Arcology

[Sword_Of_Truth]

The chemical substance buckminsterfullerene, aka "Bucky balls", aka "carbon nanotubes" were also named after him due to their resemblence to nanoscopic geodesic domes.

[L.Y.S.]

Oh ok, I guess he is pretty innovative. They basically base all these mega buildings on carbon nano-tubes. Unique stuff indeed.

[L.Y.S.]

The way of the future. BTW, is it bad to reopen an old thread?

[Beelzebuddy]

Originally Posted by L.Y.S.

The way of the future. BTW, is it bad to reopen an old thread?

Still ain't.

It's kinda bad just to bump threads without anything new to say, as you did here, but thirteen months isn't very long around these parts. The longest I've seen in my time here was a 5-year bump, iirc.

[L.Y.S.]

Still is, because now a big piece of the puzzle is solved.

[Molinaro]

With Freedom Ship getting no interest from investors or potential residents, I don't see any indication that there's any reason to consider a self sustained habitat on an even grander scale.

Once something like Freedom Ship shows success then it would be time to wonder about the next step.

[L.Y.S.]

Originally Posted by Molinaro

With Freedom Ship getting no interest from investors or potential residents, I don't see any indication that there's any reason to consider a self sustained habitat on an even grander scale.

Once something like Freedom Ship shows success then it would be time to wonder about the next step.

Who the hell wants to be at sea all the time?

[Roboramma]

Hey, awesome, so you've figured out how to address the issues raised in the thread, such as:

Originally Posted by ben m

It's already the case, and has been for 100 years, that you can put 100,000 people within walking-and-minor-transit distance of jobs, entertainment, etc.. It's called a "small city". That's what small cities have been for as long as they've existed. Poke around the map of Europe and you'll find lots and lots of places where 100,000 people live and work in a compact, walkable/transitable area surrounded by green space.

Obviously you can build any of these things even denser and more compact. You could take Cambridge, MA (100K people, 6 mi^2) and squeeze it into a patch of Manhattan-like density, but no bigger than Central Park (1.5mi^2). (Remember that Manhattan is not chockablock Empire State Buildings; much of upper Manhattan is just 3-story brownstones with little backyards, much of lower Manhattan is about 5 stories high; there are many parks.) 1.5mi^2 of high-density buildings and transit, 4.5 mi^2 of parkland. Sounds nice, doesn't it?

What's the specific advantage of taking the next step---why spend the extra trillion dollars to turn that into 0.5mi^2 of mega-uni-building, plus 5.5mi^2 of parkland? Is that extra 1mi^2 of park so important?

Maybe the idea is, "You don't have 5 miles of parkland! This is Tokyo!"

Sorry, wrong. Built-up Tokyo, suburbs and all, is something like a factor of 2 denser than Cambridge---maybe 40,000/mi^2. If you brought the whole thing to boring old Manhattan-like density, it's about half open space. That's with no unitary megastructures, no arcology, no carbon nanotubes. Go to full-on Upper East Side density in the built-up "small cities" and Tokyo's population would have, like densified Cambridge, 4.5 mi^2 of parkland per 1.5 mi^2 of urbanization.

Again, that bit of urbanization---let's call it a "neighborhood"---has all of the good properties you've attributed to arcologies. It has lots of people living close together, with walkable access to anything you'd find in a city---some jobs, retail outlets, schools. Many people will live in one neighborhood and commute to another. And so on. Just without the megabuilding..

I repeat: what's the advantage of the megabuilding? The proper point of comparison is NOT "it's denser than the status quo". Are you interested in comparing SkyCity1000 with other ways that people live at high density?

[ben m]

Originally Posted by L.Y.S.

Still is, because now a big piece of the puzzle is solved.

How so?

[Vermonter]

I'm surprised no one's mentioned the hive cities in the 40k universe. Then again these are continent-spanning megacities made to house tens of billions...

[L.Y.S.]

Building in chunks

[L.Y.S.]

Originally Posted by ben m

It's already the case, and has been for 100 years, that you can put 100,000 people within walking-and-minor-transit distance of jobs, entertainment, etc.. It's called a "small city". That's what small cities have been for as long as they've existed. Poke around the map of Europe and you'll find lots and lots of places where 100,000 people live and work in a compact, walkable/transitable area surrounded by green space.

