Comments by "JohnDoe" (@JohnDoe-my5ip) on "Stewart Hicks" channel.

  1. Hot take: I’m glad it was torn down, it’s ugly AF. Like most Frank Lloyd Wright buildings.
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  2. Unless you’re constrained by the water table, why build a skybridge instead of an underground city? Sky bridges can be neat, but they can also be pretty rotten examples of privatizing the commons. If you put that floating cruise ship in a temperate climate, it would be seen (correctly) as the rich stealing the sun from everyone else. In Singapore, it works because it’s unbearably hot and people actually like shadows and shade.
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  3. The biggest issue comes from network science IMO. Travel times from the center of The Line are halved. Everyone has to go thru the middle, creating a bottleneck. Ignoring geographical constraints, why wouldn’t you wrap the ends and make it a ring city to balance the load? Then you can build radial lines, develop the center. And now we’re back to a much more familiar city layout…
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  4. I think there’s some validity to the idea that 40 years is the point where designs are least appreciated, but it’s a bit reductionist. The worst examples get torn down and there’s survivorship bias at play. Yes, even for a Frank Lloyd Wright. Dare I say, especially for a FLW? Most overrated designer ever IMO. I just don’t get it. We see all the Brooklyn brownstones that survived 100 years, and don’t see all the tenement slums that were torn down. 40 years is the point where a low quality building reaches its natural end of life and is torn down. I also think certain eras have more timeless designs than others. The 80s designs were objectively worse than the 50s-70s. The people who made it were firmly in the greed is good, consumerist sheep mindset. Never mind if you’ll hate it in five years, just throw it out and buy something new… The stick built 5-over-1 “gentrification building” of 2016-today is going to age like milk compared to buildings from 1993-2008. Gentrification buildings are made to be condemned no later than the mortgage payoff date. Build it for next to nothing, break even with $2500/mo rents in 5 years tops.
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