>>1290965The focus should be on building working communities, rather than homogenous horizontal or vertical man-farms. Studies have shown that neither little boxes on the hillside nor focusing on maximum density hives provide proper efficiency and happiness. Super-dense structures add significant lag to movement due to verticality or depth, much like the car-centric labyrinth of plywood walls. As such mass-produced industrial housing has as little to do with our solution as the swamp-like suburban hell we need to combat.
Older, pre-industrial cities had squares within walking-distance of every household, as moving by foot was the primary mode of transport at that time. Time passing, larger cities grew to be composed of many smaller communities, districts, and wards, all stitched together and interconnected, but being self-contained entities. There was a spontaneous fractal nature to the whole thing, which worked relatively well considering the unplanned and crude nature of the it.
Nowadays similar arrangements can be achieved through many means and methods, incorporating and considering modern needs and technologies. For example, modern transportation systems do allow creating less dense communities, which still have all that is needed relatively close by and within reach by many modes of movement.
What must be considered, is that for a flexible and convenient transportation system it is as important to find ways of minimizing the need for long-distance and heavy-duty transport, as it is to construct the physical system itself.
