Vertical cities

[Stargate525]

1 hour ago, magnemoe said:

No you don't need much more flour, note that demand will increase some but is limited after some level, note that not only get flour cheaper but all products made from flour, 
150 years ago 80-90% was farmers, gnp and tech level was an faction of today, I see the upcoming changes as less fundamental. 
The industrial revolution was an pretty rough ride, part of this was that the society was dirt poor and badly run by modern standards.
On the other hand you might want her work (warning large gif)
 

Europe don't have this US issue, other issues who might be worse in the long term but not this. 
Yes lots of larger countries China, India Brazil and others are industrializing, this increase global GNP a lot, part of the reason the US finance crisis had way less global impact than 30 years earlier. Now compare 1950 middle class standard with today both in US and in China and I think even the Chinese middle class is better of. 
The cake is not an fixed size, all sort of efficiency increase the size of the cake, no the wealth distribution will change but the overall cake size increase.  
Most people have an mobile phone today, yes more than 3.5 billion, this shocked me. 
 

I know this. But the industrial revolution happened over decades in waves that rippled outwards from England and Germany and the Eastern US. This coming change may happen in as little as five, at once across the majority of the world.

think mobile phones, but if each of those 3.5 billion also displaced a job. That's what you're looking at.

[Bill Phil]

26 minutes ago, tater said:

Yeah, true... I was really thinking early 80s, but I was going back by 10 year increments. Even millions is not a huge % of the global population, however. What % of the world had access to a computer they owned in 1986? 0.1%? Approaching 1%?

My point stands, though, that it's incredibly hard to compare "wealth" over long time scales in recent history. Go back a few hundred years, then things are actually pretty flat as far back as you look. 

I'd say that a few percent had access to one, and about 10% had access to access.

Wealth isn't usually used as a meaningful measurememt. Standard of living is much accurate. The average standard of living in developed nations is higher than kings in the Middle Ages.

[tater]

Absolutely. 

On topic, I think these large, planned living ideas clearly show the most standard of living gain for people outside the first world. So

much so, that the sale pitch is easier... Of course the hard part becomes paying for it. The people that can afford it already have a nice standard of living, making it a harder sell. Gotta wonder about incentivizing it somehow for private construction.

[Bill Phil]

I think we should live smarter, not taller. Masdar city was a good idea, but they're trting to build a city from the ground up. Even so, it uses clever designs to keep cool in a desert without using power. 

There's also a building somewhere that has an AC system inspired by giant ant hills... 

[YNM]

9 hours ago, tater said:

Yeah, which would you rather live in, new vertical city, or Paris? Vertical city, or San Francisco? No brainer.

I think you misunderstood - what I'm talking about is the level of planning.

Which I would live in ? Community side, I'd live here, because people actually cares for the others. Seriously, you can't do something weird unnoticed.

5 hours ago, AngelLestat said:

To understand my point, we need to take a look to the simultaneity coefficient; demand, storage and prediction.

On a single house, your consumption time of goods or services can not be well predicted on moment and amount. If you want to generate your own electricity to fulfill all your needs, then you need to take into account that most of your consumption may be at late hours, then take into account all the time that you are on vacation or in your house with extra friends, that force you to overstate your power and storage needs. You need to buy an inverter, a charge regulator, solar panels all retail, which increase the cost of the product and installation cost.
Then you need to make the same calculation for all the other goods and services you can share, but in the community case, no all the people is on vacation or with friends or using a service at the same time, you have an average consumption and storage needs, so if you add internet, water, some common tools or products that everyone may need, etc..  You save a lot of money.

But that is not the end, ecologic designs at big scale are cheaper, a building has even benefit in air circulation or temperature management, I can talk all day on benefits vs single houses.
Also each building does not need to generate its own energy, as you mention on building area for solar panels..  You can have few, but always big scale generation is more efficient than small scale (in case you dont have huge losses on distribution and distances), but that only counts for really big distances.

Consumption time for goods can't be predicted ? Why should it differs in an apartment ? I understand you're talking about the ability to average things out but in any case, tall buildings needs more interior lighting, even at day. That means more power consumption. Oh yes roads needs lighting (at night only) but a more clever road lighting shouldn't just safe energy but also avoids light pollution.

