*cough cough*

[unixronin]

So, it seems the History Channel held a "City of the Future" contest, challenging eight architectural firms to show their visions of the San Francisco of 2108.  C|Net has a pictorial.

I can't remember the last time I saw such pretentious pie-in-the-sky "and then magic happens" bullshit posing as architectural design.  I think the winning design firm thought they were supposed to be submitting concepts for an SF movie set in the San Francisco of 3108 AD.  It'd sure make me think twice about hiring them to design anything for me.

Comments

[robbat2.livejournal.com]

By slum, I mean informal shantytown settlements. Large-scale squats. Makeshift dwellings constructed of corrugated metal.

By comparison, soviet-style apartments have electricity, running water and a solid roof.

The shantytown slums exist in large areas of Southern Africa (where I grew up). Areas larger than the middle-class suburban neighbourhoods, often on the fringes of heavy industrial areas, where middle-class people do not want to live.

[johnkzin.livejournal.com]

But slums in the USA don't tend to be shantytowns. They tend to be ... soviet-style apartment blocks, in various states of disrepair and demolition. Or of similar quality of life.

[robbat2.livejournal.com]

and worldwide, far more population lives in shantytowns than said apartment blocks. Living in said apartment blocks is usually correlated with a minimum wage job or social assistance, while shantytowns have no formal income whatsoever. I think shantytowns may yet arise in the US as the economic situation worsens, if they don't already exist in fringe locations (I have seen some settlements around Hilo, HI that were definitely bordering on being shantytowns).

I'll be down in San Jose and outskirts in early April at the MySQL conference. We can debate it further over drinks.