City Planning - Getting around and about

[PriscilaCoghlan]

Name: Getting around and about

Purpose: Transportation

Description: This is how I imagine the logic of transportation in the city planning I mentioned earlier. I believe that teleportation is the best option to ease the participant’s experience to travel around the world. But I also believe that the ports should be in the center of each “district” in order to promote the displacement and discovery of the city. This way the users are "forced" to get into the different districts and see what is in them in order to take the teleportation method. I think this is an optimal solution in order to prevent people for just jumping from place to place of interest, just going to what they know and not giving the chance to other creators to be seen. It will help, in some way, that exclusive districts are formed that take all the audience from other creators, giving them the chance to expose their work, offerings etc.

1. There will be, as in regular cities, roads with different qualifications. •green (20m width): principal roads (boulevards mostly), two ways of circulation divided by an array or green space with trees and benches, for bikes and pedestrian. •red full lines (4m width): secondary roads, two ways of circulation, for bikes and pedestrian. •red dashed line (2m width): roads to access teleport port, two ways of circulation, for bikes and pedestrian. Walking speed only. •orange dashed line (2m width): pedestrian roads, two ways of circulation.

The image below shows the division with squared tiles and this one with no squared tiles. It can be interesting to mix both typologies or the other posibilities I showed in my previous post.

2. I propose that the way the subjects displace themselves are: •walking •by bike (with up to 8x walking velocity) – the reason of this is that the space occupied by it is smaller than a car, for example, and it also promotes healthy habits in participants. (yes, scooters and skates could also be implemented but for now I propose to start with bikes) •by air baloon (or jet pack if you are not in the mood) this can depart from anywhere. •teleportation -yellow dot (you can access with the bike with no need of leaving it behind)

Here you can see the districts in different colours:

This is the arrange of roads for only one district:

3. Teleport “ports” will be in the center of each district (shown like yellow spots). In urban planning, we always take the distance of 500m as the top distance that a person should walk to get to public transport. Therefore, you can see that each teleport port is below that walking distance.

4. Also, maybe, to encourage walking and biking and therefore encouraging the parkour of the world, energy or currency can be generated from this activity, in opposition of teleporting which can generate no or little energy/currency in comparison. And at the same time it is a healthy habit to "take home". A good planning of accesibility and teleportation ports can contribute to mitigate the chances of having a segregated city, promoting interaction and exchange between neighborhoods and districts. Here are some images I generated with the idea, you can see that the roads change of texture/shaders according to their qualifications (primary, secondary or walking only)

Here you can visualize the teleport with blue lights

Here is a perspective from the boulevard

@maraoz there's no such thing as too many air balloons

UPDATE: Explore this proposal in 3D https://youtu.be/32-bcET-XLc

[archnomics]

I'll be following you priscila. Are you into urban planning and architecture? Might be high time to collaborate.

[arimeilich]

Tremendo esto!

[golhoon]

Nice

[ghost]

Love the attention to detail in your work.

[aninaser]

This looks incredible, and part of me has always wanted to be in urban development. Could you share what software you use to make the 2d and 3d designs?

[PriscilaCoghlan]

Hello @aunteek thank you for your words, I really love urban planning and architectural design and I am currently finishing my master thesis :) Regarding your question, for this particular post I used AutoCad for 2D graphics, and a combination of ArchiCad and Atlantis for the 3D building and rendering.

[PriscilaCoghlan]

I forgot to mention, I also used some Photoshop in the post-processing.

[archnomics]

Only 2 of the tools you mentioned is what I'm using. haha

AutoCAD, Revit, PS freak here and starting to include Rhino.

[aninaser]

@prilink Thank you so much, I'll look into these!

[pookage]

While I'm in agreement that central teleportation portals are a great idea for "public" plots of land, I'm a little averse to creating traffic infrastructure centred around personal-transportation like cars etc. If we assume that users will be able to determine their speed arbitrarily, or land-owners able to set speed-limits on their plots then we can draw a couple conclusions :

1. Any personal transport 'device' (ie. cars and jetpacks) are effectively aesthetic skins to indicate a users current speed.
2. The primary purpose of a road would be to group together users of similar speeds.

Given this, I think we might need to approach transport networks in a fundamentally different way - as if users are 'walking' rather than teleporting it is for a reason other than getting to their destination efficiently. For example: public transportation would primarily be a convenience to ensure the people you are travelling with stay together as a group.

As it stands, with this proposal, large amounts of usable LAND is being taken up by road, which is a compromise that I don't feel like we need to (or should) make in the metaverse...

[Tsangares]

We need horses, the only game I truly enjoyed just traveling slowly was in was Red Dead Redemption.

[pookage]

@Tsangares - I'm not saying we don't! I'm saying that horses would basically be an purely aesthetic item that would increase movement speed, right? And we don't need to worry about making the road surfaces easy to clean from all the horse-dung, any more than we need stables to put them in when we're not using them. Sure both of these would add to immersion, but are we discussing individual ideas for districts, or more fundamental rules for navigation around the world?

