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I’m glad I could find some other people on the internet that have these kind of ideas as well. I am also in no way qualified within the field of civil engineering just interested in this specific topic, so please feel free to correct me.

My first thoughts upon this idea was to have “units” as such. Because of the hexagons unique properties to tile so well, and its tendency to make effectively “upscale” (see examples below to see what I mean) I thought it was perfect.

The idea of having modules, or districts as my friend calls, them seemed also very appealing

Example 1

Here is the proposed model for a base unit. For future reference here is a key of what colours will represent:

Red - Housing

Yellow - Local community. Everything a person would need within walking distance (food stores, transport centres, gymnasiums etc.)

This same design can be scaled up to accommodate more needs that only need to be within a small journey( more of that explained later down the post)

Example 2

Orange - Transport hub

Blue - Medical/ general practitioners

Green - School

Pink - Shops and other services

The same applies to more scaled up versions Example 3

I would love some input into what needs to be included here

As mentioned before this design is ideally supposed to be a car free area. Trains lines would run from yellow centres to orange centres and orange centres into the centre of the larger upscale (incomplete), and into other orange centres, making for a more time and energy efficient journey. This would allow for every single person to be within a maximum distance from a service, and the distance to be reasonable (e.g a 5-10 minute to commute to school)

I am still aware that this design is highly impractical for real life use and there lie flaws within it, but I would appreciate any feedback people would be able to help me further develop this concept

Amibay
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    Welcome to wold building! The model for this site involves specific questions with a best possible answer. Unfortunately, open-ended questions don't allow that. Please ask a more specific question, and provide enough detail about the context for your cities so people can give specific answers. What is the goal, setting, tech levels, or story goals for theses cities? Otherwise the question will be closed for not meeting our guidelines. – DWKraus Feb 13 '22 at 13:15
  • You should be clearer here about the roads or rails. People expect transit routes to be straight, both for efficiency and so as not to arrive at the non-local restaurant with the dry heaves. Also, you need to address noise concerns - I see you kept the industrial zone separate, but at least in this sorry universe, hospitals and schools make unjustifiable amounts of noise from exposed HVAC turbines on the roof, and light residential zones are made large for a reason. – Mike Serfas Feb 13 '22 at 13:24
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    I admit it's an interesting approach in city building, however I agree with DWKraus, you should focus more on a part that gives you trouble. Most modern cities (if you talk about trains and cars, I guess we're at least starting from early 20th century tech) include a lot of thinking in transports, maybe that could be a start -if you sho have issues with it of course-? Also... What is the scale of the grid, roughly? 500m, 1km...? – Tortliena - inactive Feb 13 '22 at 13:29
  • @DWKraus I don’t really have any specific questions about this idea but do you know of anywhere that would be able to give general feedback to it? I’m happy to take down the post for not meeting guidelines, as I don’t really have anything to add. – Amibay Feb 13 '22 at 13:36
  • @Amibay There's a list of worldbuilding resources here. However, I don't know if all the discussion forums are still up-to-date... In any case, any kind of forum or Reddit would do the job for general opinions and discussions; Q&A sites are generally not good at this kind of thing ^^'. – Tortliena - inactive Feb 13 '22 at 13:39
  • @Tortliena Thank you so much!! Also to answer your earlier question I am still unsure about dimensions, as to the unforgiving area formula for a hexagon – Amibay Feb 13 '22 at 13:51
  • so the yellow contains food stores and everything people need, but the pink is shopping? If you want to build a scalable walkable city, a good way is to NOT separate housing and stores into different districts, but rather to have everything: schools, shops, transports, etc. in every area (hexagon) – Klaus Haukenstein Feb 13 '22 at 14:36
  • I suggest you try using triangles instead of hexagons. Although regular hexagons tile they plane, it is impossible to put them together to form another hexagon. This is something triangles and squares can do very easily. I suspect this is part of the reason why modern cities are build on a square grid, but I don't have any direct evidence for that claim. – E Tam Feb 13 '22 at 15:22
  • "Are hexagonal based tiling cities still possible?" (1) They are not logically self-contradictory. (2) They do not break any fundamental law of physics. (3) Which means that they are very obviously possible. (4) Which means that it is not whether they are possible or not that you wanted to ask. (5) Showing proposed city maps without a scale, and without even hinting at the target population density is lazy. (7) Cities exist for a purpose. Manufacturing, trade, education etc. What is the purpose of this city? What does it do? As described, it looks like a holiday resort, not a city. – AlexP Feb 13 '22 at 15:24
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    @AlexP Firstly, English is not my first language and your picking of semantics of the question at hand is unnecessary and unhelpful. Furthermore, the reference to laziness and "looking like a holiday resort" is an unneeded blow at my attempt of a question here. The lack of constructive criticism in this comment, unlike the rest of the thread (who have provided many thinking points for me to reflect upon) shows no real passion or willingness to answer questions posed, which to my understanding is the entire purpose of not only this site but stack exchanges as a whole. – Amibay Feb 13 '22 at 17:30
  • I would suggest focusing on one aspect at a time and asking a series of questions. For example, one question for transportation, one question for optimal zoning, one question for medical services, etc. This would help to meet the WB.SE requirements for questions and also would help you to develop your idea better. || A side note: you could have shops in the same buildings as housing. This is very typical for old cities in Europe and Asia. It also solves at least some problems with transportation. – Otkin Feb 13 '22 at 19:19
  • Sure, why not.. you want to go hexagonal.. suppose you'd tilt cubic houses 45 degrees, see Rotterdam https://www.google.com/search?q=cube+houses+rotterdam&tbm=isch&source=iu&ictx=1&vet=1 – Goodies Feb 13 '22 at 19:32
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    Are you familiar with the game Cities: Skylines? You should be. You can build a hex city, and see what happens. Gaming it out is what the game is. – Harper - Reinstate Monica Feb 14 '22 at 01:13
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    Voting to reopen. This is a sophomore-level Urban Planning and Economic Geography question. It seems well within the guidelines to me. We permit "How do I improve my monster/creature" and "How do I improve my magic system" and "How do I improve my map" questions. This is a fair "How do I improve my map using tool XYZ" question. It seems answerable and not opinion-based. – user535733 Feb 14 '22 at 02:05
  • @user535733 It is a civil engineering question but the OP is specifically asking for general feedback not help with a particular question base on this concept. – Ash Feb 15 '22 at 08:07
  • @Ash the last sentence is not clear. Maybe answerers are expected to know something about subject ? When you'd regard the title as the question, not the last sentence, there is a clear Yes/No question. vtr.. I don't see the issues. – Goodies Feb 15 '22 at 22:20
  • If you want it to be car-free, you need to make it mixed use so people can walk to most things they need, or to a transit stop. Zoning creates car-oriented cities. – StephenS Feb 15 '22 at 22:58

