Should cities be inside-out to reduce pollution?

[Boerseun]

Whilst an interesting topic, I doubt if this design is feasable. To put it simply, you can have a few shops serve many people. If you take the circumference of a circle as given by your design, the most amount of people can be housed on the outside of the city, given reasonable density levels, whilst commerce can be concentrated at the center and still be able to serve the populace. The modern trend, however, is for commerce to spread to the periphery, provided good transportation (highways, trains) are available. This isn't in support of your design, though - it's merely a reaction to high property values and traffic congestion in downtown areas. The centers are still commercial, mostly - except for those apartment dwellers who don't mind living on top of each other in high-density areas. But simply due to numbers, the populace will have to be mainly housed on the outside of the city.

[Michaelangelica]

Visit Canberra before you get two keen.
That is a "planned" city in a big sheep paddock in between Sydney and Melbourne.
(Sydney and Melbourne couldn't agree which was to be the "Capital City" so they dropped this one in,- sorta half way).

I think it is a 'Service(sic) Station" plot to make you giddy going around in lost circles using up more gas.
It is a very sterile town.
Nice museums though.
The new suburbs make Belsen look good.

The very little I saw of Houston was amazing.
My friend "Chuck" (is everyone in the USA called that?)took me to a big cow paddock.
On the other side of the paddock was high rise office blocks glass and steel to the sky.
Chuck pointed to the paddock and said proudly "There's six trillion in development going into those paddocks next year."
(Um. . . Chuck, I'm from Australia, what's a trillion?)
The city was expanding so fast there was no "old' part- it was all high rise city.
(BTW Can Texas afford unemployment benefit yet?)

Urban planning in NSW (OZ) is abysmal.
Governments got sick of us all having backyards to play cricket in, and abolished them. Now you have MacMansions right up to the fence line. (We all have fences, governor Macquarie decreed that 150 years ago to control the pigs wandering about.)
The government said it couldn't afford (read 'be bothered') to run sewage and water lines the extra distance if everyone kept spreading out.
(We have run out of water anyway and all have to put in rainwater tanks if we can find any backyard left to put them in.)
They called this "Urban consolidation".
Actually it was a govenment conspiracy/plot against BBQs (lots of drugs, strange burnt things you are supposed to eat, and that awful CO2) and backyard cricket.
So I'm for anything that is an improvement on "urban consolidation"

The best parts of Sydney are the old inner-city suburbs that poor Greeks and Italians had to live in when they immigrated. Now they are full of life, great food, ethnicity, and fabulous cheap restaurants. The backyards of places like Maricville are full of citrus, fragipannis, figs, sunflowers, vegi. & herb -gardens and grape vines.. They now cost 5 million to buy and are protected by the National heritage Trust.

Personally I would like an "inside out" house like the Romans and Arabs (1,000AD) built.
A Roman villa was square with a central garden pool and courtyard with underfloor heating and cooling.
Funny that neither had problems with sewerage or water supply.
Amazing how little 1,000 years of progress can get you.

[Brinnie]

i like your illustrations but i don't think much it would help pollution on a global scale if the majority of pollutants were on the outside... it would prolly just spread it out thinner and over more space rather than condensed, no?

in that case, yes it has advantages- like you suggested- but also has disadvantages. consider that business to business commutes would be longer and that may bring more gas pollution,no? but im sure some ppl would want 2 live there. ppl live in portland even though it rains everyday.