[Tsangares]

@pookage I am not sure how items work in the game. Does the horse need to go to the stable? Or do I just put it back in my inventory?

I agree, if a user is trying to get from A to B they should not suffer in a personal transport. If they want to walk, drive, fly, ride, it should be for the aesthetic. The distinction you give is important in this discussion.

Has the developers thought about this?

[pookage]

@Tsangares - I think that this is the place to talk about it! haha. I don't think that things like stables etc will be core-code from decentraland, but rather content created by individual users for their plots of land. I'm mostly just being vocal about avoiding a situation in which 50% of public land plots are made up of roads needlessly 😛

[PriscilaCoghlan]

Thank you for your feedback @pookage , and I am sorry to hear that you are “a little averse to creating traffic infrastructure”, but maybe I can change that with further explanation. It is a shame that you “wish to avoid” something that you might not fully understand its potentiality. I am always open to debate this issue in a contextualized and serious manner based in the urban planning science which I have studied for the past 9 years and, of course, empirical knowledge which is always important. Let me tell you that this proposal did not come out of nowhere, it has foundations in the field of urbanism which has been studying the dwelling of human beings for centuries, adapted of course to a VR world, not a game @Tsangares , which I envision to hold thousands of inhabitants one day. Roads and communication spaces are never a “waste” if well planned, on the contrary, there are numerous examples of the correlation between a well-designed transport infrastructure and revenues from businesses. I understand that not everyone has a background in planning, therefore I am preparing another document that details this more precisely. I would like to clarify that the caliber of roads it is not only about speed but also about the number of people that is expected to transit them and location, I thought this was somehow evident in the drawings but now I see that it needed more explanation. These factors are correlated between each other, and with the amount of perspective each parcel will have, therefore having an impact on their value among other things. Also, when you say 50% of land is going for the roads….by no means I estimate it to be 50% of the land, where did you take that number from? Finally, I don’t say this is a finite resolution that doesn’t allow for improvements. For sure it will have to go hand in hand with technical possibilities and I am looking forward to it.

[pookage]

Apologies @prilink - I was in no way calling into question your credentials, nor do I have any adverse feelings about creating traffic infrastructure - my aversion was and is :

...creating traffic infrastructure centred around personal-transportation like cars.

...which it seemed like these designs were based around. Also, we don't have any empirical evidence from which to build designs upon, as there are has (to my knowledge) yet to be any computer-simulations on traffic flow around teleportation hubs - when users don't need to travel the physical space between points A and B to cross the distance.

There's so many unknowns at this point that I'm trying to foster discussion about these details. For example - do we need wider roads for more traffic if people do not take-up physical space? Will there be collision-detection between users, or will we be able to move amongst each other without obstruction? If its the latter then our considerations are entirely different, no?

As for my 50% statement - that was a (probably poor) estimate derived from your top-down image of the district layout. Out of curiosity - do you have the % of usable land after road-space has been deducted? I imagine that there was plenty of maths involved in this design, so I'll keep my fingers crossed!

To reiterate - I'm not doubting your knowledge or presuming that I know something you don't; this is just new territory for all, with new challenges and a completely different set of constraints, and if we're to discuss it then this is the place to do it!

[aninaser]

This is a very intricate and intriguing conversation, and I’d like to add my own two cents to it. I wonder how our mechanics of walking/biking/driving/teleporting will affect the controls we have in the physical world, where spatial motion is somewhat limited. And vice versa, how will the mechanics of this transportation be affected by our limitations in the physical space?

[aninaser]

I’d also like to add that given the limited, hopefully zero, possibility of crime, especially physical crime, if we could leverage the possible social trust to design transportation infrastructure out of primarily public transportation systems. Automated public transportation systems could prove to be much more efficient and less accident prone. (I say this with zero practical experience in such systems, but with more presumptuous faith than anything else). In short, the less the possibility for disease or crime, the more room for public transportation systems to flourish.

[Tsangares]

@aunteek

leverage the possible social trust to design transporta...

A cannon that shoots people into space and they land at their destination at terminal velocity.

... by our limitations in the physical space?

What do you mean by this?

[Tsangares]

@prilink

a VR world, not a game @Tsangares

By "game" I did not share the connotation of lesser being lesser than a VR world. I believethat Decentraland should be thoroughly well thought out and developed to it's fullest potential, as you are doing, thank you.

By "game" I did share the connotation that it should be fun and enjoyable. Life is not always fun, but Decentraland can be.

[aninaser]

@tsangares by physical limitations I meant the current state of VR hardware where we cannot walk around beyond a fixed square of set space where the headset is positionally mapped, and any sort of movement is usually based on short range teleportation through the hand controllers.

[pookage]

@aunteek - Teleportation is a design decision as opposed to a solid rule; many users experience VR-Sickness and contiguous movement can really amplify that, so teleportation was devised as a workaround. Some experiences already do away with it.

I think there's a lot of space for public transport to prosper given the convenience of being able to move from point A to point B with a group of friends, and if the carriage / container is large enough then it could alleviate some of the motion sickness as well.