1 Answers1

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Lots of Urban Planning and Geography students get enamored of hexagonal neighborhoods when they learn about Central Place Theory.

However, keep in mind that it's an abstraction for understanding or describing some basic concepts; the hexagonal structure is not intended to be prescriptive. The hexagonal shape is intended to convey that areas are more likely to be circular than rectangular or linear when movement friction is assumed to be similar in all directions. It's cleaner than drawing a lot of overlapping circles and then stopping to explain the overlap.

Stuff to add to your model:

  • Cities grow for a reason -- the city's exports are more valuable than their imports. Your city needs a reason to exist. Maybe it's a port or trade crossroads. Maybe it's an administrative capital. Maybe it's home to a large institution (like a University). Maybe its an industrial center, located between resources. But that key reason(s) for existence is historically located near the center of the city (the city grew around that activity).

  • Land use evolves over time. Factories and hospitals and schools grow (or shrink) as demand and technologies and standards change, and if you want to keep them in the neighborhood your land use (and citizens) must be flexible. Residential housing stock ages and gets renewed, family sizes change, and family needs change -- a pedestrian city doesn't need many garages, but what happens when a fad comes along and a generation of residents very much want garages? Maybe a certain hexagon is residential for this generation. That doesn't mean it always will be the same use forever. You might consider designating which hexagons are appropriately located and ripe for recycling to another use, or for renewal.

  • Market area sizes don't match cleanly. If you have, say, 10,000 residents in a neighborhood, That won't match 2.0 day care centers and 1.0 dentists and 3.0 gymnasiums. Instead, you will get 2.5 day care centers, and they won't want to be located together. So each will be on a different side of the neighborhood, seemingly hiding in a "residential" hexagon instead of cleanly in the center "neighborhood commercial" hexagon. The day care center isn't doing anything wrong -- the model is wrong. The model is using the wrong hexagon size. There is no single hexagon size that cleanly covers every industry, every market. (The use of hexagons, you recall, is descriptive, not prescriptive).

user535733
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  • Q: what is meant with "hexagonal structure is not intended to be prescriptive" – Goodies Feb 13 '22 at 20:08
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    @Goodies, it means that nobody has seriously proposed building urban blocks and land use zones and neighborhoods in the shape of hexagons to cure some problem. "Too few 120-degree turns on my commute!" – user535733 Feb 13 '22 at 21:03
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    Terrain also causes deformation in the hexagons for a real city. A river cutting through won’t fall cleanly on hex boundaries. A railroad will cut straight across, possibly at a weird angle. And two cities founded near each other may not have aligned grids, resulting in rotation at the borders. – SRM Feb 16 '22 at 14:16