Discuss Real Life Architecture, Structure And Sociology

I don't know, prismaticmarcus. One the one hand, you may be right, but on the other
I'd say that it could also avoid people to reply to initial thoughts.
See our own initial topic, the grid, and we moved to a discussion
about Canberra in under 10 posts. If we had just let it flown,
I don't know whether others would have liked to post a comment
about the grid anymore...
It is a bit like knowing where you stand, can you post a comment
regarding a certain topic now, or is it already too late.
And are others still willing to talk about the initial stuff;
here we were, but would you know always for sure?

 

Oh yes, I like it when you put it all on me

Well, my thought here was that it would be the best if we could do the following:
1) Have an own sub-forum for discussions like this one here,
integrated into the overall-forum "XL Nation",
so not being in the "Watering Hole" would be better.
2) Have your own threads for specific topics and maybe have something
like a "General Chat"; I do think that newbies who would like to discuss
about grids when we have come down to another topic in this thread here
would not want to share their thoughts anymore. And most likely, they can also
revive threads in a way, when discussion about grids has come to and end.
I'm a bit unsure about a "general chat" feature, I thought of it as an organizing
feature: Think about that a newbie created a new thread, but some of our given group
here do not see it immediately within all the new posts (that will surely happen
once the community has grown). But one lady, one guy maybe finds the new thread,
has time to read it and can recommend it to others, who get "alerts"...
Another advantage of such a "general chat" was that one could collect thoughts
of already given discussion material, and one could interconnect given single-goaled
discussions, like connecting a grid-centered discussion with a sociological discussion.
But as said, I'm not so sure here...
I meanwhile have to say that I start believing that one single thread for discussions
about real life was not enough

Your thoughts?

 

I know that you can get alerts anyway once you start watching a category/forum/...
This first option was really thought for recommendation, like someone finds
something good and says "check out this thread" in the general chat.
I mean, I could follow you guys and see if you all discuss a certain topic,
but I think following someone you will need heavy organizing talents yourself...
Now let's have the thoughts of the people who follow me" (9 members atm, lol)

 

Hmmh, well, the thought for separate sections was rather
for also allowing newbies to easily find threads like this here...
Yes, we did not fill up the watering hole, though
But I somehow believe this thread does not belong
into a watering hole or whatsoever

Anyways, maybe I'm going to write a PM to
the group here and to the moderators for what could be done
to on the one hand somewhat be able to guarantee that there was
a certain focus regarding one single topic and on the other hand
be able to interconnect given thoughts, add new ideas, and then
...conquer the world, err..., wait, wrong movie
It is hard to resemble the, you know, bonfire talks where anybody
can add something, where you can digress for a while and then go back,
where you can come back to the initial thoughts whenever you want,
this was hard to do here, I hope you understand...

So, meanwhile, what about a new topic?

Widespread Towns vs. Narrow Cities
with sharing your experiences, discussing
the differences in their inhabitants' way of life,
and so on (e.g. differences in traffic solutions
and the inhabitants perspective and opinion about the
specific way they travel; heard someone mentioning that the people of Canberra
do believe that their status was higher when they could drive by car)...
I wanted to have it a broader discussion,
but if you want to center it, we can have it too, let's see...

 

I have to say that the grid part actually looks more beautiful in my opinion,
as the houses do have more details, and a little bit of playing with the forms.
I dislike the power lines there, though... and it has almost no trees?
Why the hell it has no trees in the streets there?
On top of that, some houses look rather derelict.
Overall, it has its charms, and if the city could find the money to renew this area a bit,
it could be a little paradise. First, they need to replace the power lines with underground cables,
then some streets have to be renewed, and the derelict looking houses need
to be repaired, and then find some good places for more trees...

The non-grid parts look a bit like some British version of the superblocks,
it in general looks very American there, a large mall in the center,
major roads leading to distributor roads leading to single cul-de-sac roads...
I'm not a fan of that...

In any case, Swindon does have its charms, though residential zone architecture may not be
its number one attraction, but that holds for many other cities, too
(e.g. for many German cities that suffered from bombing in WWII).