Build your own town?

[the_alias]

One of the best Twitter accounts out there put out this really interesting substack:

https://wrathofgnon.substack.com/p/how-to-build-a-small-town-in-texas?r=hv52d&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email&utm_source=twitter

[SCBrian]

Very interesting read, with useful and specific suggestions. 

[Raptor]

 :A good read.

I would push back on the ability to farm in that area of Texas as well as more attention and thought should go into potable water and the reuse of gray and black water due to the feast and famine nature rain fall in that part of TX.

Still it is very thoughtful complete with the logic behind the suggestions.


As an experiment i made a 1 acre kitchen garden in an area with rich soil and abundant rain fall. It was a very humbling experience. If i had to grow my own food i would likely starve to death. Self sufficiency for food is desirable but the effort should not be underestimated.

[boskone]

Interesting.

There are a few statements which I find lacking or flatly disagree with:

• No bulldozing.  Does this guy actually live in west Texas?  A large part of west Texas used to be coastline, and terrain modification is absolutely a requirement.  That doesn't mean you need to flatten everything, but even old settlements had the land levelled and rocks removed.
• No mention of solar chimneys for passive cooling.  Those would mesh very well with the call for cisterns and such.
• No concrete?!  One of the best build technologies available would be ICF.  By all means, clad it, but don't skip it.

I would also say that the town should have a drive-through main road, and if the town will be built without household parking there should be adequate, accessible municipal parking built into the plan.  Maybe a "parking street" or two crosswise to the main road.  Those would also drastically improve emergency access, even if just an ambulance.  It's all fine and good to say you won't actually need ambulances very often, but when your kid's fallen out of a tree and concussed themselves you'll be cursing whoever put the ambulance spot 15 minutes away.

[flybynight]

Build your own town ( so I can build my house outside of the town 

[the_alias]

Interesting.

There are a few statements which I find lacking or flatly disagree with:

• No bulldozing.  Does this guy actually live in west Texas?  A large part of west Texas used to be coastline, and terrain modification is absolutely a requirement.  That doesn't mean you need to flatten everything, but even old settlements had the land levelled and rocks removed.
• No mention of solar chimneys for passive cooling.  Those would mesh very well with the call for cisterns and such.
• No concrete?!  One of the best build technologies available would be ICF.  By all means, clad it, but don't skip it.

I would also say that the town should have a drive-through main road, and if the town will be built without household parking there should be adequate, accessible municipal parking built into the plan.  Maybe a "parking street" or two crosswise to the main road.  Those would also drastically improve emergency access, even if just an ambulance.  It's all fine and good to say you won't actually need ambulances very often, but when your kid's fallen out of a tree and concussed themselves you'll be cursing whoever put the ambulance spot 15 minutes away.

No he lives in Japan.

Concrete does not mix with his ideals of beauty for building I don't think. Most modern horror architecture is concrete and glass, Wrath of Gnon could not be further removed from that.

[woodsghost]

I'm reading his "3000 people and 80 acres" thing along with his "enough for all the professions" idea and thinking "there is a ton of that in the US, but the professions leave and the young leave for better opportunities. The professions go where the work is and usually the professions meet the needs of a wider clientele. An auto mechanic or a chiropractor pull from 10+ surrounding towns. But the mechanic or chiropractor in the next town also pull from the surrounding 10+ towns, because they do things differently." Or...."the town is too close to another town with better professionals and everyone stopped going the local professionals and shopping opportunities and now the town is dying and is basically a bedroom community for the town or city which grabbed all the good people."

The only way I see his ideas working is if we told people "you will live in THIS house and never another." I feel attracted to the images he paints but it doesn't fit with actual human experience. Not my human experience, anyway. I love the ideas and wish they could work. But I think they would only work in a place far from other options or opportunities.

[rlail]

:A good read.

I would push back on the ability to farm in that area of Texas as well as more attention and thought should go into potable water and the reuse of gray and black water due to the feast and famine nature rain fall in that part of TX.

Still it is very thoughtful complete with the logic behind the suggestions.


As an experiment i made a 1 acre kitchen garden in an area with rich soil and abundant rain fall. It was a very humbling experience. If i had to grow my own food i would likely starve to death. Self sufficiency for food is desirable but the effort should not be underestimated.

My 40X60 garden is almost too much work to keep up with, and work, you're entirely correct.  Especially if you factor in Canning, and other preservation

[Crimson_Phoenix]

First thing that popped in my head when seeing this topic. This was part of my 7th grade reading class.

https://archive.org/details/girlwhoownedcity0000nels

[Wasteland Charlie]

That was an interesting thought experiment. I think utopic planning in this day and age has to contend with people not being very communal any more. We are isolationists by habit now. We don't join clubs, or lodges, and we don't socialize with our neighbors. We take very little interest in local politics, as a rule. I remember when the original ZS tried to just get a Ham radio net going, but couldn't. 

There is also a distinct lack of passion for creating anything in a scale that big. My opinion is the regulation heavy governmental agencies places too much burden on people And actively seeks to stop such initiatives,  or they are so poorly conceived that the effect is the same.

Some years ago, one of the big pizza chain owners wanted to create a Catholic town. A town for and by Catholics ran on Catholic religious principals. The ACLU already had the lawsuits drawn up should they try and establish a town where religion and politics were not separated.

The formation of a new town, or the assumption of an old town would require freedom from regulatory oversight and some sort of external pressure and/or an enticement of some sort to motivate people to undertake the endeavor.