I've written about this subject before but I can't resist another try. Are there any professionals more clueless than architects? Why are they always foisting sterility (above) on us? Can't they get it through their heads that no one wants to live that way?
My guess is that most people would prefer a nice place on a quiet street (above) to an apartment in a megastructure.
Even so you have to admit that city living has some advantages. All those bright people living in close quarters! Anything is possible in a place that! My prediction is that in my own lifetime we'll see holographic robots and dinosaurs roving the city streets, visible to fans of holographic art who wear the right glasses.
I think people would much rather live in an aquarium than visit one. Big cities should have an abundance of everything that's interesting in the world. Let's have sea turtles and giant squids swimming in places that we visit frequently.
Both cities and suburbs should be full of bridges: iron bridges, wooden bridges, covered bridges, Chinese and Japanese bridges, high and low foot bridges, safe bridges, unsafe bridges...and there should be something interesting below the bridges. Waterways? Rapids? Urban kayak canals? Trees? Animals? Trolley cars? Waterfalls? Houses?
Let's plant giant trees and have tree houses (above)! I want to live in the Tarzan treehouse in Disneyland!
And let's figure out a way to bring exotic animals into urban environments. I'm tired of seeing dogs, cats and pigeons. I want free-roving monkeys and lions and ostriches. If we put our minds to it, we can figure out a way to make that happen, can't we? I mean some way that doesn't require capturing animals in the wild.
Let's have fun transportation! Can we take a submarine or a sailboat or a ferry to work instead of a bus?
Horseback riding is just about the most fun transportation there is. Can we make that possible for millions of suburbanites?
Can we have real, urban transportation like the kind we find in water parks? Can rapidly flowing water be made to channel through cities?
Why did we do away with trestles and steam trains? People like stuff like that! Can we bring these to the suburbs and cities?
Ever since I heard that Bangcock (spelled right?) uses urban kayak canals as a means of serious transportation I've been chomping at the bit to see them. Is that really possible? We have to wait for floods (above) to get our urban kayaking in.
Horse-drawn coaches of all kinds make great transportation. Not for the freeways of course, but they'd be great in the suburbs. And while we're at it, let's have affordable convertable sports cars.
Vincent said weird hippie vehicles slowly cruised all over the Burning Man festival area. They went slow enough that anyone could get on or off without the vehicle stopping. Maybe the hippies are on to something.
Somehow we've got to make cheap, safe, silent private airplanes available for urban use. I want to explore the caverns in cotton-candy clouds then land in my backyard in time for dinner. I guess if everybody did that the planes would blot out the sun. I haven't the slightest idea how to make this practical. Airplane buses, maybe?
A while back I read that one way to keep jobs from being outsourced is to make American cities so exciting and attractive that employers and skilled workers won't want to leave them, even if they can make more money some place else. Let's put that idea to the test!
