A Really Long, Drawn Out Explanation (Apology? Whatever...)

[The_Canuck]

Cars>Urban planning

FTW!

[my porsche]

Lmao

Dont get mad just becasue NY pwns Texas.

Supporting Members Pwn

riiiiiight, i'm glad your halleucinogens haven't worn off.

[Egg Nog]

Esperante, you're heading down the same route I am... not so much the car bit, because I still love a few cars (although not really any new cars).

I'm going into 8 years of school - environmental design followed by architecture, so I know exactly what you're talking about. I just finished reading a book called "Superbia" (cheesy, I know) that goes over the intricacies of planning sustainable living communities. I'd really like to be in the field creating larger mixed-use (aka highrise) sustainable living/etc structures.

What's your msn?

[IWantAnAudiRS6]

I thought you'd not been around for a while.

It is something that can't be helped- people change all the time, they come and go, multiple reasons work together and drive us apart sometime. This time is your time.

I'm really sorry about what happened to your family, I hope the Durango driver thought it was worth it. Utterly horrific. If you want a donor for that Thunderbird..?

I hope you can stick around, your entries to the photography and chopping competitions were definitely different!

[McReis]

Hi Esperante, and welcome back.

For a start, I'd like to adress you my sincere condolences for you loss. I understand it's a very harsh happening for someone who loves cars. However, you may also love chocolate and, somehow, it kills people too.
About your environmental orientation, I sincerely congratulate you for that and I believe it's necessary to have more and more concerned and active people on that area. However, there's a role you can play while being both environmental defender and car lover. Alternative and renewable energies are the only hope for us petrolheads, hydrogenheads, electricheads, whatever.
Cars will always exist and defending the environment by being anti-car is like digging your head on the sand. You can be both a car and environment supporter. Communities like our's will need active members to preach about the advantages of alternative energie propelled cars, in a future not that far away. Maybe one day you can make a little difference by convincing someone to buy a Tesla Roadster instead of o proper Elise (or worst, a gas-guzzling SUV).
As you see, there are plenty of reasons to stay around.

[DesmoRob]

I'm sorry to hear about your losses, Esperante; my heart goes out to you and your relatives. I don't think I had started posting when you left UCP, but nevertheless I'm happy for you that you've found a goal and a direction that you want to head in. That's a valuable thing. In life, you win some, and you lose some.

[Esperante]

Thanks for your condolences, everyone.

While we may not be a model for zoning, it's not like we have businesses right next to houses or anything.

Right. You just demolish all of historic downtown and surrounding neighbourhoods so that way businesses can't stand next to single family houses.

Egg Nog, I'm glad you're into conservation and tastefull growth as well. I haven't used MSN for about four years, but I'm on AIM as EsperanteGTLM pretty often.

McReis, I completely agree with you, too. In terms of enviromentalism, I very highly support any initiatives to implement biofuels and hydrogen powerplants, and in reasonable (or necessary) circumstances I don't mind the car. It's when people drive their Cadillac Escalades all the way from the exurbs into midtown New York and the drivers complain about how awful the traffic was, and how bad the navigating is, and how expensive gas is, and how there is nowhere to park...etc., so they decide, in essence, to shut themselves in their little safety bubble subdivision that further decays the city and the enviroment. Again, it's not so much I'm anti-car as much as there needs to be a choice:everyone should be able to have the choice of taking public transit instead of driving a car, and as well the cars should not be given priority in a city, and cars should be designed for minimal enviromental impact.

[my porsche]

Right. You just demolish all of historic downtown and surrounding neighbourhoods so that way businesses can't stand next to single family houses.

Have you ever even been here? there are so many historic buildings and neighborhoods...

[johnnynumfiv]

People out west have it easy, they don't have to really deal with 300 year old buildings getting in the way of new projects.

[Esperante]

Have you ever even been here? there are so many historic buildings and neighborhoods...

Don't get me started.

Too late.

Every single city in the country went through a slump from the 60s-70s and arguably into the 80s, as well, when, beginning in the 60s, the population moved out into the suburbs, infrastructure and transit decayed, and cities razed blocks and blocks of historic buildings to make way for parking (Detroit is the best example of this). Today it's a matter of how well those cities have recovered from the 60s and 70s, and cities like New York, Chicago, Philly, LA, and SF all have very strict protocol for historic preservation. In Houston's attempt to grow in population and in economics, zoning ordinances are almost nonexistant, and historic Houston is demolished almost daily. Sure, I suppose one could count up the buildings in Houston and say, 'Hey, there's several hundred historic buildings here!' however one must keep in mind cities like NY or SF are saving their thousands and thousands of 'historic' structures and re-ultilizing them, thanks to zoning. In SF, you'll probably end up gutting, building out of, or renovating historic structures, wheras in Houston, you can just raze the old building and build your new one because of no zoning. That's why your tallest buildings are just boxes, essentially.

