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Atalla Wanderer
Joined: 26 Feb 2009
Posts: 13
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 Posted: Thu Feb 26, 2009 6:33 pm Post subject: City Down Under |
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I would first like to say I'm not an architect. I a sailor. I have no formal training across any type of field. What I've learned is from reading material I've hunted down. All I have is my creativity. And my want to learn.
Building up is an amazing idea. Why can we build down? Why can we mirror NYC underground? If you took an acre of land and dug down to create twenty basements, and gave them proper lighting, why can't we have suddenly 20 acres of farmland going vertical, with the natural land untouched on top?
Why not?
Thank you for being patient with me. |
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lekizz
millennium club
Joined: 11 Jan 2006
Posts: 1218
Location: UK
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| Posted: Fri Feb 27, 2009 5:36 am Post subject: |
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| Plants require light. You will need to recreate the Sun on your 20 basement floors! |
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solidred
Joined: 05 Jan 2006
Posts: 732
Location: Scotland
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| Posted: Fri Feb 27, 2009 3:18 pm Post subject: |
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Atalla: the 'architect' of St.Paul's Cathedral in London wasn't a qualified architect either, so fear not 
I suggested something not dissimilar to your own idea on another architecture forum. People were worrying about spoiling historic views in a city by building skyscrapers and so, naturally, I suggested people instead excavate massive holes with daylit basements around their perimeters. Whether or not this is more expensive than building up I don't know. Factors such as subsoil strata type, water table and so on would obviously affect feasibility but things like ground retention could be engineered to a minimum by following the 'angle of repose' of the ground concerned. Furthermore, differing ground conditions affect the cost or feasibility of skyscrapers almost as much.
Thing is, although there's an argument for building vertically (up or down) with its attendant expense (over, say, low-rise buildings of two-five storeys) because city-centre land is expensive and in short supply, the really tall buildings - the skyscrapers - have almost always been built for prestige: that they're often alluded to as 'phallic symbols' isn't far from the prosaic reality. Look at contemporary Dubai, for example. They have plenty of space yet they're building the world's tallest right now. Why? To make Dubai the greatest city on earth, or so their ambition goes...
But I think you can work out the rest when it comes to an age of female empowerment (if not, perhaps, in Dubai) and the construction of the skyscraper's opposite  |
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erjavi
Joined: 10 Jan 2009
Posts: 407
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| Posted: Sat Feb 28, 2009 5:34 am Post subject: sailing with soil |
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Hi Atalla,
You are sailor, I am glider pilot (or it is said planner?) so we move in an usual atmosphere; just comment, together with Lekizz, than live underground is not healthy at long term, like live in space, and Solidred suugested other keys. There are more people who traveled to space than went to the bottom of the seas. But there are more people who lives in rocky houses and clay ones.
Normally these are in the slope of a hill, the really precedent are subterranean cities of Capadocia but this last case consist in dig on rock, like the Catacombes. Dig on fertile soil is diminish fortress of living soils, I mean micro organism elements that are not explored by researchers: you can sail on the sea, you can submerge to the bottom, you can fly but you can not advance through land without destroy everything.
Archaelogists usually finds stones not re-used or rubbish, I wish this civilization do not finish for give enter to another like the precedents, and if it happens I wish the proportion of stone/rubbish be on the average, for let our descendents the same opportunities to initiate their lives like our precedents.
Take way strenght to soils, more in time of accelerated general dessert tendency, with or without climate change or with or without new lands to colonize, is like the miners that dig into themine with anxiety looking forgol without perceive that the walls are shaking, and may be mine change into tomb.
Delta of big rivers throught al the world often preserves hidden cities, not easy to locate like tells in Mesopotamia. I ask myself in under the delta of Guadalquivir river is found the lost city of Tartessos. For some time I was interested on it because after Alexandria and Pergamus Library is the last massive recipient of ancien times culture in Mediterranean area (The king Argantonio Library, made with metal books). But I forget the dignity of people which lived there thinking only in books and if city exists are located over a national park crutial for migratory birds, Doñana: if they are not birds plagues will be arrive in West Europe and Africa, with or without avian flu. So I began designed a fine tube that could intorduced from stable soil in direction to the city if founded via satellite and trial excavation managed together with biologists. The exterior of the tube could be mobile and with form of two screws situated in both extremes and turning opposite directions so it let advance the tube but more interesting it can moved in perpendicular direction too together with natural general underground soils, delta are dynamic systems.
