Urban Renewal, Corporate-Style
Zappos.com founder tries to resurrect downtown Las Vegas.
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In recent years, entrepreneurs have tried to route around such obstacles in novel ways. Food trucks give aspiring chefs more flexibility than a traditional restaurant. Pop-up boutiques allow entrepreneurs to rapidly prototype and debug new retail concepts. The Downtown Project has similar aims: It’s an attempt by people who aren’t urban planners to inject urban planning with the radical configurability that characterizes software design.
Witness Hsieh’s plans for Central Container Park, an outdoor mall whose buildings will be fashioned from shipping containers and thus allow entrepreneurs to test ideas before investing in costly build-outs and long-term leases. Or his notion of creating a dorm-like building that offers 100-square foot studios (with shared bathrooms) for as little as $100 a month.
Already, Hsieh is discovering that building a real-life metropolis is more complicated than playing Sim City. “I come from a tech background and I’m used to being able to go from idea to launch in 24 hours,” Hsieh recently told Pando Daily editor Sarah Lacy in a video interview. “And you just can’t do that with city regulations and permits and so on.”
But according to The New York Times, the Downtown Project has persuaded “around 15 tech start-ups” to set up shop in Las Vegas and initiated at least 16 construction projects. It’s purchased multiple properties and jump-started a new restaurant and a co-working facility. Along with the shipping container park, a pre-school, a newsstand, another co-working facility, and a venue for TED-like public talks are also in the works.
“As someone who works in this field, I’m shocked at how fast he’s been able to organize and move,” says Florida. “It shows what entrepreneurs can do versus what governments can do.”
And perhaps it also points a way toward a more dynamic future, where urban planning is defined at least as much by new ideas and experimentation as it is by zoning codes and preservation groups. As flexibility, novelty, and rapid change increasingly characterize our lives, we want more and more of these things, from our neighborhoods as well as our smartphones.
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So company towns are the new thing?
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My thought exactly.
But the good thing is that being in a large urban area with lots of other options, the traditional monopoly problem of the company town (which is usually in a remote location) won't be an issue. On the other hand, who knows what kind of pressure can be put on employees to live and spend in certain places. I remember reading an interview with Zappos' chief and it sounds like the company does have a certain creepy social factor to it, like they want people in the company to hang out together socially. In that context, the company town idea sounds creepy.
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The thing is, people treat their careers these days as extremely fluid and amorphous, and for good reason. A modern worker shouldn't expect to stay with a company their entire career(as used to be common). However, this has lead to certain companies(like Zappos) having to use other means for employee retention, such as encouraging a cohesive social unit to form out of their own workforce.
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I'm surprised telecommuting hasn't become more of a thing; We have less reason than ever to have to be at a certain location. I could do my job without having to be at any specific physical location.
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... It’s an attempt by people who aren’t urban planners to inject urban planning with the radical configurability that characterizes software design.
The only urban "plan" is the spontaneous order formed by individuals and businesses as they endeavor to make a living. What top-down urban planners, i.e. Government Top Men, plan is based more on aesthetics. Worse yet, the plan is usually influenced by the latest Liberal buzzwords; green energy, renewable, bicycle friendly, light rail, live/work, etc.
I hope this project is successful, and the capital stays private.
Also, thank you Greg Beato for this story. Please Reason, more like this.
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Government Top Men also have to spend a lot of money to undo what the previous generation of Government Top Men did, once they see the disastrous results of the previous liberal buzzwords. Remember when government planners treated the urban grid as the original sin and sought to replace it with superblocks and pedestrian malls? Their successors are busy undoing that work.
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What great urban center has been formed solely by the spontaneous efforts of individuals and businesses?
I'm thinking London before the great fire. But not after.
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What great urban center has been formed solely by the spontaneous efforts of individuals and businesses?
What great urban center hasn't been reformed due to the dysfunctions brought about by its previous configurations?
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What great urban center hasn't been
formed solelydisfigured by thespontaneous efforts of individuals and businessesdelusions of lackeys of the Master Class?From my understanding, the rebuilding of London after the Great Fire was almost entirely a non-governmental affair. There were plenty of grand plans, but they all foundered on reality.
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The Derider| 12.13.12 @ 3:31PM |#
"What great urban center has been formed solely by the spontaneous efforts of individuals and businesses?"Parsed:
'Gov't has taken over those functions, so it's obvious nothing else works'. -
"Urban Renewal, Corporate-Style"
Don't you mean Ganganam Style? Oppa Gangname Style!
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The great part about the downtown core of many cities is that land values have plummeted and vacancies are enormous, so it's relatively easy to snap up some properties. The problem is that the politics of many cities have not internalized the lesson that businesses and residents will flee in the face of bad governance.
It might be easy to move loads of people into a city. It's probably harder to get the city to respect the autonomy of those people once they come in. They're more likely to treat this windfall as a resource to exploit than a gift to nurture.
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True that, but many cities are also desperate to revive their crumbling downtowns, so they keep the interference to a minimum.
Once the people are in and casting votes for their city council is when things get interesting.
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I'm another one of those crazy people who's actually read Jacobs' "The Death and Life of Great American Cities."
Honestly, you can look at any city or collection of buildings and see the principles she recorded in action. Very cool stuff.
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