Also Robert Silverberg’s The World Inside.
That’s what I was going to say.
How are you going to get people to want to live in these buildings? It might be an improvement in quality of life for some people when you get the bugs of sanitation and privacy worked out…in countries that lack infrastructure
Most Americans might not go for it, even if they think their home is a pain in the ass. I don’t want to live in such close proximity, and I can’t be the only one.
Old Man River City was designed by Buckminster Fuller. This looks like something I would actually be interested in living and working in.
In the Oath of Fealty the accommodations were similar to a nice apartment building, but the big selling point was security. Think of the arcology, Todos Santos, as the world largest gated community. Todos Santos had a private security force and non-residents weren’t allowed outside the Mall. There were video cameras in all public areas. All residents, including the children, wore tracking badges and children could just go anywhere with the parents confident that their children were safe.
The second factor was that the arcology insulated you from a lot a lot of the hassle of modern life. No commuting and the arcology even prepared your tax returns for you.
The book made it clear that everyone wasn’t comfortable with that kind of lifestyle and there was a lot of stress between the arcology residents and the Angelenos living around it.
I was thinking of the arcologies from SimCity, and The Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov.
We already have large, complex structures that house thousands or even millions of people in a centralized location. They are called “cities”.
Why would anyone want to live in a giant Borg cube stuffed in a room half the size of a Manhattan studio appartment?
Has the OP considered how a 50,000 people move efficiently inside this cube?
Where do the people work? Does everyone work inside mister_mistropolis or do they have to commute to somewhere else?
How much would it cost to build a single structure with an internal volume 250x the size of the largest building every built (the Boeing factory in Everett, WA).
If “money is crippling your idea” and society doesn’t want it, maybe it isn’t an idea worth pursuing.
Has the OP read the book “High Rise” by J. G. Ballard?
It sounds like he’s got plenty of room for 1000 such large buildings, fitting six trillion Homo sapiens for a thousand times the fun. In fact, with less food overweight should be less of a problem – why not ten trillion?
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Good decision.
Or you’ve moved people back out of the city to where they were in the first place, turning the city into a shadow of its former self.
The point is to do it because people need homes, not because there is money to be made.
I guess it is hard to expect anything above what a person knows to be right.
I think it is really sad that it is a joke to people.
Yes, there is more than enough land to house all the people in the world and it wouldn’t involve building a highly sophisticated structure that is also 1 km into the earth, has its own power, heating, ventilation, and a complex network of hydroponic farms, that can take up a lot more space more efficiently then a farm on a horizontal plane.
The place would be huge, and some may consider it to be scary. Sort of like the idea of computers getting smarter than humans, or being monitored all the time.
The funny part is, both of those are closer to happening than actually caring for people other than yourself.
My idea, just like any idea, can always shift its alignment based on whose hands it lands in.
Although Einstein did not invent the bomb and did not participate in the Manhattan Project, his theories laid the foundation for it.
Even one of the brightest minds could not foresee how his desire to make the world more educated could result in one of the worst things EVER discovered (Weapons of Mass Destruction).
Maybe my approach isn’t for everyone. Honestly, I never said I wanted to shove everyone and a hole and forget about them.
I just said it could be done. We already have huge holes dug into the earth in a lot of places.
Bingham Canyon Mine is the world’s largest man-made excavation, stretching 2.5 miles across and 3/4 of a mile deep.
By far that is the most impressive, but at least that is one.
But like I said, you can’t expect anything above what a person knows is right.
If you live in money, you die by money. Plain and simple.
AND to just add another note, there are people right now who have designed a multitude of different mega structures just like this one. Some are in the water, or “Above ground”. There are so many ideas floating around that can accommodate many types of life styles.
So? They can commute in their flying cars and nuclear powered maglev trains.
Google “housing bubble”. There is not a shortage of buildings for people to live in.
A lot of really smart people have written a lot of interesting stuff about economics, urban planning, architecture and speculative engineering.
What you have described (as someone else pointed out) is called an “arcology”. It’s a standard trope in sci fy, but it’s not necessarily unrealistic or implausible. as there is a global trend towards greater urbanization. So there definitely is a growing need to house lots of people in a relatively small area. And in many cities, you can already find complex, interconnected networks of residential and commercial buildings.
I wouldn’t design such a building as a giant Borg cube though. What you described sounds more suitable for housing prison inmates than being a place people actually want to live and work in.
That sounds to me reasonably close to my idea of hell.
Look, you’ve got to get over this “who cares about MONEY!!!” stuff. Money isn’t mysterious, it’s just a way for people to exchange goods and services. When your Dad says, “Son, we don’t have to money to build a swimming pool”, and you say, “Come on Dad, who gives a shit about money?”, you’re not getting the point.
