This Town Did The Impossible
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN cites it in housing and urbanism threads as an example of a dense, beautiful neighbourhood built in recent times.
What it is
A look at Le Plessis-Robinson, a French suburb transformed from modernist urbanism into traditional mixed-use fabric with local-style architecture, green space and a more balanced housing supply.
Recommended by 0 HN commenters across 0 different months, 2024 to 2025.
What Hacker News said
Cites looofooo0 · 2024-03 · on “Mass timber is great, but it will not solve the housing shortage”
With mixed zone neighbourhoods with 30.000+people/km² you get everything for daily needs in Walking distance and close by metro. There is also a 120 years old concept for such neighbourhoods. [LINK] Also can be done in today s time: [this video]
Cites enaaem · 2025-03 · on “The housing theory of everything (2021)”
I am from the (possibly naive) believe that beauty will change the world. So if you want to present any changes, it has to be beautiful. Ethical and logical arguments only work if people already desire your vision and are only used to rationalise their emotions. [this video]
Cites panick21_ · 2025-04 · on “Air pollution fell substantially as Paris restricted car traffic”
Except that many European cities copied US cities in their development styles, and then later reversed them. So we absolutely do know how to reverse it. > But it is nice to live in the Mission and take the techbus to Mountain View and handwave all the hard trillion dollar problems and say let the poors eat cake. Which is effectively how these discussions seem to go. Every study shows that the poor are hurt the most because of car centric development. Here is a guide on how to improve American cities that are surrounded by lots of suberbia: - Remove/close all highways that go across the city, only keep the ring road. People will simple reclaim those space for recreational uses as soon as cars