Can't say anything about air conditioning as live near the equator, where everyday is the same bar the rain.

5 hours ago, AngelLestat said:

When I talk about vertical cities, I am talking on an average of 5 to 8 floors (in almost continue way) with some tall towers.
You dont waste much in structural if many of your buildings are joint and they block high winds between them.
A building also waste the same structure than single houses with the exception of very tall buildings. 
With the time buildings structure will become cheaper, light and fast to build, you will not need much concrete neither.
But yeah, I am sure that you may take many different concepts from internet where that would not apply.

You don't waste much structural construction... Have you ever look at the foundations for skyscrapers ? If you're talking that the low level buildings around is supporting the much higher building, that's another way of saying that you brought the base of the foundation a few floor level up. Not much difference.

In a house... The supporting columns can be as thin as the wall. (no, seriously.)

[Stargate525]

1 minute ago, YNM said:

You don't waste much structural construction... Have you ever look at the foundations for skyscrapers ? If you're talking that the low level buildings around is supporting the much higher building, that's another way of saying that you brought the base of the foundation a few floor level up. Not much difference.

In a house... The supporting columns can be as thin as the wall. (no, seriously.)

Actually, couldn't you theoretically make a skyscraper the same way we used to build cathedrals? The outrigged skyscrapers are the main tower's flying buttresses. Increases window space, and allows for massive buildings without being a giant windbreak.

1 hour ago, tater said:

Absolutely. 

On topic, I think these large, planned living ideas clearly show the most standard of living gain for people outside the first world. So

much so, that the sale pitch is easier... Of course the hard part becomes paying for it. The people that can afford it already have a nice standard of living, making it a harder sell. Gotta wonder about incentivizing it somehow for private construction.

You might be able to sell them if you paired them off with factories. Massive building built by a 1st world corporation with included grocery, medical clinic, retail sectors, school, fire and police department, with modern housing for the workforce of the entire kit.

But then you get into the whole Company Town issue we had with mining towns in the US, but condensed into a nominally self-sufficient building that could withstand police attempts to breach it, if they wanted. And they would no doubt be seen -arguably rightfully so- as United States outposts. Political nightmare if they're funded by anyone who could actually afford it.

[tater]

Yeah, hence the 3d world bit... might work anyplace where the "citizens" are subjects of the oligarchy. It seems less likely in a more individualistic society.

[YNM]

40 minutes ago, Stargate525 said:

Actually, couldn't you theoretically make a skyscraper the same way we used to build cathedrals? The outrigged skyscrapers are the main tower's flying buttresses. Increases window space, and allows for massive buildings without being a giant windbreak.

The difference is, a cathedral's pillars only support the roof. Two floors and basically you're transporting the weight across the second floor as well, making it unnecessarily reinforced.

Also, I'm not talking of what you can see above the ground, I'm talking of the things below ground - TBH that's the biggest problem of skyscrapers, it makes you unable to do anything below them except going very deep. There's a reason why super-tall skyscrapers tend to be cone-shaped, and I believe foundation is the reason why.

At least that's the way how I think about it, I suppose I need to learn more of it. Figuring them out may saves a lot of money.

One more reason why I won't like to live in a building : it's not much different than living in an elite neighborhood - less interaction.

EDIT : Anyway

On 4/12/2016 at 8:53 PM, AngelLestat said:

Not sure where do you get that..
But in my country Argentina, the transport of cost average for cultives is 45% of the the productor profits.
Of course then you have another distribution (transport cost) to each market, but those 45% and more is what a vertical farm save. 

I guess now I can understand your POV. The same thing happens in Indonesia, where almost all things are cultivated in Java with Sumatra practically used for palm plantations, Borneo as place for logging and coal mining and other islands either too dry or is still in wilderness. Food prices are higher on other island because of the transport required, but otherwise is cheap here. Blame it on staple food uniformity (rice, which before have been more diverse including wheat, corn, cassava, sago and tuber which all are more suitable for other islands) but still other things are distributed from Java to other island too.