Obviously you can build any of these things even denser and more compact. You could take Cambridge, MA (100K people, 6 mi^2) and squeeze it into a patch of Manhattan-like density, but no bigger than Central Park (1.5mi^2). (Remember that Manhattan is not chockablock Empire State Buildings; much of upper Manhattan is just 3-story brownstones with little backyards, much of lower Manhattan is about 5 stories high; there are many parks.) 1.5mi^2 of high-density buildings and transit, 4.5 mi^2 of parkland. Sounds nice, doesn't it?

What's the specific advantage of taking the next step---why spend the extra trillion dollars to turn that into 0.5mi^2 of mega-uni-building, plus 5.5mi^2 of parkland? Is that extra 1mi^2 of park so important?

Maybe the idea is, "You don't have 5 miles of parkland! This is Tokyo!"

Sorry, wrong. Built-up Tokyo, suburbs and all, is something like a factor of 2 denser than Cambridge---maybe 40,000/mi^2. If you brought the whole thing to boring old Manhattan-like density, it's about half open space. That's with no unitary megastructures, no arcology, no carbon nanotubes. Go to full-on Upper East Side density in the built-up "small cities" and Tokyo's population would have, like densified Cambridge, 4.5 mi^2 of parkland per 1.5 mi^2 of urbanization.

Again, that bit of urbanization---let's call it a "neighborhood"---has all of the good properties you've attributed to arcologies. It has lots of people living close together, with walkable access to anything you'd find in a city---some jobs, retail outlets, schools. Many people will live in one neighborhood and commute to another. And so on. Just without the megabuilding..

I repeat: what's the advantage of the megabuilding? The proper point of comparison is NOT "it's denser than the status quo". Are you interested in comparing SkyCity1000 with other ways that people live at high density?

To answer this specific question, the idea is to reduce human footprint, and to have humans take as little space as possible. That is the ideal situation.

[Andrew Wiggin]

Originally Posted by JWideman

I've read too much science fiction to think that packing a metropolis into a skyscraper is anything but a very, very bad idea.

Just think of it as evolution in action...

[ben m]

Originally Posted by L.Y.S.

To answer this specific question, the idea is to reduce human footprint, and to have humans take as little space as possible. That is the ideal situation.

a) I don't think that is the ideal situation. The human impact on earth has very, very little to do with the space taken up by housing. (It has even less to do by the space taken up by multistory urban housing.) It has a lot to do with farming, ranching, mining, transport of invasive species, and emission of greenhouse gases. A sci-fi approach to reducing *ranching acreage* by 50%, would be (to me) a lot more ecologically interesting than a sci-fi approach tripling the population density of Manhattan. Do you have a *reason* for citing "buildings take up space" as an important part of our footprint?

b) I don't think arcologies accomplish it, given (from what I've seen) the high-rise, concrete-wasting architectural flights of fancy involved. You don't benefit the environment if you simultaneously (1) free up 20 square miles on Manhattan Island by compressing everyone into an arcology, and (2) obliterate 200 square miles of Ohio mountaintops to get enough coal, iron, and limestone to build the damn thing.

[quarky]

I suspect that future solutions to housing humanity will manifest in a variety of forms and functions.

In deserts, perhaps a system that mimics a mature ant colony, with some division of labor, and a variety of species. Terraforming the desert would be the main work.

Maybe a city underwater, say, in Lake Superior, would be a worthy project, creating its own economic and environmental niche.

High-tech sky scrapers, of course.
And lands for the potential for a more Aboriginal lifestyle.

People could move about and try lots of flavors of lifestyle. One size fits all is the stuff of sci-fi nightmare.

One of my fantasies of future possibilities involves a new sort of clothes.
With the right outfit, housing could be obsolete. Further advance in I.T. could slowly make 'stuff' redundant. Our homes are mostly places to contain and protect our stuff.

I sort of envy wild mammals that are equipped to be basically homeless. It might be fun to live the life of a more enlightened Mountain gorilla, or orangutang. More tree climbing; less elevator rides.