[my porsche]

That's why your tallest buildings are just boxes, essentially.

Now THAT makes no sense, of course skyscrapers are "boxes" it's the most stable and efficient design, and they certainly didn't make 80+ story buildings in the 19th and early 20th century...so would it not make sense that the tallest buildings were of the modern "box" as you call it, design?

[ZeTurbo]

Now THAT makes no sense, of course skyscrapers are "boxes" it's the most stable and efficient design, and they certainly didn't make 80+ story buildings in the 19th and early 20th century...so would it not make sense that the tallest buildings were of the modern "box" as you call it, design?

Dude, that is wrong in so many levels. A pyramid is the most structurally sound structure. Why do you think the pyamids are still standing today, after thousands of years?

Ever taken a look at the transamerica pyramid (atach)? built to resist severe earth quakes.

[crisis]

Real bummer about your rellies and the accident. Sorry to hear that.
I probably haven’t posted as much here for a while but mine is for the second bit and a much happier reason. Playing in a band. I am really into music and playing and find myself spending a bit of time on those sites as well as playing and practicing.
What kind of music do you play on a Wurlitzer?
And it takes some kind of conviction to allow your beliefs in urbanism (?) to supplant your interest in cars (although it doesn’t seem to have entirely).

[Esperante]

Now THAT makes no sense, of course skyscrapers are "boxes" it's the most stable and efficient design,

Erm, actually the box is morelike the cheapest way to construct a building, and is certainly in no way shape or form more stable than any other type of steel cage design (if you really want to get into it, it's probably less stable due to aerodynamics, which really factor into play on 1,000 foot boxes. In fact, stable is an awful word to use in this case as buildings need to sway or bend). Take New York, for example, with arguably the strictest skyscraper building codes on the planet. For example, the full height of a skyscraper can only take up 25% of the lot it's placed on. Yes, NY has it's share of boxes, but you'll notice they are all considerably set back from the street (see Citibank Building, WTC), as to form to a code mandated from 1918 when the 'gargantuan' Equitable Building rose straight up from the street and blocked sunlight.

You're probably thinking, 'hey, we've got stuff like that in Houston, too! So we must have zoning!' But actually, NY's building codes cascaded down into stylistics, and setbacks became popular in skyscraper architecture.
In NY, there are a few exceptions, but very rare.
NY's mindset towards construction is (essentially), 'build it, but follow the rules and keep it sensible.'
SF's mindset, by contrast, is, 'Please please please don't build it, but if you must, keep it sensible and follow the rules.'
Houston's mindset is, 'Build it or tear it down, we don't give a ****.' That's why you have a 1,000 footer outside the CBD.

As to box buildings being more structurally sound than other types, it's not a matter of its form, but the skeleton beneath it. Take off the skin and they're basically all the same, with some variations (IE, cage dependant versus core dependant versus skeleton dependant).

Here, take a look at New York's Chrysler Building, while under construction 72 years ago:

The cage system of it is virtually the same as what's done today, except it's becoming more and more often to see core dependant structures.

Without getting too far into it, a cage style structure bears all its weight into the structural caging, simply enough. A core dependant structure bears most of the weight around a tough, concrete core (that holds elevators) with a less complex steel cage built around that, and skeletal dependent skyscrapers push the weight to an exoskeleton on the outside, see former WTC or JHC in Chicago. What eventually led to the decline in popularity of purely steelcage structures was that one needs to have lots of pillars on the inside space.

and they certainly didn't make 80+ story buildings in the 19th and early 20th century...so would it not make sense that the tallest buildings were of the modern "box" as you call it, design?

Well, seeing as the Woolworth in NY from I think 1914 is the equivalent of 70 stories, and the Chrysler building is 77 stories from 1930, and the ESB is 103 from 1931, it's rather silly to say there weren't supertall buildings built that weren't boxes. 80 story buildings could've been built in the late 18oos, but people were too afraid, elevators were too early in development, real estate wasn't expensive enough, and people weren't confident in stepping into 80 story buildings. The only reason the box became popular is due to how cheap they are to construct and the shift in popular style from Art Deco to the INternational Style. You might want to look around and see that a helluva lot of supertall buildings aren't boxes.
Blah blah blah .


Crisis:I haven't done a whole lot with the band as of late, as the Wurly has been only until recently fixed, but before that we've done some pretty eccentric sounding stuff with just a grand piano, a Les Paul and drums, maybe sort of heavier fusion (we don't have a vocalist, and we're not sure if we want one or not).

[crisis]

Crisis:I haven't done a whole lot with the band as of late, as the Wurly has been only until recently fixed, but before that we've done some pretty eccentric sounding stuff with just a grand piano, a Les Paul and drums, maybe sort of heavier fusion (we don't have a vocalist, and we're not sure if we want one or not).

This sounds extremely interesting.