This idea could be developed too for build touristic coastal submarines that transform ocean currents into longitudinal movements avoiding noises for the fishes, but without forget the experience of Gagnan and Cousteau with the aqualung (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aqua-lung ) something designed forbe enjoyed was used for devastate most of marine coastal beauty worldwide.
I´ll be back to the forum not before two weeks, I am sorry. |
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Atalla Wanderer
Joined: 26 Feb 2009
Posts: 13
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| Posted: Sat Feb 28, 2009 3:54 pm Post subject: |
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Antarctica's crust is 20 miles deep on average. 105,600 feet. (Sorry, I don't know metric. All my calculations are in feet. If somebody has a good online converter, let me know.)
If a "story" was 12 feet (this allowing for pipes and all that), you could on average have 8,800 stories. Now, given how cold it will be, and how hot it be be way down under, we can wedge all our buildings in the middle. Say bring our number down to 7,000 stories. That's alot of space. Now, yank out cars, create a place where people mostly walk, or take the sub for long distances, and everything is closer together.
We could empty entire countries into close-knit cities deep underground, and let the world restore itself. Not that I'm a particular tree hugger, but at least consider the idea. A few grand cities built deep underground. In fact, build them under mountains for the added room of scooping out that mountain and living in it as well. |
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solidred
Joined: 05 Jan 2006
Posts: 732
Location: Scotland
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| Posted: Sat Feb 28, 2009 5:22 pm Post subject: |
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| The Antarctic idea, though, has a flaw: cities of the size you describe need a huge supporting infrastructure. For example, where would their food come from? I remember reading that aeroplane fuel costs $x in the urban part closest to where the plane departs in South America then, say $- nice flowers - by the time it leaves the southern tip of that continent, $- nice flowers - by the time it reaches the Antarctic shore and $- nice flowers -. by the time it lands at the research station. Apart from anything else, you have to pay for the cost of the fuel used to carry the fuel. The further you have to fly, the more fuel you need, which increases the weight, which increases the amount of fuel you need again and so on... |
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solidred
Joined: 05 Jan 2006
Posts: 732
Location: Scotland
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| Posted: Sat Feb 28, 2009 5:24 pm Post subject: |
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By the way, for "-nice flowers-" read carefully calculated costs
Damn automated text again  |
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Atalla Wanderer
Joined: 26 Feb 2009
Posts: 13
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| Posted: Sun Mar 01, 2009 5:52 pm Post subject: |
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I've already thought infrastructure through. Infrastructure is the main component of the city.
By the way, the city is a self-supporting country, not a colony attached to any current country. For arguements sake, the City is a country. The City consists of six Districts, and each District has between dozens and hundreds of Sub-Districts. For comparision: The U.S.A. is comparable to the City, the States are comparable to the Districts, and the Counties are comparable to the Sub-Districts.
Now, different Districts include all the main components of the infrastructure. In the north lies "Quamu", which grows all the food and then distrubutes it among the rest of the city by rail. In the center is a cave, which is partly filled with water and eight miles deep. To the west is "Rediu" which has giant locks to raise and lower hundred of ships at once. It also has a waterfall falling from sealevel down to the cave, which has many generators to create power. Above the cave is "Fatau" which focuses mainly on artifical sunlight, starlight, air exchange, and government and business and all that. And running along a road that slopes up to the surface at 5% increase leads to "Shatu" which has a geothermal powerplant for that side of the City, and also heating and cooling, and water desalination and disribution. There are a handful of interlocking water systems. It is completely self-sufficent in terms of infrastructure. |
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Atalla Wanderer
Joined: 26 Feb 2009
Posts: 13
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| Posted: Sun Mar 01, 2009 5:54 pm Post subject: |
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| By the way, whenever I talk about carefully calculated costs, I'm going to use -nice flowers- from now on. It just feels right. |
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lekizz
millennium club
Joined: 11 Jan 2006
Posts: 1218
Location: UK
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| Posted: Mon Mar 02, 2009 3:31 am Post subject: |
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| Bear in mind that if all your good ideas - geothermal, solar, tidal power, growing food within a defined geographical limit etc - were applied to our existing population centres in the developed world, we would have no need to live in your underground twilight world |
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Atalla Wanderer
Joined: 26 Feb 2009
Posts: 13
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| Posted: Mon Mar 02, 2009 6:46 pm Post subject: |
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| Imagine taking any great area of the world and stacking 6000 replicas on top of it. That is the magnitude of which I am speaking - a waterfall that falls naturally for 42000 ft and is 32000 ft wide - tap that kind of raw power and you are a god. I'm talking about a world enterprise that will transend any value you put on it. World-changing to the degree you cannot measure it. A model for all human society for all time. |
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