[Darklogic112358]

I find thought experiments to be highly entertaining, though I've never openly shared any of them with others, so I figured I'd start a thread about this.

There's been a lot of development of new megacities these past few years, fueled by globalization and shaped by a desire to be green, efficient, and technologically cutting-edge. In the spirit of Plato and Thomas Moore (except on the scale of a city, not a whole society), what would the perfect megacity be like?

What would it's highest priorities be?
How would it implement them?
What would set it apart in terms of engineering and planning?
What would the likely culture be to emerge from this?
What problems might this city face?

[mieu]

Love this thread.

	Originally Posted by Darklogic112358 To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	What would it's highest priorities be?

I spend a lot of time commuting in, out and through cities. I'm a stones throw from NYC, I live in a small 'safe' city (Danbury), and have frequented a large 'unsafe' city (Hartford). I'd throw my chips in and say one of the highest priorities would be effective and sustainable transit. I'm certainly of the opinion that roads and cars are obsolete--push them to the outskirts or the industrial parks for hauling freight only. Implement a subway-esque bullet train, underground, with modular cars and specific lines for transporting passengers or delivering products. Lanes for shorter 'hops' closer to the surface, longer trips deeper underground. Subterranean to avoid inclement weather delays and damage

Or just invent teleportation already, sheesh.

[Darklogic112358]

Originally Posted by mieu To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

Love this thread. I spend a lot of time commuting in, out and through cities. I'm a stones throw from NYC, I live in a small 'safe' city (Danbury), and have frequented a large 'unsafe' city (Hartford). I'd throw my chips in and say one of the highest priorities would be effective and sustainable transit. I'm certainly of the opinion that roads and cars are obsolete--push them to the outskirts or the industrial parks for hauling freight only. Implement a subway-esque bullet train, underground, with modular cars and specific lines for transporting passengers or delivering products. Lanes for shorter 'hops' closer to the surface, longer trips deeper underground. Subterranean to avoid inclement weather delays and damage Or just invent teleportation already, sheesh.

Yeah, I'll never forget my trips to London. I don't know (relatively speaking) how punctual its transit system is compared to, say, Japan. However it was great to be able to get from one part of the city to another in about 10-15 minutes.

Personally though, I hope that cars would always have a place, just so long as they were made considerably smaller, and electric. If cars were designed to hold two inline and have electric motors with a top speed around 100 mph they would be perfect. You could have built-in sensors that provide a constant stream of real-time data to a central database that then feeds back traffic patterns to the cars, which could advise the drivers on the best routes. At least until technology allows smart cars that can drive themselves.

People could still have the option of a mass-transit system, but at least this way they would still be able to enjoy the benefits of driving, whether they just want the freedom of driving themselves, are too introverted for a mass-transit system, or just want to go longer-distances into the country. I've read some articles in the past about the rapidly-diminishing returns of a bigger mass-transit system (anybody know about this???) so I wonder if a system that used both mass-transit and personal transportation would be the most efficient in the long-run.

There was a Wired magazine article a while back about a guy who was working on a theoretical alternative. I don't remember the details too well but it was basically about having a universal electric grid, and the price of cars was ultra-cheap. The expense would be in renting batteries at distribution stations that had a constant supply of fully-charged ones, so you wouldn't have to leave a car plugged in.

Since green energy would be a high-priority in a perfect city, I think the answer there would have to do with greener electricity production driving the electric cars, though that gets into a whole other set of issues. Anybody heard of thorium?