We don’t have the technology (yet) for cloud cities. But, what if skyscrapers were connected with skywalks at the 75th floor or even higher? If shopping malls were located at those floors then a person could live in a 105th floor apartment, walk over to another building to work, and then shop in another building. Never once leaving the sky. You would only need to go down to the 75th floor for the skywalk.
You’d avoid city traffic, street crime (assuming the building has security at the entrance), driving, and only rarely need to visit the ground for special errands.
Could this realistically be done with todays technology? I’ve often wondered why Skywalks are usually on the 1st or 2nd floor. Our Big city hospital has a skywalk system from the parking deck to a couple different medical buildings. The skywalk gets you over the street traffic.
A entire city might be a bit much. Lets say you picked several New York skyscrapers along with Trump Towers and interconnected them with 75th floor skywalks. Or maybe a city like Hong Kong that has existing tall buildings?
I don’t know how close the NY skyscrapers are. It might take custom designing & building a city like Stratos with skyscrapers only a block or two apart. Realistically the buildings can’t be much more than a few blocks apart. Otherwise it would be too dificult building the skywalks. Chicago has the Ell running downtown.
Anyway, the Chicago El is an example of an elevated transit system that covers a fairly large downtown area. Would a 75th floor skywalk system that connects the skyscrapers be that much harder?
btw, I picked 75th floor at random. It could just as easily be the 80th or 90th floor. Whatever common height would work with most skyscrapers.
The Chicago El is attached to the ground, and is only a couple dozen feet up. Your skywalk system would have to be retrofitted into pre-existing buildings, however many hundred feet in the air, without disrupting the expensive things the buildings are doing right now. So yes, I think it would be much harder.
Something underground like the PATH in Toronto sounds easier.
I’ve heard of the PATH system in Toronto. That is some impressive engineering. I’d enjoy visiting the Petronas Twin Towers’ skywalk in person. I bet the view is incredible.
A lot of Star Trek tech is thousands of years in the future. Stratos may never be possible but it’s kind of cool to imagine some way to make it happen.
One problem: Buildings sway back and forth due to wind and seismic forces. They’re designed to handle this, of course, but it would mean that the distance between the upper floors of two adjacent buildings might change significantly. It’d be hard to design a connector that could accommodate this.