I sure hope we manage to allow some wilderness in the future...and I don't see why that space couldn't allow niches for humans that would like to be more wild.

Genetic manipulation might even enable some new designs for the human diversity.
Furry people; flipper people; mini-people; cyborg people...diversity of approach and intent...this could be the best fun and increase the likelihood of human survival.

Although, in retrospect, I have to admit to having few feelings of loyalty to the whole homo sapien experiment, should it slowly crap out.
If I was going to cheer "Go team, go!" to the human experiment, it would be in the hopes of us not trashing all the other wonderful species.

[L.Y.S.]

Originally Posted by ben m

a) I don't think that is the ideal situation. The human impact on earth has very, very little to do with the space taken up by housing. (It has even less to do by the space taken up by multistory urban housing.) It has a lot to do with farming, ranching, mining, transport of invasive species, and emission of greenhouse gases. A sci-fi approach to reducing *ranching acreage* by 50%, would be (to me) a lot more ecologically interesting than a sci-fi approach tripling the population density of Manhattan. Do you have a *reason* for citing "buildings take up space" as an important part of our footprint?

Both the issues of farming and habitation must be solved. As for farming, some arcologies are designed to have farms built within them, others have increased farmland on the ground, and others rely on huge greenhouse like structures (I forget the name) to grow food and increase food production.

Originally Posted by ben m

b) I don't think arcologies accomplish it, given (from what I've seen) the high-rise, concrete-wasting architectural flights of fancy involved. You don't benefit the environment if you simultaneously (1) free up 20 square miles on Manhattan Island by compressing everyone into an arcology, and (2) obliterate 200 square miles of Ohio mountaintops to get enough coal, iron, and limestone to build the damn thing.

It would be impossible to construct arcologies using any of the said materials. With that being said, with all the demolitions of older structures and what not, their material can simply be recycled if need be. Most arcologies are spacious in design, meaning that they are not designed like modern buildings. They are for all intents and purposes, hollow (comparatively speaking). They have spacious hallways, and outer areas where people can play and work. As for why two is incorrect, I've already stated why in the beginning of my paragraph. It would take material like carbon composites, and other new light-weight and easily producible materials to build such a structure. These materials are only decades away, but do not currently exist. Concrete and steel are simply too heavy.

[mikeyx]

Originally Posted by StuBob

While I figure a killer virus will take care of our population crisis (or maybe a zombie apocalypse), this is still a very interesting topic since it is directly applicable to mars or asteroid colonies. Those would be cool.

A few questions: How much well-lit surface area is needed per person to allow enough food production to break even? How much energy would be required, and what would be the source? If solar, how much additional area per person would be needed?

I do recall playing Sim City years ago, and being able to build these 'arcs' as you describe.

sim city was easy to keep population under wraps, volcano here, asteroid strike there....

[quarky]

Originally Posted by mikeyx

sim city was easy to keep population under wraps, volcano here, asteroid strike there....

Odd that we seem unwilling or unable to address the problem in a more direct way, with less suffering implied.

A commitment to a certain level of population density, perhaps?
One that conceivably might be sustainable?

Most people I've debated with, find this notion more reprehensible than depending on war and disease to do the hard work for us.

Its the most peculiar thing.

Its not like we wouldn't be able to have sex. More sex, actually.
The daddies on the forum might agree:
When you manage reproduction, the sex drops off...unless you move on.

[ben m]

Originally Posted by L.Y.S.

Both the issues of farming and habitation must be solved.

Want to put some numbers to that?

Let's be concrete about it. Start with, say, England---currently considered an *extremely* densely populated area. That's 53M people, using their land as follows:

Quote:

The total land area of England is 129,720 km². Crops and fallow land accounts for 30% of the land area, grasses and rough grazing 36%, other agricultural land 5%, forest and woodland 8%, and urban development 21%

So that's about 2000 people per km^2 in the "urban development", which is sort of dense-suburby on average. If you compressed these 53M people *merely* Cambridge, MA-like density (6000/km^2) England would be only 7% urban. If you go to Manhattan-like density (25000/km^2), England's entire population would fit on 1.7% of its land, leaving 98.3% of the land for forests, farms, etc. That's a LOT of open land. It's still a lot of open land even if you imagine doubling, tripling, quadrupling the population.