There are all sorts of things your Dad could do with that money. He could buy a car, or a pool, or hookers, or steak and lobster, or gamble it away. All money is, is a coupon for future goods and services, and you get that coupon because you (or somebody else) has produced goods and services in the past.
So how do you get people to agree to work like dogs to create the arcology you’ve designed, plus thousands more? What are they getting out of it? Why should they agree to do what you want, and not what Bill or Steve or Fred wants?
Of course, even if we decide we want extremely high density, there’s no particular reason to cram hundreds of thousands of people into one building. Think of Manhattan island as a single unit that houses a million people. But rather than one megabuilding, it has hundreds of modular cellular units that can be torn down, remodeled, repaired or built without affecting the rest of the structure. These individual units are called “buildings”, but even though they are composed of separate structures, these buildings are highly interconnected. There are roads, sidewalks, subways, trains, bike lanes and the occasional zeppelin mast to allow the movement of people and physical goods. There are water pipes, sewers, gas lines, power lines, phone lines, data lines, and radio networks servicing almost every building. There are traffic signals, policemen, firemen, postal carriers, courts, jails, hospitals, ambluences, taxis, garages, buses, trucks, bicycles, scooters, trains, restaurants, grocery stores, and on and on to service the needs of everyone.
The comparison between a city and the human body is pretty apt. Think of each individual building as a cell. The cells in your body are constantly dividing, growing, changing, adapting, dying, and being replaced, yet your body continues to function. Cramming everything into one giant bulding is like trying to build an elephant sized creature out of a single cell. Maybe it can be done, but why would you forgo the ability to adapt, rebuild, repair, and change? Why would you lock a whole city into one design? In any real city, there’s an unending cycle of construction and demolition, as the old makes way for the new. Ever stop and think about why that is?
I know its a crappy pic, but I don’t have a scanner… :mad:and for the love of god, most of it would be open space and aside from the steel support columns and erosion resistant outer coating, you could make it look however your heart desires. SO can everybody stop calling it a jail. a normal room would be more of a jail than this place.
you have a lot of valid points. and yes, I am aware that the obsolete and old usually get pushed aside or replaced.
Going with the “If its not broke don’t fix it” approach only works on cars.
These structures we have in place have been the same for years, I think that its about time to make way for the new that has been around for years as well and get rid of the old, inefficient, problematic systems that plague most cities.
Money is and always will be a barrier to any progress like this, BECAUSE of the amount of money it would take to make these old out dated systems you speak of more efficient.
It takes money to go to the bathroom now. last time I checked, the Eco system that has been here long before us, was running without a hitch.
I could go to the bathroom out side and not take a second glance or care(gross), but some how, our system that is new and inefficient, is superior to something that has been around for millions of years(still in question…god?), has bumped it head, and had to rebuild from scratch more than once.
If anything, take advice from nature and LOOK at what it does. Like BEE’s, extremely efficient, But who want’s to live like a ROBOT in there little cubical… i mean jail cell… wait, too late.
The body, if you want to talk about it like a city, Is the most efficient form on the planet for what it does. The who community of CELLS WORK TOGETHER regardless of cost to themselves.
I could imaging the body TAXING its self and running on a currency system. TOTAL FAILURE in a week tops. The body is a community of cells that do what it takes to make everything run as efficiently as possible with the resources around.
When the body is thirsty, you drink water.
when the body is hungry, you eat.
when the body is tired, you sleep.
So if you compare what society is to the human body
we have cells dying every where, from neglect, not because it was their time, some sort of natural disaster, or disease.
Naturally, the body can only work with what it has, and it does so at 100%.
If there is no food, water, or a place to sleep, its done.
We have all the needed resource (that we constantly waste because of the inefficient system that people support) in abundance, and we have clever ways of making it work when the resources are not around, by tuning salt water to fresh water, plant food with out soil, cool down a hot room, light up the darkness.
Are you trying to tell me that YOUR MONEY is making everything run at 100%
Its just a nice thought that maybe, just maybe, people can put aside the thought of personal gain in the present, and grab hold of a very secure future.
Nobody wants to work for nothing, yet most people do. At the end of the day, week, month, or year, a lot of still end up with almost nothing. The people with almost nothing are increasing as this obsolete system is reaching the end of its life.
Tell me Lemur866, Do you have your own land to call your own? Do you have Friends who wouldn’t sell you out for money? and really, just because they say it, don’t mean jack squat, everyone has a price.
