I mean... we build up so that we dont have to build out... I wonder if anyone has done a square footage exercise where it shows how much land youd have to used up if skyscrapers werent a thing....
Yes, they did, in a way. I can't find the article at the moment, but some years ago a group of feminists had the exact same complaint: that cities are full of skyscrapers and skyscrapers are too phallic. So several city planning engineers set up the software they use to help them plan and design cities, and let the feminists design their own city. The only two requirements they had to meet were 1) the city had to be less than ten square miles (or something similar, there was a limit to how far out they could build), and 2) the city needed to house 100,000 people.
After several hours, the feminists unveiled their skyscraper free utopian city. It was a marvel of spacious parks, lakes, shopping centres and luxury homes. It also couldn't house more than around 10,000 people. As the city planners pointed out, the only things that live in parks are squirrels and homeless people. So the feminists went back to the drawing board, and replaced some of the parks with more luxury homes, increasing the population to around 15,000.
At this point, the city planners sat down with the feminists and started to make suggestions to increase the number of available houses. After many careful explanations, they came to the radical conclusion that more houses could built if they used apartment blocks, and the higher the apartment block, the more people could live there. You can't imagine how proud the feminists were when they hit upon the revolutionary idea of building very tall buildings full of apartments. It almost matched their disappointment when they realised they'd built a city full of skyscrapers.
That sounds like an interesting read. I tried searching for "feminist city planning experiment" and other similar keywords but couldn't find it. Do you happen to remember where you read it?
Unfortunately, I don't remember where I read it. I've just gone looking myself, but can't find it. Searching for keywords like you did just returns endless results similar to the OP. The article did have an accompanying video that basically boiled it down to what I posted above though.
I mean... we build up so that we dont have to build out... I wonder if anyone has done a square footage exercise where it shows how much land youd have to used up if skyscrapers werent a thing....
Yes, they did, in a way. I can't find the article at the moment, but some years ago a group of feminists had the exact same complaint: that cities are full of skyscrapers and skyscrapers are too phallic. So several city planning engineers set up the software they use to help them plan and design cities, and let the feminists design their own city. The only two requirements they had to meet were 1) the city had to be less than ten square miles (or something similar, there was a limit to how far out they could build), and 2) the city needed to house 100,000 people.
After several hours, the feminists unveiled their skyscraper free utopian city. It was a marvel of spacious parks, lakes, shopping centres and luxury homes. It also couldn't house more than around 10,000 people. As the city planners pointed out, the only things that live in parks are squirrels and homeless people. So the feminists went back to the drawing board, and replaced some of the parks with more luxury homes, increasing the population to around 15,000.
At this point, the city planners sat down with the feminists and started to make suggestions to increase the number of available houses. After many careful explanations, they came to the radical conclusion that more houses could built if they used apartment blocks, and the higher the apartment block, the more people could live there. You can't imagine how proud the feminists were when they hit upon the revolutionary idea of building very tall buildings full of apartments. It almost matched their disappointment when they realised they'd built a city full of skyscrapers.
That sounds like an interesting read. I tried searching for "feminist city planning experiment" and other similar keywords but couldn't find it. Do you happen to remember where you read it?
Unfortunately, I don't remember where I read it. I've just gone looking myself, but can't find it. Searching for keywords like you did just returns endless results similar to the OP. The article did have an accompanying video that basically boiled it down to what I posted above though.