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Like many of you out there, I spent a lot of my time as a kid playing with LEGOs.
And perhaps unsurprisingly,
I spent a lot of time building and designing LEGO cities.
When I was a kid, when I could afford a LEGO set, or got one for Christmas,
I would often go buy a LEGO City-themed LEGO set.
Now that I'm an adult, when I go and look at LEGO sets,
I often wonder, what kind of a city could you build with LEGO City sets?
Would they be any good? Would they be good urbanism?
So stick with me as I get a little bit nerdy and review LEGO City sets as a city planner.
*City Beautiful intro*
Okay, let's get started here on shop.lego.com.
I'm gonna find the theme "City," and we're gonna look at the LEGO City sets.
And it says here that there are 95 results for LEGO City sets.
So where do we begin? I want to start at the bottom, quite literally, at the baseplate level.
Here are your standard road baseplates,
but I actually wanted to start this discussion by looking back at baseplates from the past.
Now, it used to be that as any LEGO set of any reasonable size came with a baseplate.
I mean, look at these LEGO sets from the late '70s through about 1990.
You can build out a fully-fledged road network with only a few sets.
I mean, look at the baseplate on this one. This was my first set ever. It had a custom hit row for the racecars.
But I want to focus on 𝘰𝘯𝘦 aspect of baseplates: the width of the road itself.
A standard LEGO baseplate is 32 studs by 32 studs.
But the amount of space the road takes up has changed over time.
Let's start at the beginning, and no, I'm not gonna talk about these weird things from 1970.
The first true road baseplates were released in 1978,
and the road was about 14 studs wide, with 9 studs on each side of the road.
Each lane was 7 studs wide, though the lane markings reduced that a bit.
This was a great size for vehicles 4 studs wide, as all were at the time.
I'm not sure about this crosswalk to nowhere though.
When I was a kid, the roadway was 18 studs,
which left 7 studs on each side of the road.
The roadway did widen compared to 1978,
but you gained what was essentially a bike lane on either side.
It seemed like a reasonable trade-off to think of transportation options for LEGO minifigs.
Roads changed again in 2005, and not for the better.
Roads got wider.
LEGO released new baseplates with 20-stud wide roads, and no bike lanes,
leaving only 6 studs on each side for sidewalks or buildings.
I do appreciate the nod to storm sewer systems here though. These are the LEGO base plates we use now.
Why did LEGO streets get wider? Well, you have to look at the vehicles.
Check out this car released in 1985.
It's 4 studs wide. The name of this set is, and I'm not joking,
"Family Car."
I suppose this is an accurate name if,
if someone expects this man to transport families of 𝘮𝘪𝘤𝘦 or something.
But it obviously highlights how hilariously small these cars are.
But let's look at some cars in the 2019 LEGO City sets.
Here, let's look at this one, "High-speed Chase."
They are at least 6 studs wide. Look at this police car!
And the kicker is that they don't carry any more passengers than the family car from the '80s.
LEGO cars are generally designed for one passenger,
which seems sort of strange when we drive around with cars meant for four or more people.
This is of course because LEGO people are bizarrely shaped.
Can you imagine what a real-looking LEGO human would look like?
God, that's horrifying.
LEGO people are far wider than humans,
so you can't really fit more than one in a car and keep the scale reasonable.
But it's also sort of appropriate, as most cars on the roadway today only have one person in them.
In playing, they're called single-occupant vehicles.
This is why many cities promote carpooling,
as it is much more efficient than allocating nearly 100 square feet and two tons of vehicle for each person.
Maybe we can learn from LEGO people and switch to smaller cars meant for only one person.
Something like a smart car.
Unfortunately, at least in the US, our love affair with the SUV is stronger than ever,
despite no need for a car that shape or size.
Unfortunately, it seems like LEGO streets and vehicles have taken inspiration from the real world.
Streets and cars are larger and wider now in LEGO and in real life.
So kudos to LEGO for the realism, I guess.
But this is a case where I'd want more fantasy than reality for my toys.
Okay, I think we've covered baseplates pretty extensively, so let's move on.
If you scroll through the LEGO City sets,
you quickly come to the conclusion that the LEGO city is incredibly dangerous.