When was the last time you didn’t have to worry about some impending disaster story mucking up your air? How often do you see or hear of people going shopping for things they don’t need when people are starving, especially, people who served this country? When was the last time you concerned yourself with someone else you don’t know? How often do people cry about not getting what they need out of life? Lastly, How often has money, government, politics, or good old fashioned business ever solved any of your problems… that was not created as a by product of those infrastructures?
I don’t want to kill the economy, or put down money, but money is so hard not to talk bad about because it stops real progress from happening.
business and tech are booming because money makes it happen. homes and peoples life’s are destroyed because money makes it happen. A scientists or engineer(Who actually does something useful) get paid less then a person on wall street(who only deal with money).
systems in place right now support money, not the people. so people are always going to at least be third best, after making money, and stopping people from trying to interfere with the flow of money.
I don’t know about you, but If I am not first, I may as well be in last.
Cities are made to be inefficient so they can make more money of something that needs fixing. cabs, cars, trucks, trains, planes(really inefficient), mass transit, pluming, sewage, electricity, cops, firemen, and other things like that are all built to be inefficient so more money could be made.
when a house burns down because a person can’t afford to bring it up to code, everyone but that person makes money, and they lose everything because the system had built in inadequacies.
I can go on and on… but its always the same thing, systems that don’t make money will remain obsolete in the presence newer, better, efficient things because they will make more money being outdated and old.
If a car could heal its self(totally not real), why would you need a mechanic?
If fires put them selves out, why would you need firemen?
If people were happy most of the time, and well educated and treated equally (one of the main causes of violence is inequality) all the time, why would we need cops?
If you could ride a train everywhere, why would you need plains,trucks,or buses for mass transit?
Without problems there is no money to made, that’s why I don’t like money.
It makes problems to fix them,
not fixing problems so that you never have to worry about it again.
and if you call that childish, FINE, I would rather be a child than some stuck up prude who actually thinks money makes the world a better safer place.
You don’t have to see things my way, really, its not mine anyway.
personally, I just hate the idea of working till my bones hurt and i’m physically ill. find out I have some disease because I ate McDonald when I was 15, so I have to spend the rest of my life broke and in pain because the economy fell out and I lost all my invested money.
and that is not bad planing. It’s happening right now to people who HAD their life’s together and had a plan and still got the bad end of the stick.
bad luck happens to one person, not half the dam nation.
Agreed.
I’m not happy without my husband, my cats, and my books. The OP’s idea has no room for any of these. Maybe my husband can be warehoused next door, but I’m pretty sure that he wouldn’t allow private ownership of animals, or allow animals to exist except to feed people.
I’ve stayed in quite nice hospital rooms. That is, I have a decent TV and radio, and a variety of programming, and even a laptop. My meals are brought to me. Assuming a better quality of food, this is something like the OP has in mind, but a bit more spacious.
And it’s deadly boring. Can’t go anywhere, can’t do anything. Even I will get bored with being online. I want my husband, my cats, my books, and all my other belongings. I’ve also stayed in better hotel rooms. Again, I have TV and radio and a laptop available, plus I have significantly more freedom of movement (plus a complete lack of people waking me up to take blood samples). But living in a hotel room is boring, unless I’ve got my cats and books and computer with me.
We don’t have a housing crisis. We might have an affordable housing crisis, but there are plenty of homes out there. My husband and I went house shopping about 14 months ago, and we were able to find several houses that were reasonable priced AND that were quite attractive.
The problem is the economy. But housing will ALWAYS be a major part of people’s expenses. Even an arcology will cost quite a large percentage of someone’s wages or salary, even if it is more affordably priced than other housing solutions.
sorry, euhm, what am I looking at?
You know - for kids!
Wishbone City, pop: 989,000,454,343,223
I think people would take your idea more seriously if it appeared to be grounded in generally accepted principles of economics, urban planning, and architecture.
If you don’t like the idea of working, then who do you think should provide you with all the goods and services you need? Do you think it just magically appears? It all comes from someone’s labor.
You don’t like money, but how do you want to exchange the product of your labor and ideas for the labor and ideas of other people?
You have proposed a large architectural space for housing a quarter million people, but how does cramming all those people on top of each other meet the needs of society, improve standard of living or help the environment. A quarter million people still create just as much waste and garbage. They still eat the same amount of food and drink the same amount of water. They still use engery for their gadgets. Where people actually physically live is a small part of their environmental footprint.
And you claim cost shouldn’t matter. So what projects should be sacrificed to build your mister_mistropolises? Basic economics is about making choices to maximizing utility. Is it better that steel production go to make these giant buildings/cities or should it be used to build ships and railroads for moving goods from place to place?