buildings would all be designed to be rounder. This is going back to the windier cities again, because as loud as wind is, some of the noise comes from the fact that it's basically crashing into the flat surfaces of walls, rather than just gliding right around them. They would probably hold up better against wind if they were made that way anyways because of the fact that it would reduce the amount of wind pressure applied to the building, thus reducing the stress on the "joints" where the walls connect. Perhaps there is a material that could be added to the walls that absorbs more sound as well, again further quieting the sound of the wind.
Fourthly, and I know this one would be much more controversial than the others because it would be a modification to the people inside of it rather than the city itself, but I would put in a plan to somewhat gradually genetically modify people to be smaller and smaller. Same proportions as whatever they have now, but just smaller. They genetically modify food to be larger, but I feel like that's a backwards way of going, because that takes up more land or fits less food on the same amount of land. If there's only so much space we have on the earth, than although we can certainly continue plans to get into outer space in order to gain more land on another planet, in some ways it would be more economically feasible to just make people smaller so that they don't require as much space to live in. A lifestyle that generally produces smaller people would also have to be encouraged. Sort of like how they make thin seem desirable in advertisements. Height is usually what's also encouraged right now, but a shortness of stature would be better. The gradual reduction in size of the people would be coupled with a gradual reduction in the size of products and buildings. Bugs would be larger threats to houses and people then, but we're already always in battle with them anyways, so we would just continue to fight them off as a predator like we do now. Some of the larger species of animals that are beginning to suffer because of their size would also be genetically modified for smaller stature in order to protect them, like bears. In fact, with how much we see them as a threat at their current size, they would probably do better being quite a bit smaller than they are now. Otherwise we will continue to see them as a large threatening creature and keep killing them off.
Lastly, since all government controls or changes like these run into the problem of causing some trouble to someone or some business in some way or other, there could be a certain amount of money, time, and people allocated to addressing the concerns of the people, rather than simply pushing all these things to happen and then watching things fall apart because they don't adjust well.
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Originally posted by Sheba