Edited April 15, 2016 by YNM

[Stargate525]

19 minutes ago, YNM said:

The difference is, a cathedral's pillars only support the roof. Two floors and basically you're transporting the weight across the second floor as well, making it unnecessarily reinforced.

Also, I'm not talking of what you can see above the ground, I'm talking of the things below ground - TBH that's the biggest problem of skyscrapers, it makes you unable to do anything below them except going very deep. There's a reason why super-tall skyscrapers tend to be cone-shaped, and I believe foundation is the reason why.

At least that's the way how I think about it, I suppose I need to learn more of it. Figuring them out may saves a lot of money.

One more reason why I won't like to live in a building : it's not much different than living in an elite neighborhood - less interaction.

IIRC building up is less about vertical support (the foundations are because big cities tend to be built on horrible places for heavy structures, like swamps or coastline), and more about wind shear and horizontal motion. Lateral motion is handled very well by buttressing (as the buttress is actually keeping the thin walls from bowing outwards beneath the roof), and like I said, you also get the benefits of additional window space.

[YNM]

Hmm... I'm no expert. But given an earthquake pretty much stresses building in all direction (and with earthquakes happening everywhere), I think it's nitpick to say that only lateral motion matters. (living in ring of fire, huh. Guess this is also why we're reluctant to build up high.)

Unluckily the forum lacks an appreciable amount of Japanese people...

Edited April 15, 2016 by YNM

[kerbiloid]

If several hightowers are bound into a single pattern with horizontal struts, the stresses can be distributed through all the city and supressed.

P.S.
Offtopic: Yesterday I've placed a Kerbin-Side's "Arcology" object on Gilly. This looks amazing...

 

[YNM]

I won't even trust that on Earth. Probably yes on Kerbin. "Just Add More Struts" XD

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, YNM said:

Just Add More Struts

Of course as "struts" I mean not "metal ropes", but horizontal constructions similar to the vertical buildings themselves.
Tetrahedron is the simplest and best example.

An artificial crystal lattice.

Edited April 15, 2016 by kerbiloid

[YNM]

I don't think their shear strength would justify... Or if not the ropes, the buildings.

[kerbiloid]

Old buildings made of bricks - yes.
But large so-called "buildings" are bunches of concrete cells pitched around giant spatial loadbearing frameworks.
Look at a gothic cathedral as a minusculus sample. It's a large spatial carcass filled with (relatively) lightweight inner and wall elements.

Edited April 15, 2016 by kerbiloid

[magnemoe]

Mechanical its no problem building an building like this, highest buildings are almost an km high, this will be far wider so it will not have any problems with stability. 
Problem is more in the building time and cost and having transport, air supply and climate control for all of this while keeping it safe from fires. 
Again doable but will increase cost a lot. 
Another major issue is that use patterns change a lot over 50 years. its far more exepensive to modify parts of this building than to tear down and rebuild some standard sized ones. 

[kerbiloid]

Transport problems inside an arcology just disappear, because distances are, say, 2 km horizontally and several hundred meters vertically.
So, a car transport just has no place to be. So, no roads are required inside the city, no parking places, no fuel stations.
All you need - electric elevators, electric rail carriages. Like in "Aeon Flux" movie or so.

Ventilation is also not a big problem, as currently you anyway have to use an artificial air conditioning in any large building.
In arcology instead of millions tiny pipes you use thousands of large pipes. Energetically this is even more efficient.

The same with cable and mobile phones infrastructure. Instead of billions tiny cables you put thousands of thick ones.
While now your smartphone tries to connect to a base station in a kilometer away, there it just connects to the closest wall antenna. Or more, you don't need a smartphone at all, just touch the closest on-wall display.

Modifying/repairing is much easier in such city as: you always can provide your building efforts with a ready industrial infrastructure in one step from you.
And you can put cranes on the closest "sub-buildings", rather that to mount it from ground or use crane helicopters.
Also you can replace just selected parts of the whole city structural pattern, leaving others intact.

