• Grownbravy [they/them]
    ·
    edit-2
    3 years ago

    HyperdriveCity Nebraska would be a disaster to realize.

    For the space, someone will complain, there’s no avoiding it. Developers wont work if they cant make a profit, and that goes all the way down that chain. Ballooning prices so rents will never be $200 because everyone sees green and wants their piece.

    The prices of goods would be gouged if they knew where it was going. “200 palettes of drywall to the middle of nowhere? That’s 20% extra with a 15% delivery markup.”

    So the land could’ve been bought cheap, but developers ran the budget through the roof, so it’ll be just as expensive to build anywhere. The developer has to make a profit, so rental units are reconfigured to make more profit. Stores likely wont move in if there’s no chance to make a profit, and while units are $2000/month now, who’s making that much to live there? Certainly not the mall employees. So luxury rentals will sit empty. The malls will be empty because such a big city would have half-baked infrastructure because america. No one will go there, shop there, live there. The development will be a failure.

    Then walmart will buy it up to make a company town at a steep discount.

    • zifnab25 [he/him, any]
      ·
      3 years ago

      Might be worth mentioning that a bunch of these Chinese supercities are on the coast. Nebraska is... not.

      If you really want to turn, say, Omaha into a Supercity, the best approach is to do what Americans did a century ago to make it a Regular City. Build more rail infrastructure through it. Build more power and communication infrastructure through it. Chattanooga's municipal fiber plan transformed the city by offering businesses and residents a cheap and reliable utility. Austin's Google Fiber plan achieved similar results. Las Vegas grew up alongside the Hoover Dam (a big reason why it has so much relatively-cheap water and electricity). Houston's the 3rd largest city in the country because it has a port that can survive a hurricane and a bunch of its neighbors don't. Dallas? Rail. Chicago? Rail and canals that link up the Great Lakes. New York? Boston? LA? San Fransisco? All big port cities.

      All these cities are a consequence of their business infrastructure. And if you go down the line on Chinese cities - from Hong Kong to Shanghai to Beijing to Taipei - they all tell the same story. Junctures of critical infrastructure attract people like a magnet.

      How do new supercities get built? Typically, by staging a big transportation hub in their center.

      All the consumerist crap comes on later. It's the decorative fringe around an industrial core.

      • Collatz_problem [comrade/them]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Novosibirsk, one of the largest Russian cities, was built literally around railway bridge and station.

        • medium_adult_son [he/him]
          ·
          3 years ago

          Would building a high speed rail line (plus a bridge if needed) between two medium/large cities in the US work, if the new city could be created in between with a station?

          A lot of couples work in two different cities and often both deal with hellish commutes. I think they'd be willing to move to an apartment to avoid that.

          • sonartaxlaw [undecided,he/him]
            ·
            3 years ago

            That's called a commuter suburb, which is different (in that the people who live there don't tend to work there) but yeah that can happen. If you live on the east coast there are a lot of walkable towns that did that when trolley companies bought out land to run tracks to.

            • medium_adult_son [he/him]
              ·
              3 years ago

              I'm familiar with those, I live near a small "downtown" area that was a trolley suburb before the bad men took all the trolleys away.

              With high speed rail it could be further from the existing cities, and allow it to be built somewhere that isn't already suburbia (which now surrounds all US cities).

              I think if high speed rail corridors were to happen in the current Amerikkka, real estate speculators would buy up as much land as they could near any planned stations. Something to prevent that should be part of any proposed HSR.

              • SoyViking [he/him]
                ·
                3 years ago

                The ghouls running this world genuinely think that speculants buying up land near planned infrastructure is a good thing.

                Apparently along the way somebody decided that rising costs of real estate = good.

              • sonartaxlaw [undecided,he/him]
                ·
                3 years ago

                Yes, probably the best way to hendle that under capitalism would be for the transportation authority to own the land around stations so they can capture that land value back into the system but a lot of placed (Denver, off the top of my head) don't allow their authorities to own land beyond their right of way

      • star_wraith [he/him]
        ·
        edit-2
        3 years ago

        Given the unqualified success that Chattanooga's municipal internet has been, I'm kind of surprised at least a few other cities haven't tried to emulate it. Like, it's a ridiculously simple formula: offer people very cheap and very fast internet and you'll get businesses and people wanting to move there.

        I mean, I get why it doesn't happen, because the telecoms will fight tooth and nail to stop it. And they've pre-emptively bribed enough state governments to pass laws that ban cities and counties from making their own ISPs. Jesus America is so v cool, isn't it...

        • zifnab25 [he/him, any]
          ·
          3 years ago

          Given the unqualified success that Chattanooga’s municipal internet has been, I’m kind of surprised at least a few other cities haven’t tried to emulate it.

          For all the talk of being "business friendly", American politicians have been hell bent on strangling economic growth in the cradle at every opportunity. Because economic growth requires the democratization of capital and that's not good for the folks that bankroll elections.

        • NaturalsNotInIt [any]
          ·
          3 years ago

          People will move there when it's a unique benefit. When tons and tons of towns have free broadband, eventually it stops being a benefit and becomes a burden for local governments who are always strapped for cash because they're run by corrupt moguls or complete morons who read the shit that leftwing podcasters mock and take it as gospel.

          • invalidusernamelol [he/him]
            ·
            edit-2
            3 years ago

            I have no idea, I never watch those videos with sound lol

            Just rewatched it and that's fucking hilarious, what a weird music choice

        • sexywheat [none/use name]
          ·
          3 years ago

          I'm an occasional player of Cities Skylines and I love the concept of building the city around the transportation network and not the other way around. I'm not very good at the game so I'm still just kind of fucking around but the idea makes so much sense to me. I've had a hard time trying to squeeze in a rail transportation system into an already-existing city.

      • TeethOrCoat [none/use name]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Off topic, but the way you make it sound, it seems like Xinjiang has a bright future, being the gateway of BRI and all.

        • zifnab25 [he/him, any]
          ·
          3 years ago

          Fingers crossed. The sooner we're out of Afghanistan, the better they'll be.

    • sexywheat [none/use name]
      ·
      3 years ago

      There was a video posted here a few months back that showed how some of the buildings being built in China right now are just simply not possible under a free market system. Developers and investors want short term profits, but these Chinese buildings are planned for the long term and operate at a loss for the short term, but it's entirely on purpose.