In what scenario is "1% more wild land"---which is what you'd get by cramming everyone into an arcology--- so important that it motivates the construction of a carbon-nanotube-based sci-fi hyperstructure? Can you put numbers (say, using the England context above) to the scenario you have in mind?

"I think England needs to hold X people. With arcologies, that's Y land devoted to the arcologies, Z to farming, and W wild."

[quarky]

I wish we didn't have to approach this subject via the Brits.

Know what I mean, wink wink?

Can we use Puerto Rico instead?

[quarky]

Actually, i don't even know what I mean. Carry on, please.

(no 'wink wink' this time.)

[L.Y.S.]

Originally Posted by ben m

Want to put some numbers to that?

Excellent, I'm glad you brought this up. So let's begin.

Originally Posted by ben m

Let's be concrete about it. Start with, say, England---currently considered an *extremely* densely populated area. That's 53M people, using their land as follows:



So that's about 2000 people per km^2 in the "urban development", which is sort of dense-suburby on average. If you compressed these 53M people *merely* Cambridge, MA-like density (6000/km^2) England would be only 7% urban.

Premises granted

Originally Posted by ben m

If you go to Manhattan-like density (25000/km^2), England's entire population would fit on 1.7% of its land, leaving 98.3% of the land for forests, farms, etc. That's a LOT of open land. It's still a lot of open land even if you imagine doubling, tripling, quadrupling the population.

Manhanttan's population density is only roughly 10'000/km^2.

Originally Posted by ben m

In what scenario is "1% more wild land"---which is what you'd get by cramming everyone into an arcology--- so important that it motivates the construction of a carbon-nanotube-based sci-fi hyperstructure? Can you put numbers (say, using the England context above) to the scenario you have in mind?

Well let's use some concrete numbers. London's pop density is at around 5'200/km^2, NYC like I said is about 10'000/km^2. Now the said SkyCity 1000 can support approxiamately 250'000 persons and their acitivites in 8 km^2. That's roughly 31,250/km^2. That's about triple the pop density otherwise. Now, there are even larger structures than sky city. Sky city is a relatively conservative arcology. Shimizu city Pyramid boasts an even higher population density ratio, while still maintaining the same high standard of living as the previous structure. Shimizu is designed as a coastal arcology with roughly the same base area as sky city, roughly 8 km^2. However, Shimizu can host roughly 750,000- 1,000,000 persons. That's roughly 90,000 -125,000/km^2. That is roughly 9 to 12.5 times the population density as you would receive in NY.

In terms of national density there would be roughly 10-100 times the available land depending on how aroclogies are designed, and that means that humans will inhabit an incredibly small portion of their said countries.

Originally Posted by ben m

"I think England needs to hold X people. With arcologies, that's Y land devoted to the arcologies, Z to farming, and W wild."

So let’s say for a second that the average arcology could reasonably and healthily support a population of roughly a population of 500,000 persons, and that England’s population of 53 million could fit into roughly 106 arcologies well spread out amongst the country to protect national security interests. That would take perhaps 1,000 km^2 or less. If you divide 500k by 53, you get 106, that is how I got the number, then multiple the average base by about 10 km^2 that’s how I got around 1’000km^2. I got 10km^2 based on the average arcology being 8km^2, I made it more conservative and take up more area. If we are talking population alone, it is clear that persons would inhabit less than .008% of England, much less than your original predictions.

As for farming, it can e argued that “vertical farming” is a solution, or something like major scale “greenhouse farming” is also a solution, but it would be difficult to make such a claim. Like arcology, these technologies aren’t impossible, but they are decades away from being cheap and practical on large scales. However, let’s take out the impracticality bit for a little while and say that the average farm land production yield could be increased by roughly 1,000 times, theoretically that would be roughly 1,000 times less farmland required needed to produce crops and sustain agriculture. Now the basis for this number is simple. Suppose we could have a 1km^2 and say that we can increase crop yields by 10 fold, and operate roughly 100 levels of farming at peak proficiency, that would be roughly speaking be 1’000 times the efficiency than is what is present in current day 2-dimensonal farming. 3-dimensional farming offers lots of alternatives, and increased efficiency if some bugs could be fixed in the system.