But at the same time you're never more than a few steps away from emergency personnel.
Does your barbecue get out of control?
Don't worry.
In LEGO City, dispatch will send out a perfect backyard barbecue-sized firetruck for your rescue.
After that fire and ensuing rescue ruined your lunch,
you decide to just give up and grab a burger at the local fast food joint.
But bad luck falls you, and soon enough, the giant burger sign outside the restaurant is on fire.
Luckily, a slightly larger fire truck shows up to save the day.
Unable to get a burger in the midst of this disaster, you decide to get some fine dining downtown.
And you can probably guess what happens next.
The LEGO website lists 34 police, fire, ambulance, or rescue sets for sale in 2019.
That's really half of all the sets for sale in the theme.
Now, of course, they could do this because kids love disasters and they love to save the day.
It's fun to catch the criminal or put out the fire or fly the the rescue helicopter.
My question as a city planner is, how does LEGO City pay for all of these services?
Cities get revenue from a few basic sources,
including transfers from state and federal governments, property taxes, local sales taxes, and fees.
If we look again at LEGO City here, we can see if there isn't a whole lot of property
to pay property taxes to support all these services.
The best in line-up in my opinion here, is "Capital City," though there is no capital in sight.
It's probably a good thing as government, that government building, wouldn't be paying property taxes.
This set has a hotel.
It's very cool that LEGO City can use it to charge guests local lodging taxes.
The bad news is that this costs $7,425 a night,
due to the large lodging tax needed to pay for all those fire and police personnel.
There are also, you know, other buildings here that are pretty great.
Let's see.
There's a museum right here, which isn't great,
because here in the United States, non-profits don't pay property taxes.
So that's unfortunate.
The city could collect--
let's see here--
some sales taxes from the hotdog and news stand as well as this ice cream truck,
and maybe some fees from the electric vehicle charging.
So, there are some sources of revenue here in this set,
which makes it kind of above and beyond what we see in the LEGO City theme in my opinion.
And then again, on the bright side, there are no police and fire personnel.
The obscene number of fires and criminals in LEGO City
may have something to do with another strange feature of the city.
There's absolutely nowhere to live.
Well, I shouldn't say that.
There is a shack owned by, you guessed it, a shady character or criminal.
I have a couple theories about the lack of housing in LEGO City.
First, I think that there used to be housing in LEGO City, but it all burned down.
Without homes, many turned to crime to fund their personal rebuilding as nobody had insurance.
I mean, have you ever seen a LEGO insurance agency set?
The newly homeless who didn't turn to crime overreacted
and demanded obsessive levels of police and fire service.
And that's how you get today's LEGO City.
I also think that the lack of housing could be corporate LEGO holding a mirror to our real-life housing crises,
and suggesting that this apocalyptic hellscape
is what will happen if we don't get serious about providing affordable housing in our cities.
Either way, the lack of house LEGO sets is kind of sad,
especially when you look back at some of these extremely charming houses they used to sell.
I mean, how cute are these. They're just delightful.
And they have much more character than some of the 2019 sets.
Now, to be fair to LEGO, you can walk into a LEGO store and buy house sets,
They just aren't sold in the LEGO City theme.
So let's leave Disaster City entirely, and move to a different place.
Heartlake City, home of LEGO Friends.
Now you'll notice a few things right away.
The first, the sirens have stopped.
There are no emergency vehicles in Heartlake City.
Unless you count the adorable ambulance
at the Heartlake City Pet Center. Well, that's pretty nice.
You'll also notice that the residents are much taller and thinner than the residents of LEGO City,
which is sort of inexplicable when you consider that Heartlake City has a burger joint,
café, cupcake café, frozen yogurt shop, pizzeria, and hot chocolate van.
But maybe they're getting all their food from the mobile organic food market.
The point here is that residents of Heartlake City like to eat as much as residents of LEGO City like to rob a bank.
Not that I'm critiquing Heartlake City here. It is far more realistic.
There are homes at Heartlake City.
They seem to be your standard suburban single-family house,
complete with living room, kitchen, horse, and wishing well.
You get the sense that by LEGO City standards, Heartlake City residents are wealthy.
