Vertical Cities

[Butters]

Is there any major disadvantage that anybody can see in centralising human populations in massive vertical cities? By this I mean single structures that can hold tens of millions of people, several thousand storeys tall.

 

Okay, I am aware of the very obvious disadvantage of putting all your eggs in one basket, but I'm assuming that if you had the ability to build such a massive structure, then you would also have the ability to make it earthquake proof and able to contain any fires and so on. Also it wouldn't just be one basket. It would be several hundred worldwide, presumably.

 

Such structures would have farms in them, or on the roof, and could be powered by solar fields, wind turbines on the outside of the structure, geothermal and so on. This would allow the human footprint to be much smaller, once of course the resources to build such a thing in the first place were taken into account, and there would need to be a huge amount of maintenance, which would provide the majority of employment for people.

 

On the plus side, a large amount of the earth's surface could be reclaimed by nature and return to its natural state.

 

Are there any obvious social problems with this? I personally feel that although the first generation may struggle with living and dying indoors, those that were born into it would not. It's not like people could never leave either, it would just be that the majority of people lived in these vertical cities most of the time. Could be wrong about that, any studies anyone can think of about inherent problems in people living almost exclusively in enclosed environments? Any other more obvious problems I'm overlooking?

[Ringer]

Problems:

 

1.) Money it would even cost to build

 

2.) Energy it would take to keep all of it running

 

3.) Sanitation

 

4.) Keeping it save from all forms of natural disasters

 

5.) Crime

 

6.) Privacy

 

7.) Etc, etc

 

Not to mention forcing everyone to live in these structures would pretty much like a concentration camp

[Butters]

1. Definitely a massive problem. Probably insurmountable.

 

2. It seems it might require less energy than a standard city of similar population, as it would be a lot more efficient in its use of power, being purpose built right from the start.

 

3. It wouldn't necessarily be a bigger problem than for any large city. Treatment plants for waste could be well away from the structure itself.

 

4. Agree. Big problem.

 

5. Crime wouldn't be any worse than anywhere else. In fact, privacy would be more the issue as you say later, because it's seems likely the whole structure would have surveillance in most areas.

 

6. Maybe by the time this is possible, people will have so much of their lives on facebook that privacy won't be as large an issue as it is to people today! People are voluntarily giving up more and more of their privacy. But yes, it would require a fairly big shift in attitude which is something people tend not to be good at en masse.

[Mr Skeptic]

The largest problems:

1) Yes, we could concentrate the human population, in this could increase efficiency. However, our food, energy, and material needs cannot be concentrated, and if your plan was to reduce our footprint this will have little effect.

2) The air conditioning costs would be enormous, or the ventilation system would have to be impressive. Due to the low surface area, all that heat produced by bodies, lightbulbs, etc., will need to be actively removed, even in the winter.

3) Speaking of lightbulbs, there would be no chance of using sunlight for illumination. So, we need lightbulbs and vitamin D supplementation, and possibly need more eyeglasses (may be related to light brightness and lightbulbs don't compare to sunlight).

4) Concentrating humans increases risk from disease, terrorists, and accidents/disasters.

[lemur]

I have often wondered how it would work to have multi-story greenhouses. You could put gardens around the edges of the building and have people living in the core. If you organized recreation levels, shopping levels, school levels, etc., I don't see why it would be inhospitable. Whoever posted that the heat would need to be ventilated in the winter may be thinking in terms of too much density. If there was a way to harness the heat while getting sufficient ventilation, it could be very efficient, I think.

[Dan6541]

Ok, these structures may be huge, but it wouldn't be the same as living out in the open with wide open spaces. Modern cities are restricting but there are still open spaces, such as parks. Closed-space psychology is interesting. A notable case of this is the miners in Chile, and after a few days some of the miners got depressed. I think, no matter how big the structure is, living in an enclosed space would be horrible, for the first generation at least. It would be intresting to see the second generation and the ones after, and see how different they would be having lived in an enclosed space for their whle life.

 

Of course, people could be let out of the structure, but if your thousands of storeys up, it would be pretty hard.

[lemur]

Of course, people could be let out of the structure, but if your thousands of storeys up, it would be pretty hard.

 

if the structures were pyramid-shaped or long with sloping sides, there could be large open areas that would be accessible from the upper levels.

[Butters]

I was actually thinking it's basically a big trapezoidal prism, so the walls would be slightly sloping inwards. That way it could have an enormous open area on the roof, although of course depending on the height of it this could be a fairly unpleasant place to be and may need to be enclosed in glass anyway. This would also be a good place for a wind farm, as you could make the walls of the whole structure into solar panels. This shape is also better for stability. Building a big tower of that kind of height creates a lot of problems in that area I would imagine.

[Dan6541]

This whole vertical city thing is a while away, but I don't think it's completely out of reach considering how high we're building already. Check this out, it's the 800 metre tall building in Dubai:

 

 

And the view from the top (click on it to zoom in, it gives you a better idea of how tall it is):

 

 

It's something like 820 metres tall.

Edited September 7, 2010 by Dan6541

[Butters]

This whole vertical city thing is a while away, but I don't think it's completely out of reach considering how high we're building already. Check this out, it's the 800 metre tall building in Dubai:

 

 

And the view from the top (click on it to zoom in, it gives you a better idea of how tall it is):

 

 

It's something like 820 metres tall.

 

Wow. That's amazing. It almost looks photoshopped. I wonder if you could earthquake-proof a tower that tall, or if you would just have to build it in places that aren't prone to seismic events.