So agriculture is out of the way. It can feed lots more people in less space, let’s move on.

Since it would take perhaps, it would take less than 1% land to house and feed people, we are talking about 99% or more of pure wilderness.

Ironically by concentrating infrastructure in an area so much, you require a lot less infrastructure in overall. And it is a lot easier to maintain infrastructure and manage your use of energy. A lot less energy will be lost since it is being channeled to fewer areas. The list could go on and on.

[ben m]

Originally Posted by L.Y.S.

If we are talking population alone, it is clear that persons would inhabit less than .008% of England, much less than your original predictions.

OK, good. So you're NOT talking about trying to get Earth to support 100 billion people or something.

Given that, let's compare your 0.008% footprint to my 1.5% footprint. One of them has 128439 km^2 of non-city. The other has 130385 km^2 of non-city.

They're practically the same thing. The difference is a rounding error. If you were living on a 130395 km^2 island with 128439 km^2 of wilderness, that's actually lots and lots of wilderness already. Who is going to look out on a 128439-km^2 wilderness vista, and say "geez, I wish I had a carbon-nanotube-based method for turning that into a 130395-km^2 wilderness!"

[ben m]

A comparable situation: I like gardening. Among other things, I keep up about 50 sqft of vegetable beds. There's a 4 square feet patch in the middle that I leave fallow, because planting there would block access to the gas meter. For a few thousand dollars, I could have the gas lines rerouted so the meter is on the other side of the house---reducing my "wasted" vegetable beds from 8% to 0%. Seen that way, it's a huge improvement, right? Seen another way---well, I'd be paying $3000 for four square feet of dirt, which is absurd, providing an 8% increase in my gardening capacity, which isn't worth it.

[L.Y.S.]

Originally Posted by ben m

Given that, let's compare your 0.008% footprint to my 1.5% footprint. One of them has 128439 km^2 of non-city. The other has 130385 km^2 of non-city.

How'd you determine these and your other numbers? Demonstrate this to me please, thank you.

Second question, how'd we go only a "bit" higher, when my arcology model can pack at minimum 3 or 4 times a conventional city model? At moderate, it would be 10 times the population density.

Originally Posted by ben m

They're practically the same thing. The difference is a rounding error. If you were living on a 130395 km^2 island with 128439 km^2 of wilderness, that's actually lots and lots of wilderness already. Who is going to look out on a 128439-km^2 wilderness vista, and say "geez, I wish I had a carbon-nanotube-based method for turning that into a 130395-km^2 wilderness!"

Again, how'd you come up with the numbers? Does your model account for the use of agricultural land? Mine does. I'm almost certain that with the reduced need for space in agricultural land, that my model would be a lot more spacious.

At first glance the advantages aren’t obvious. It’s less expensive to build roads because there are fewer places that need them. Infrastructure would ironically become simpler and easier to maintain. And less energy would be wasted because it wouldn’t have to be carried long of distances to service the population. And again, minimal human footprint to return most of the world to it’s simple state of nature, and have minimal human interference in nature.

In all reality, an area roughly 1/40th the size of San Antonio Texas would be able to support it's in the future.

[quarky]

Originally Posted by ben m

A comparable situation: I like gardening. Among other things, I keep up about 50 sqft of vegetable beds. There's a 4 square feet patch in the middle that I leave fallow, because planting there would block access to the gas meter. For a few thousand dollars, I could have the gas lines rerouted so the meter is on the other side of the house---reducing my "wasted" vegetable beds from 8% to 0%. Seen that way, it's a huge improvement, right? Seen another way---well, I'd be paying $3000 for four square feet of dirt, which is absurd, providing an 8% increase in my gardening capacity, which isn't worth it.

Might I suggest some potted plants in that area?
They could be moved aside when the meter had to be accessed.

It would be a cheaper way.
An elevated table, even, which would maintain the meter access below, without needing to move stuff out of the way, would enable one to tap into that solar energy for less than $3,000.