They are certainly wealthier than the homeless population of LEGO City,
particularly as home ownership is the primary means of wealth accumulation here in the United States.
Heartlake City residents also have expensive hobbies,
like car racing, horses, recreational vehicles, and the aforementioned eating out at restaurants.
Stephanie's family even has a lake house, but you can see where they make their money.
The residents are very entrepreneurial.
Olivia works in robotics, while Emma opened an art studio in a nice turn-of-the-century Main Street building.
Residents probably also pay low taxes because they don't have as many municipal services to speak of.
Overall, Heartlake City is far more realistic than the constant trash fire that is LEGO City.
People do "live, work, and play" in Heartlake City, to echo the motto of like, 80% of US cities.
But there are other city sets LEGO offers in their LEGO Creator theme.
So let's look at Creator City and see how it stacks up.
Now. There are actually two lines of creator sets.
The first line is Creator 3-in-1, which actually contains some of my favorite LEGO sets, period.
They kind of harken back to a simpler time in LEGO history,
and there are just a lot of fun to build and play with.
They offer small, modular buildings,
including this, let's see here, this nice little modular skate house and sweet shop.
It's pretty nice.
My daughter even has this really cute LEGO treehouse here,
which was, you know, totally fun to build and play with.
But, all in all, you can get some nice houses and businesses in the LEGO Creator 3-in-1 line.
So, kudos to LEGO for that.
But I really want to focus more on a different Creator theme.
It's the Creator Expert series. So let's go there.
You know, whereas playability dictated the design of all the previous sets,
here, I think it detail is the driving force.
So, look at this, look at the ornamentation on this,
you know, Corner Garage here. It's just fantastic.
And this is just one of many of these modular building sets.
The first modular building, Café Corner, was released in 2007.
And since then they've released one or two new sets a year.
The architectural styles range from Exotic Revival to Streamline Moderne,
but all are two or three stories, and meant to attach to each other to form a sort of varied streetscape.
Now, this video is supposed to be a review of LEGO City sets and I give this line five stars out of five.
These sets clearly promote dense walkable urbanism,
many of the buildings here are even mixed-use, with apartments above retail.
The clash of architectural styles may bother some,
but cities don't exhibit just one architectural style.
The differences imply that the city wasn't built all at once,
but instead evolved over a period of time just like real cities.
The mix of uses is great here too. You have restaurants, services, shopping, and municipal uses.
I especially love the townhome and the pet shop set.
It's a great example of horizontal mixed-use.
The horizontal mixed-use is where there is a mix of uses,
but instead of a stack, like residential over retail, it's side-by-side.
Due to zoning and some code issues, horizontal mixed-use can actually be easier to build
and offers many of the same benefits.
Now, that's not to say I don't have a few quibbles with the modular sets.
I find that the width of the sidewalks to be too small.
If I was collecting these sets, and by that, I mean if I had lots and lots of disposable income,
I would at least double their width to allow for more room for pedestrians,
as well as street furniture and street trees.
Most of the street trees included in these sets are pretty pathetic,
and the entire street scene would look better with some mature trees.
I also found the most recent set, a Corner Garage, to be really out of place.
With such a dense, walkable environment, why would there still be a gas station and a repair shop?
There are also relatively few vehicles included in modular sets,
so there's really not a big demand for auto services.
But, all in all, you can't get a better bunch of city LEGO sets than the ones in the Creator Expert Modular line.
They are fantastic, and I hope LEGO keeps releasing them.
So thanks for sticking with me on this whirlwind tour of LEGO City, Heartlake City and Creator City.
I think they all offer an interesting perspective on the modern city.
If you're interested in buying these sets and looking for, kind of, maximum detail and realism,
I'd recommend the Creator Expert Modular Buildings.
But they are expensive. So if cost is a concern,
you can't go wrong with something from Heartlake City, or the Creator 3-in-1 line,
or even one or two of the LEGO City sets.
You know, and the way I like to build cities when I was a kid was to buy these sets,
and then tear them apart and build my own thing.
So, you know, maybe just consider these sets to be raw materials for your own creations.
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[Subtitles credits: 雜碎 Chop Suey] [Translation credits: ]