Of course, such city will by default loose less energy for "square/cube" law, and emit much less radio waves.
So, ET spaceship would discover a wildly looking planet with packs of of voiceless pyramides connected with railway tubes.

 

 

Edited April 15, 2016 by kerbiloid

[Stargate525]

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

Transport problems inside an arcology just disappear, because distances are, say, 2 km horizontally and several hundred meters vertically.
So, a car transport just has no place to be. So, no roads are required inside the city, no parking places, no fuel stations.
All you need - electric elevators, electric rail carriages. Like in "Aeon Flux" movie or so.

They don't disappear, they change. Instead of car traffic you have elevator traffic. If you've ever been to a convention or large gathering with a hotel (or some badly designed hotels on checkout) you know what I'm talking about.

Quote

Ventilation is also not a big problem, as currently you anyway have to use an artificial air conditioning in any large building.
In arcology instead of millions tiny pipes you use thousands of large pipes. Energetically this is even more efficient.

You're still talking about forcing air up several kilometers, something we currently simply don't do. And you have more ducts, actually, because there is more space that the air needs to be delivered TO.

Quote

The same with cable and mobile phones infrastructure. Instead of billions tiny cables you put thousands of thick ones.
While now your smartphone tries to connect to a base station in a kilometer away, there it just connects to the closest wall antenna. Or more, you don't need a smartphone at all, just touch the closest on-wall display.

One base station which covers everyone in a 1-5km radius, or a wall antenna on every floor. I know which one I'd prefer to wire.

Quote

Of course, such city will by default loose less energy for "square/cube" law, and emit much less radio waves.

Citation needed. There will be less loss from surface area, maybe, but the support infrstructure for it outside the building will be many orders of magnitude bigger. And why would it be radio silent at all?

[kerbiloid]

4 minutes ago, Stargate525 said:

Instead of car traffic you have elevator traffic.

Instead of 2 hours and 30-100 kilometers of car driving  you need to cross a square and take a lift or an escalator.

9 minutes ago, Stargate525 said:

You're still talking about forcing air up several kilometers,

Up - several hundred meters, which is already not a great problem.

10 minutes ago, Stargate525 said:

One base station which covers everyone in a 1-5km radius, or a wall antenna on every floor. I know which one I'd prefer to wire.

Power density of radiant energy ~ 1/distance².
To create the same power density on the receiving antenna you would apply in transmitter  (1000/10)² = 10000 less power when you are in 10 m from the receiving antenna, rather than when you are in 1 kilometer.
So, as transmitting devices power decreases many times, the total energy lost decreases in turn.
It's much easier to keep warm a ton of cow, than a ton of mice.

 

[tater]

Since these ideas have been around for 50 years, you'd think that if they made any sense at all, someone would have built one.

[kerbiloid]

The ideas of air flight had been around for millenia. Abilities were poor.

Just look at any nowadays capital city.
A pyramide-like bunch of skyscrapers (the wannabe arcology) surrounded by endless fields of cottages with hundreds of thousands kilometers of roads, pipes and cables per city.
The only conceptual change: replace the roads between the skyscrapers and connect them into a bound structure.

Edited April 15, 2016 by kerbiloid

[magnemoe]

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

Transport problems inside an arcology just disappear, because distances are, say, 2 km horizontally and several hundred meters vertically.
So, a car transport just has no place to be. So, no roads are required inside the city, no parking places, no fuel stations.
All you need - electric elevators, electric rail carriages. Like in "Aeon Flux" movie or so.

Ventilation is also not a big problem, as currently you anyway have to use an artificial air conditioning in any large building.
In arcology instead of millions tiny pipes you use thousands of large pipes. Energetically this is even more efficient.

The same with cable and mobile phones infrastructure. Instead of billions tiny cables you put thousands of thick ones.
While now your smartphone tries to connect to a base station in a kilometer away, there it just connects to the closest wall antenna. Or more, you don't need a smartphone at all, just touch the closest on-wall display.

Modifying/repairing is much easier in such city as: you always can provide your building efforts with a ready industrial infrastructure in one step from you.
And you can put cranes on the closest "sub-buildings", rather that to mount it from ground or use crane helicopters.
Also you can replace just selected parts of the whole city structural pattern, leaving others intact.