Just sayin'

[GlennB]

Originally Posted by L.Y.S.

As for farming, it can e argued that “vertical farming” is a solution, or something like major scale “greenhouse farming” is also a solution, but it would be difficult to make such a claim. Like arcology, these technologies aren’t impossible, but they are decades away from being cheap and practical on large scales. However, let’s take out the impracticality bit for a little while and say that the average farm land production yield could be increased by roughly 1,000 times, theoretically that would be roughly 1,000 times less farmland required needed to produce crops and sustain agriculture. Now the basis for this number is simple. Suppose we could have a 1km^2 and say that we can increase crop yields by 10 fold, and operate roughly 100 levels of farming at peak proficiency, that would be roughly speaking be 1’000 times the efficiency than is what is present in current day 2-dimensonal farming. 3-dimensional farming offers lots of alternatives, and increased efficiency if some bugs could be fixed in the system.

So agriculture is out of the way. It can feed lots more people in less space, let’s move on.

Excuse me for bolding (some of) the bits where you went wrong. You can't just wave your hands around and suppose this and suppose that and conclude "So agriculture is out of the way".

The logistics of 'vertical farming' are horrendous, and meanwhile there is plentiful 2-D dirt available for far less effort and expense.

You might as well propose asteroid mining

[quarky]

Unless growing food by-passes the need for green leaves that photo-synthesize, you're kind of stuck with a given area of sun-shine. Hydroponic greenhouses don't change that.
We could be eating bacteria, raised in the dark. We could be using fission-powered grow-lights, to up production, and extra CO2 introduced, and all sorts of other hi-tek possibilities.

Thus far, we depend on top-soil. And surface area exposed to sunlight.

[Aepervius]

Originally Posted by ben m

a) I don't think that is the ideal situation. The human impact on earth has very, very little to do with the space taken up by housing. (It has even less to do by the space taken up by multistory urban housing.) It has a lot to do with farming, ranching, mining, transport of invasive species, and emission of greenhouse gases. A sci-fi approach to reducing *ranching acreage* by 50%, would be (to me) a lot more ecologically interesting than a sci-fi approach tripling the population density of Manhattan. Do you have a *reason* for citing "buildings take up space" as an important part of our footprint?

b) I don't think arcologies accomplish it, given (from what I've seen) the high-rise, concrete-wasting architectural flights of fancy involved. You don't benefit the environment if you simultaneously (1) free up 20 square miles on Manhattan Island by compressing everyone into an arcology, and (2) obliterate 200 square miles of Ohio mountaintops to get enough coal, iron, and limestone to build the damn thing.

If you put people in a very dense building rather than spread on a surface, you will spare a lot in transportation, heat loss (a lot of small building vs a big one) you will more easily cover greater amount of people with services, for example that MRI machine and similar, and I pass many others.

It is not really about forest or park or taking less surface, it is about using less resource and energy by packing human rather than sutpidenly spread them all over the palce , like suburbs.

[ben m]

LYS, I wish you had attempted the calculation yourself---not "how small is the city" but "how much wild land is left around it"---because it sounds like you missed the intended point and misunderstand the math. Doubling, tripling, or octupling the density of one thing doesn't mean you double, triple, octuple every resource you can think of.

Originally Posted by L.Y.S.

How'd you determine these and your other numbers? Demonstrate this to me please, thank you.

a) Take England's population, 53e6
b) Divide by a hypothetical population density to get a populated area:
Manhattan-like 53e6/26e3 = 2000 km^2
Shimizu-like 53e6/100e3 = 500km^2
Sci-fi airships 53e6/10e6 = 5km^2
c) Subtract 'populated area' from 'total area' to get "non-populated area"
Manhattan-like 130395 - 2000 = 128395
Shimizu-like 130395 - 500 = 129895
sci-fi airships 130395 - 5 = 130390

Quote:

Second question, how'd we go only a "bit" higher, when my arcology model can pack at minimum 3 or 4 times a conventional city model? At moderate, it would be 10 times the population density.

