China tests 300 mph train.

[Warspite]

Washington DC is a disaster of urban planning.

Don't they have really strict rules on how tall buildings can be, so it just sprawls and sprawls?

London has the same problem. Anything over four stories wades into a quagmire of planning considerations. And the view of London from Primrose Hill continues to take precedence over more practical considerations like the housing shortage.

[Capetan Mihali]

Similarly, Philadelphia apparantly used to have an ordance that no building could be taller than the bell tower on top of Independence Hall.  They didn't drop that until the mid-1970s IIRC.

It was an unwritten rule that the city wouldn't approve buildings higher than the William Penn statue on top of City Hall (548ft -- the second tallest masonry structure in the world, and tallest building in the world from 1901 to 1908).  It wasn't broken until One Liberty Place was built in 1987, giving birth to the "Curse of Billy Penn" idea concerning the city sports teams.

[Eddie Teach]

You can still have a rather densely packed city with 500 foot tall buildings.

[Capetan Mihali]

You can still have a rather densely packed city with 500 foot tall buildings.

I think most of the post-87 buildings in Philadelphia haven't added much.  One Liberty Place is an OKish knockoff of the Chrysler Building, but that's about it:




And City Hall is gorgeous in my opinion:




It creates a very dramatic sightline looking up Broad Street from almost anywhere south of it in the city:




There were plenty of great early "skyscrapers" in Center City.  The PSFS building was the first American skyscraper built in the International modernist style (1931):

[Josquius]

Washington DC is a disaster of urban planning.

Don't they have really strict rules on how tall buildings can be, so it just sprawls and sprawls?

London has the same problem. Anything over four stories wades into a quagmire of planning considerations. And the view of London from Primrose Hill continues to take precedence over more practical considerations like the housing shortage.

i used to be quite in favour of ths thinking it good to preserve the appearance of the city but lately i read something about the sinister undertones of these poliies- it is so the existing land owners keep their land values high

[HisMajestyBOB]

Washington DC is a disaster of urban planning.

I don't think it's fair to expect the planners to foresee that the city would be home to more people than the entire country was at the time.

For starters, they could allow high rise buildings, so that people can work in the core of the city rather than sprawling everywhere.

That's just in DC proper, which is pretty small. Outside of that, you can build high rises and there are some in parts of NoVA and MD, just not enough. I blame American's insistence on owning a McMansion in the middle of an urban area.

[garbon]

I think you managed to hit every major american city with a good public transportation system.

Well yes, probably. But I didn't have much use for them either.
Used the subway in DC to get to Arlington, and I may have used it once or twice in New York.
Everything else could be done on foot. The only time I needed a taxi was to get to Vancouver Airport and go home.

Not sure what you are arguing though. There is a lot more of America that isn't like that.

I also wonder about the amount of time you wasted on foot.

[Warspite]

Washington DC is a disaster of urban planning.

Don't they have really strict rules on how tall buildings can be, so it just sprawls and sprawls?

London has the same problem. Anything over four stories wades into a quagmire of planning considerations. And the view of London from Primrose Hill continues to take precedence over more practical considerations like the housing shortage.

i used to be quite in favour of ths thinking it good to preserve the appearance of the city but lately i read something about the sinister undertones of these poliies- it is so the existing land owners keep their land values high

Pretty much - a lot of it is just NIMBYism. Then again if you did start developing more high rises in London, the Duke of Westminster and Marquess of Salisbury would be quids in. :/

[alfred russel]

Washington DC is a disaster of urban planning.

I don't think it's fair to expect the planners to foresee that the city would be home to more people than the entire country was at the time.

For starters, they could allow high rise buildings, so that people can work in the core of the city rather than sprawling everywhere.

That's just in DC proper, which is pretty small. Outside of that, you can build high rises and there are some in parts of NoVA and MD, just not enough. I blame American's insistence on owning a McMansion in the middle of an urban area.

Certainly the problems go beyond DC proper, but I disagree that it is so small: according to wikipedia DC has almost 3 times the land area as Manhattan. If you duplicated the density of manhattan in DC you would have about 4 million people there, out of an urban population of 5.58 million.

[Maladict]

Not sure what you are arguing though. There is a lot more of America that isn't like that.

I also wonder about the amount of time you wasted on foot.

I'm arguing that, for admittedly touristy purposes, a centrally located railway station can be all it takes to make public transportation work.

Time on foot wasn't wasted as it was done by choice, I know what the yellow cars are for
Hauling 20 kg from Penn station to 110th street at night was a bit uncalled for though 

[Duque de Bragança]

Washington DC is a disaster of urban planning.

Don't they have really strict rules on how tall buildings can be, so it just sprawls and sprawls?

London has the same problem. Anything over four stories wades into a quagmire of planning considerations. And the view of London from Primrose Hill continues to take precedence over more practical considerations like the housing shortage.

Guess what, same issue in Paris.

[Ideologue]

Washington DC is a disaster of urban planning.

Don't they have really strict rules on how tall buildings can be, so it just sprawls and sprawls?

London has the same problem. Anything over four stories wades into a quagmire of planning considerations. And the view of London from Primrose Hill continues to take precedence over more practical considerations like the housing shortage.

i used to be quite in favour of ths thinking it good to preserve the appearance of the city but lately i read something about the sinister undertones of these poliies- it is so the existing land owners keep their land values high

Pretty much - a lot of it is just NIMBYism. Then again if you did start developing more high rises in London, the Duke of Westminster and Marquess of Salisbury would be quids in. :/

NIMBY people are basically what's wrong with America and the reason federalism doesn't really work.

[Capetan Mihali]

Building high-rises in itself won't help the housing problem, since the housing problem is really the affordable-housing problem.  And most developers over here seem to prefer buying their way out of any municipal effort to devote X% of a residential development to low/middle income housing.

[dps]

Not sure what you are arguing though. There is a lot more of America that isn't like that.

I also wonder about the amount of time you wasted on foot.

I'm arguing that, for admittedly touristy purposes, a centrally located railway station can be all it takes to make public transportation work.

In most American cities, the touristy places aren't necessarily centrally located.

Of course, that partly depends on just which touristy places you're interested in.  If you're interested in Civil War sites, for example, some of them are nowhere near major city centers.  Really, none of them, as far as battlefields.

[jimmy olsen]

Washington DC is a disaster of urban planning.

Don't they have really strict rules on how tall buildings can be, so it just sprawls and sprawls?

London has the same problem. Anything over four stories wades into a quagmire of planning considerations. And the view of London from Primrose Hill continues to take precedence over more practical considerations like the housing shortage.

i used to be quite in favour of ths thinking it good to preserve the appearance of the city but lately i read something about the sinister undertones of these poliies- it is so the existing land owners keep their land values high

Pretty much - a lot of it is just NIMBYism. Then again if you did start developing more high rises in London, the Duke of Westminster and Marquess of Salisbury would be quids in. :/

NIMBY people are basically what's wrong with America and the reason federalism doesn't really work.

Is the NIMBY phenomena limited to federal republics?