Page 64 - Vertical City

64 The vertical city

The analysis of this model, the formulas and figures
resulting from it are a rich source of information. They
illustrate first of all the exorbitant cost of the network of
the monocentric city and the usefulness of the polycen-
tric organization. They also illustrate that the networks
of a vertical city, every other factor being equal, are
always less important than that of the low-level city.

The financial charge of the network by m² of
constructions ɣ, for the city planned following the rule
L/H = 2 (L/H = 1) is minimal for buildings of five (nine)
stories, whatever the size of the city. It depends little
on the number of stories when it is small, but is more
sensitive to the number of stories when it is large.

It decreases in hyperbolic manner when the number
of floors increases for the city planned following the L/B
rule, and is lower than for the city planned following the
L/H rule from 17 stories on.

Networks can thus only be partially developed and
in a limited manner in a large monocentric city made up
of low-level buildings due to their excessive cost.

When from 1950, China urbanizes with a population
using bicycle transportation (still the case today), while
it imposed since 1979 the policy of one child per family,
and abandons the one-level city model, America and
Europe in full-blown “baby boom” began to develop a
pavilion type of urban planning and its road network for
a population traveling more and more by automobile 5.

5 The subprime crisis of 2007-2009 in the United States, evaluated to
have cost 400 billion euros, concerns only the pavilions. The asso-
ciated network costs, paid for by the community, are still unknown!