this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2023
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Fuck Cars

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Asphalt desert

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Let's have a look at some archictecture designed to make the desert countries nice to live in. Yep, not really seeing a lot of similarities to Houston.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The best architecture for desert cities in the US:

Don't build cities in deserts. There's tonnes of space in parts of the country that aren't actively trying to kill you for half the year.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

As /u/hank hints. it' might be possible if you build the buildings under some mass, like in Arakkis or Pompeii or North Africa - Your stone house has a central courtyard. Your street is in the shade between houses. Any public building rising above the rooflines has a wind-catcher. Really big public spaces are catching winds.

Literally anything better than an above-ground structure (skyscraper) with exterior glass (greenhouse) walls!

[–] afraid_of_zombies 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Every place is trying to kill you, it is just easier to warm a human body up than cool them down. It is easier to have someone just avoid water that is where it isn't supposed to be than it is to bring water where it clearly has no desire to be there.

How many places in the world do you think you could survive naked without access to indoors for over a day? Maybe some tropical island? I read once the typical member of the industrial world has never once in their life been outdoors for over 6 hours without some access to shade/tent/building. Which doesn't sound right but try to think of the last time you did that.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I mean, most people could survive almost anywhere for a day. Yeah, people need shade, just like all animals do; which is naturally provided by trees, shrubs, big rocks, terrain features etc. It's true that there are places where humans have deliberately made the outdoors inhospitable by removing those features, but you can fix that by putting them back.

[–] spacedancer 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What, you don’t like our culturally significant stripmall and 16-lane highway architecture? /s

[–] afraid_of_zombies 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Houston is also one of the centers of chemical engineering for the planet. I have worked at facilities that were so big there that they had their own private train lines just to move stuff around the facility. And no not just oil.

[–] Agent641 2 points 1 year ago

I watched a documentary about a man who lives on a train with his family. He drives the train around a steel mill. The train never leaves the mill.

[–] Relo 1 points 1 year ago

Large factories like steel mills always have their own train network. At leas there in Europe. I life close to an old steel mill that was turned into a landscape/architecture park. The railways were turned into bicycle lanes and make up about 80 % of my daily commute to work.

I know, I am very lucky.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I wonder when we start to dig holes in the ground to live in in areas with hot climate.

[–] doppelgangmember 3 points 1 year ago

It may be called Moorish architecture but they can't fit as many unpaid interns in those!

[–] crypticthree 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Houston is a swamp not a desert

[–] afraid_of_zombies 2 points 1 year ago

Houston in August is the only solid evidence I have that Satan is real.