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.
mailrooms are useless for food delivery
You’ve clearly never had snailmail stew
I don’t think DoorDash offers that…
Seems like an easy problem to fix. Have a designated meeting/drop location
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.
low rise and mid rise are ugly as hell compared to densely packed high rise buildings or single family homes
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.
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.
If I lived on the top floor I would place the order from the comfort of my home then immediately start walking down stairs and by the time I got there the order will have probably arrived.
stairs
Everyday is leg day!
Stairs are normal to me. Far be it for me to interfere with anyone else’s feeble worldview.
Hey man I love stairs! But for, say, 20+, that’s pretty significant
E: floor 20+ I mean
Yeah, man. Stairs were the shit. But once I turned 20, I knew it was just too much. Not a sustainable lifestyle anymore…
Lol, exactly what led me to make the edit/addition there
Three days later
They probably have a number of diverse food kitchens in there, and would most likely “buy local”, anyway. That building being basically a slum, I doubt that there is much delivery from the outside.
Mailroom aside, if a delivery guy is fine crossing a city with 20/30k people horizontally in traffic, I don’t really see why this is such a bad thing when you break it down.
I count 35 floors, so you can cut it down to ~850 people on each floor after an elevator ride, and a building like this will probably have at least 4 elevator areas sectioning the building almost equally.
So you’re down to about ~210 people after entering the right side of the building, that’s like a big street / small neighborhood (and how far you have to walk should scale closely to that). And with this much people in one area you can really easily batch deliveries. And a delivery place will probably settle quite closely to such a hub of people anyways.
Also: big buildings usually have cargo elevators. It would be insanity to “door-dash” every last package on the passenger cars, limited by what could be carried or lugged on a hand-truck. Instead, they would load up the whole car from the truck on a loading dock, then deliver one floor at a time, start/stopping the car where needed.
at least 4 elevator areas sectioning the building almost equally.
each elevator lobby also has its own address. It’s less confusing than you’d imagine, and also any delivery drivers will have been there before.
Luckily each unit has a number that indicates the floor and each floor probably has a floormap near the elevator, so you won’t have to go knocking on random doors until you find the person.
Same thing for making deliveries in cities of several million. If there’s an effective addressing system, it’s usually trivial to find the destination, or at least to get very close to it and switch to “ok wtf is going on here with the last bit of this address?” mode.
China: Bulldozes Kowloon Walled City
Also China:
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.
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.
I honestly think commieblocks don’t look that bad.
The problem is that, for the property owning class, the unaffordability of homes is broadly a feature and not a bug.
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.
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.
We need mass housing, but also a focus on aesthetics.
I noticed my area has done a nice job after visiting Chicago. Chicago was concrete, roads and parking lots, and barren. Fly back to metro Vancouver and even worst neighborhood has beautitul construction, parks, trees and flower beds everywhere.I mean I agree that Vancouver is one of the most beautiful cities in the world, but it’s also one of the most expensive! Even a bachelor apartment in the gnarliest blocks on the downtown east side is over $2k/mo.
Yeah I meant an hour out of Vancouver, Metro Vancouver… But still pricey
We need mass housing, but also a focus on aesthetics.
I noticed my area has done a nice job after visiting Chicago. Chicago was concrete, roads and parking lots, and barren. Fly back to metro Vancouver and even worst neighborhood has beautitul construction, parks, trees and flower beds everywhere.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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I’m from Poland.
I’m talking Soviet-style, grey concrete commieblocks
So the commieblocks are always:
- few minutes walk from school, kindergarten, grocery, doctor’s office, post, dentist and bus stops
- sane distance from another block
- either surrounded by good greenery, or next to a park
- surprisingly good quality
- small elevator
- little parking spaces
Vs “modern” blocks:
- large elevator
- the blocks are so close, if you open your window you could pee in the neighbours coffee cup
- usually surrounded by pavement, cement, or car parking
- better at noise reduction
- you’re more likely to need a car to go to doctor’s office or drop your kids off, or go to the grocer.
To me the ideal is the commie era urban planning with modern techniques, but that’s uncommon.
in Lithuania we call commie block neighbourhood as “sleeping neighbourhood” since they were built far away from industrial areas where you would do your work and come back to sleep and nothing else. Many of these places also lack other infrastructure besides schools. But i agree with you on everything you listed
Commie urban planning with modern blocks, exactly my ideal too
Though for density the blocks being close together is beneficial.
Oh and I’d like to see more ground floors of residential buildings used for services. Have a dentist in your building, small grocery store in the next one and a restaurant in another. Though I do think that’s becoming more common with new builds here in Estonia.
When I was in the Czech Republic a lot of old commie blocks were painted and surrounded by grass with wide passages between them.
It was incredible compared to what I saw in Poland or where my Russian friends lived. (they managed to flee the country)
Depending on the city in Poland they might also be either painted in pastel colors or there might be murals on them.
Example:
And the wide green corridors between them were a constant feature as far as I know (at least I don’t remember NOT seeing wide grass + trees + some flowers corridors between 'em).
I do agree that Czechs picked better colors for it and keeps them fresher.
Betcha the delivery guy delivers for one or more from many takeout food spots that are probably located inside the building itself.
So it’s Peachtree towers in MegaCity 1.
Judge Dredd approves.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The sewage pipe at the bottom must be ginormous
Sewage? …pipe?
where is the parking
They are not going anywhere. It’s self-contained.
where’s the airport then?
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
