Blog
Tip of the Day – 10.03.21 Help for Horizontal Non Cities
Written by Jimmy
Big Mistake. I recently referred to NYC as a vertical City and London and Moscow as Horizontal Cities. Maybe, but that is before I spent any time in a REAL horizontal city, or non-city like ‘Sterling.’
18 years ago I was supporting a big oil and gas deal, travelling back and forth between Moscow and Houston with a lot of Russians. One of them, having gone on a ‘tour’ of Houston, reported back, ‘There’s no city in that city.’ He couldn’t find a centre, emotionally, culturally or commercially. London has a centre, the City historically, and Charing Cross geographically. Moscow has a clear centre around the Kremlin.
But for many US cities, there is no city in the city. Different problems. NYC has millions of folks travelling vertically up and down buildins with no code of social interaction. Well I solved that and am just waiting for the ‘roll out.’ What do you do with a city where everyone is in their little car bubble, floating around on highways around and around shopping centres and suburbs filled with McMansions where there is no need for social interaction? You don’t need a code for social interaction because you can pretty much avoid contact.
As far as I can tell, the current US solution is cup holders. If you are confined to your car, travelling around and around shopping centres, you can’t be fueled by motivating human contact. You need lots of liquid. We wented some GM van. There are 6 cup holders for the driver and passangers. And 10 more cup holders for the 4 seats in the back. And four separate sunglasses holders that flip down from worth. Interesting ratios — 66% of all passangers in our gym are expected to wear sunglasses, while dividing up 2 and 2/3’s drinks per person. So more emphasis on hydration then squinting. Fair enough. the windows are blacked out anyway.
But here are three ideas to bring human interaction back into vertical non-cities.
- Step A. Each car’s colour and horn represent one note on the musical scale. Step B, someone cool takes over those big signs that tell you about crashes ahead and fog patches. during rush hour, the man controlling the sign announces a song and the notes involved. You’ve got a few miles to sort yourselve out into the appropriate order (you’ll get quite good at this, especially as it will be covered in drivers’ tests) and then you beep out the song. I recommend that mics get set up under bridges and there’s a radio station that just covers ‘horn covers’ so that you can hear the song and your contribution. Average songs involve 400-800 notes or so, so this would be a miles long thing. Bohemian Rhapsody could cover the whole commute. Motocycle riders would bunch up to handle Slash and Jimmy Page guitar solo’s, truckers would handle the long note, like the final chord in Day in the Life. A community is born. After all, it is all about the music.
- Bring back CB Radio. If you can combine the old CB radio excitement with the new rules of Facebook, you’d have a winner. I will leave it to Hunter and Hannah to sort out how to do it. The only rule is you have to end up with better music than the last time we did this. Convoy, beget the Streak and it was a pretty bad time… (Oh, and remind me to tell you about getting arrested for Streaking in 1976! ). These two videos come with a serious health warning.
First, the Streak:
Second, Convoy:
3. Create a speed battle ship game for the road. Now this will take a bit of explaining, but stick with me. Real genius. So all cars are divided into two teams — odd and even license plates. Second, all cars are assigned a ‘cell’ for each game. And they have a box on their roof. There are two guys — the music guy from point 1 and some other cool guy in charge of distributing battle ships across the cells. If your cell has a battle ship, when your cell is called by the opposing teams, the box on your roof blows up and for the rest of the game there’s smoke coming out … If you’re a ‘safe cell’, the box bursts with flowers and James Taylor songs and just has a sweet green light emerging. Every mile you get a go, and you’re playing with about 800 cars in your mile. Very fast game and the big signs that are warning you of fog patches, but now play music games, also play battle ship games. So will require alternating games, which is really cool. So for 20 miles or so the whole road is busting out in flowers or smoke. And then for 20 miles you’re organised to play ‘heard it thru the grapevine.’ Think of the social norms created. You’re the d4 guy at cocktail parties that always blows up, but you also delivered a hell of a C note on Dead Weather’s Treat me Like Your Mother. With a great mix into Tie Your Mother Down.
So that’s it. We can bring some soul back to Sterling. Those little signs warning of fog patches will become critical to the working of society and the little Music Guy and his buddy will ultimately control the heart of the non-city, City. This will encourage folks to stay on the road more to interact and might cause a little carbon emissions problem to sort, but let’s assume all these cars get electric at some point. Oh, and if we’re really going to take this seriously, we’ll need more cup holders!
Jimmy