Thread: Suburban Europe
View Single Post
  #48  
Old Posted Oct 26, 2010, 5:55 PM
Swede's Avatar
Swede Swede is offline
YIMBY co-founder
 
Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: sol.III.eu.se.08
Posts: 6,751
Quote:
Originally Posted by opius View Post
That would mean 50% still prefermodernist suburbs.
Anyway I'm rather sceptical to this "urban living" ideas, there are many areas with traditional XIX century urbanism in Europe with half empty streets and very few shops/cafes ifany because they are too far from the center and not popular enough. New Urbanism seem to ignore changes that happen in human lifestyle in the last 100 years, they seem to think that if we build like they did in XIX century Paris or XVII century Italy people would start to lead similar lifestyle which is quite naive if you ask me and I don't know many examples where it actually worked.
50% is my point! 50%! not 85% and growing, which is the ratio in Stockholm. Also, the vast majority who want suburbia want the single family house, not the concrete tower blocks.
As for 19thCentury urbanism... yeah, it has its flaws, which comes from it being from the 19th century and not adapted to changes in technology and lifestyles. For instance, inner city Stockohlm at one point had 100 movie screens (mostly in 1-screen theaters). Since then not only do most people have tvs, other pasttimes also take up our time, cost of going to the movies has gone up (gah!) and... inner city Stockholm has about 1/3rd less people living in it! and that's with the moderinst additions on the edges that count towards the administrative units.
I'm no proponent of pure 19thC urbanism, I'm in favour of urbanism (and no, suburban ain't a sub-set of urban IMO) which is a wider category. I prefer taller buildings than the pre-elevator norms, I prefer more office spaces included in residential areas (and residentials in office areas). Building density has to go up to make our cities come alive today since we live on so many more square meters per person at home and at work.


Quote:
Originally Posted by opius View Post
You can have those in modernist districts too, even if prefab technology didn't allow for too much commercial space you can still build some free-standing structures for this purpose.
lol. All I picture is the dozens upon dozens of now-failed mini-malls, suburban zquares and cultural centers strewn all over Sweden (and Europe), standing there all covered in tags and 20th incarnation of the local grocery in 40 years, surrounded by concrete towers of one shape or another strewn in patterns (that look nice from 10km up) on parking surfaces in a forest.
__________________
Forumers met so far:
Huopa, Nightsky, Jo, wolkenkrabber, ThisSideofSteinway, jacksom, New Jack City, LeCom, Ellatur, Jan, Dennis, Ace, Bardamu, AtlanticaC5, Ringil, Dysfunctional, stacey, karakhal, ch1le, Hviid, staff, kjetilab, Þróndeimr, queetz, FREKI, sander, Blue Viking, nomels, Mantas, ristov, Rafal_T, khaan, Chilenofuturista, Jonte Myra, safta20, AW, Pas, Jarmo K, IceCheese, Sideshow_Bob, sk, Ingenioren, Ayreonaut, Silver Creations, Hasse78, Svartmetall
Reply With Quote