The answer to most things like this, I feel, is going to be to provide curated options, and let each user decide what is best for themselves.

[cyberworm1]

These are beautiful designs and very well thought out. I have to ask though, in a world based on a grid made of squares, how do you reconcile the lost space in triangular areas? Especially since at this point, there doesn't seem to be any mention or way of splitting a tile.

[aninaser]

@cyberworm1 I believe splitting a tile, as each tile belongs to a single person, is up to that person. They can, I assume, rent or lease out portions of their land as they wish.

[pffff]

I like the design, makes me think of The Venus Project, do you know about that? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndsWuYfRgjE , maybe watch some of those documentaries for inspiration https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uphxFHnVv1E

[PriscilaCoghlan]

@cyberworm1 I truly have no idea on the coding/implementation side of the story, sorry. If you are still interested in the grid thing you can check out issue #36 . Also I would like to point out that a triangle land can be built on with cool results, shapes have their own properties and you can exploit them to you benefit just by understanding them. You don't have to maintain the pure geometry of the land, because normally when you do so, you compromise things like use. "Form follows function" is a principle of modern architecture and industry for the begining of the 20th century, usually the people that used that term were/are called functionalists.... I don't want to bore you with architecture history.... long story short, I think that form and fuction should be balanced, unless properly justified. An example of a well-known triangular building is the Flatiron Building in NY, there are many more if you just google it, but as I showed in my post towards the end, you can build squares and circles inside your parcel, it doesn't have to follow the exact shape of it, especially since there's no high restriction and there're no construction costs. The downside of the square grid is that it encourages people to just extrude that baseform and then all the buildings turn to be the same extruded prism.... resulting in a monotonous and depersonalized urban environments which can be seen in most of the emerging cities. This particular layout could try to prevent that from happening encouraging people to explode their imagination when building. @pffff I have followed that project for some years, it's very interesting and inspiring, I didin't remember it properly but now that I see the videos I can spot that Fresco's city is a concentrial one. Thanks for the input! @aunteek @pookage what do you think of the road infrastructure and the option to use teleportation but only from certain spots?. I wasn't aware that teleportation can provoque sickness when using VR. (I edited this because I though I was on issue 2 when I first read this, sorry)

[neuhaus]

I like the idea of having bikes (bicycles) as a means of transportation at intermediate speeds. It give the world a "eco" feel that hopefully translates over into the real world.

[AdamBLevine]

@prilink Instead of Bicyles, I'd say we should do something more like a Segway. Most people aren't going to have a real life bicycle seat in their VR rig so it would be better to use a mode of transportation which can have the user standing on top of it rather than the incongruity of being on a bike but not in bike position.

[neuhaus]

Standing still while moving in VR is a quick way to get motion sick. I tried a Segway like prototype device for VR locomotion at the Digility hackathon and did get motion sick really quickly when not moving in a straight line.

Am 17.08.2017 um 17:35 schrieb Adam B. Levine notifications@github.com:

@prilink Instead of Bicyles, I'd say we should do something more like a Segway. Most people aren't going to have a real life bicycle seat in their VR rig so it would be better to use a mode of transportation which can have the user standing on top of it rather than the incongruity of being on a bike but not in bike position.

— You are receiving this because you commented. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or mute the thread.

[AdamBLevine]

I haven't found myself comfortable in any non-teleport/fast travel that involves a space larger than room sized. Do you have any ideas for what would work here? Seems like the missing sensation of motion is the main problem but how do we defeat that without adding hardware?

Adam B. Levine CEO, Tokenly http://tokenly.com

On Thu, Aug 17, 2017 at 9:28 AM, Sven Neuhaus notifications@github.com wrote:

Standing still while moving in VR is a quick way to get motion sick. I tried a Segway like prototype device for VR locomotion at the Digility hackathon and did get motion sick really quickly when not moving in a straight line.

Am 17.08.2017 um 17:35 schrieb Adam B. Levine <notifications@github.com :

@prilink Instead of Bicyles, I'd say we should do something more like a Segway. Most people aren't going to have a real life bicycle seat in their VR rig so it would be better to use a mode of transportation which can have the user standing on top of it rather than the incongruity of being on a bike but not in bike position.

— You are receiving this because you commented. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or mute the thread.

— You are receiving this because you commented. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/decentraland/proposals/issues/6#issuecomment-323124978, or mute the thread https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AGimT173da2Hh9vOxKKClujX0xtZnfzzks5sZGo2gaJpZM4OWffY .

[silkwebware]

Do we want ultra modern forms of transport? (An ultra modern world in general?) Wouldn't it be better to forget about the modern world and lock the transport down to that used in say the 1960's?

[silkwebware]

Drive to the places we like in a Mustang?

[enihprom]

individual traffic in timeless design vehicles is not impossible in an "ultramodern" (i'd name it optimally designed) world. i'd say that the venus project (which i like very much) encourages thin population and individualism in a natural equilibrium and you can have a (flying) e-mustang for free but you don't have to own it. so ultra modern would be some kind of high level evolutionary design based on nature (honeycomb, radial AND "flossenheck")