Of course, such city will by default loose less energy for "square/cube" law, and emit much less radio waves.
So, ET spaceship would discover a wildly looking planet with packs of of voiceless pyramides connected with railway tubes.

Modifying repairing inside an construction tend to be complicated, more so as you can not shut the entire thing down.
Here talking about more complex stuff than renovating an bathroom like installing more trains / elevators or swapping part of other infrastructure. 
Stuff who is far easier to do in an city than in an giant construction as its no free space unless you set off areas for it during construction. 
One issue with no shutdown is that you have to be careful with noise. 

Elevators are an headache in skyscrapers. Standard practice is to have huge express ones, some has multiple decks who goes standard routes and don't stop on all floors, then having local ones. One idea might be an train going in an spiral up and down, Remember you have to move millions of people every day. 
 

16 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

The ideas of air flight had been around for millenia. Abilities were poor.

Nothing here who could not be done 50 years ago, We are basically talking about an very wide skyscraper. Nothing revolutionary and no new construction methods needed. yes you would need new / improved solutions to the problems I list above but you self agree they are no big issues.
Better logistic during building like using more pre-made modules you mount is also nothing new, mostly an lack of need / standardization. 
Only thing lacking is an need. 
 

[kerbiloid]

5 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

Remember you have to move millions of people every day. 

You already are moving all these millions every day.
But currently you move them by cars, buses, etc - and just don't see them at once. Currently you are moving them for 100 km, in arcology - 1-2 km.
From POV of the system in whole, the total amount of moving objects will stay the same, while the distance decreases for dozens of times.

10 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

Modifying repairing inside an construction tend to be complicated, more so as you can not shut the entire thing down.

And nothing prohibits to take down a section of the arcology, previously disconnecting it from the pattern.
But then it's much easier to rise its replace if you have a ready building scaffolds aside - its neighbor sections. Already with energy, water and transport.

[tater]

There is nothing about these structures that was past construction state of the art in the 1960s---they are equally daunting now. The problems embedded in the notion of soil/water/vegetation as a large part of a design are non-trivial now, and were non-trivial then. They introduce problems of drainage, extra structural mass to support the extra mass of soils, plus trees, etc. Extra wind loading issues, plus the actual building needs to be friendly to the greenery (too much glass could end up cooking the plants). If there is an issue with the vegetation, you need to be able to garden effectively... rooftop cranes that stay after construction for possible tree replacement? What about animals?  It's complex.

Anything close to megastructure that has actually been built has ended up as a failure, I think.

Look at shopping malls in the US. We went from the organic Main Street of the past, to building malls on the outskirts of town. The guy who started malls, Victor Gruen, actually was trying for a more european feeling shopping district (he came to the US from Vienna), with a roof over the top. He originally envisioned a mixed use space that would have included apartments, etc. What happened lost the mixed use, and became the mall. Now, many roofed malls are being remodeled to lose the roof. The popular mall here in ABQ is along the lines of spaces I have seen in Las Vegas, Phoenix, etc, where there is a street pattern, and the stores have unique facades to mimic individual construction on "Main St." even though they are one structure.

 

[Thor Wotansen]

I just skipped here from page 2 to comment on the farming thing.  "Using up" farmland is the result of the current paradigm of factory monocrop farm methods that rely on chemical fertilizers to maintain the bare necessities of fertility.  You could basically grow corn in sand with that system, but that's not the point.  The main crop that is grown by these huge factory farms is corn, which is used to feed literally everything from livestock to cars (ethanol) to us.  Just try finding a processed food product that doesn't contain some form of corn in it, its hard.  Food costs in this case are determined by transportation costs and spoilage rates, but a small, diversified, family sized farm of about 100 acres can sustain not only the family that owns it, but be their sole source of income from selling direct to the end consumer.  With this intensive level of farming, it is easily possible to provide the entire planet with healthy, natural food from local sources.  Vertical farming is quite frankly, a silly idea made by people who have very little experience farming and no experience in sustainable farming practices.