Because the "total land" is a large number to start with. The difference between adding a London, or a Manhattan, or a Shimizu-thing, tells you whether you're removing a small number, or a very small number, or a very very small number.

Whether you remove a small, or very small, or very very small amount of wildland, what remains is always lots of wild land.

Quote:

Again, how'd you come up with the numbers? Does your model account for the use of agricultural land? Mine does.

Your agriculture numbers are, to be honest, nonsense. Complete nonsense. But we can handle that the same way we handle sci-fi airships above.

Pick one from column A, one from column B:

A) Populated area:
current: medium to small (30000km^2)
normal urban: pretty small (10000km^2)
Manhattan urban: very small (2000km^2)
Shimizu sci-fi: tiny (500km^2)
Wormholes: vanishing (1km^2)

B) Agriculture:
current: medium (50000km^2)
intensive: small (30000km^2)
modern high-tech: smaller (15000km^2)
sci-fi: small (5000km^2, who cares)
fake sci fi: as small as you like (0km^2)

Pick one from column A, and one from column B. Add the result. Subtract from 130395km^2. That's wild land.

Please actually try it.

Please note that, no matter which (B) you pick, you have practically the same wild land *without* arcologies as *with* them.

[quarky]

Still,

I'm seeing the Donald Trump of arcology.

And his hair is fabulous.

[GlennB]

Originally Posted by ben m

Please note that, no matter which (B) you pick, you have practically the same wild land *without* arcologies as *with* them.

Bingo. It's this simple.

[ben m]

Originally Posted by Aepervius

If you put people in a very dense building rather than spread on a surface, you will spare a lot in transportation, heat loss (a lot of small building vs a big one) you will more easily cover greater amount of people with services, for example that MRI machine and similar, and I pass many others.

I have no argument with that. Denser urbanization requires less energy to operate ... and Manhattan does a great job of this. Here's a surprising fact---my numbers are a bit fuzzy on this, but it looks like a Manhattanite-subway-user's carbon footprint might easily spend as much on elevators as it spends on the actual subways: vertical transit isn't free. Interior lighting (a bigger issue in megastructures than in normal ones) isn't free. Ventilation (a MUCH bigger issue in megastructures) isn't free.

I get the impression that LYS isn't particularly interested in energy issues; he seems to focus entirely on land use, and assume that future technology has solved all other problems (including "free" construction to infinity height.)

[quarky]

Extrapolating on the efficiency available, the ideal would be to minimize human motions entirely. Why go up and down; back and forth, if you could stay put?
It should be your supplies that make this journey...and minimally at that.
Elevators would transport products, not people.

Yet, at what point does life kind of suck too much to bother with?

[L.Y.S.]

Originally Posted by ben m

I get the impression that LYS isn't particularly interested in energy issues; he seems to focus entirely on land use, and assume that future technology has solved all other problems (including "free" construction to infinity height.)

Who says this? I'm interested in energy, but again, I'm basing off of the assumption that we will have resources in 100 years that we do not have today, resources like nuclear fusion power, or solar panels that are cheaply produced and can absorb something like 90% of the sun's available energy that shines on Earth, or wind turbines that can harness most of the wind energy, etc., etc. In addition, I believe the issue of efficient transport of energy will be resolved as well.


With that being said, land use will remain a challenging prospect. England, perhaps did not serve as the best example, but it is clear that in this model a lot of land is left, and in the future it will be cheaper to house people like this, then in older conventional model cities.

[Roboramma]

Originally Posted by L.Y.S.

With that being said, land use will remain a challenging prospect. England, perhaps did not serve as the best example, but it is clear that in this model a lot of land is left, and in the future it will be cheaper to house people like this, then in older conventional model cities.

Did you do the math that ben m suggested?

It was pretty simple: Say you have a country with an area of 100,000 km² and 1,000,000 people

If you put them all in a city with a density of 10,000 people/km² they'll take up 100 km²

Which leaves you with 99,900 km²

How much more land do you think you can squeeze out of this country by jamming the people closer together?

(the answer is maximum 100 km²)

[quarky]

Line up, and count off by twos.
Don't fight the power.

[ben m]

Originally Posted by L.Y.S.

With that being said, land use will remain a challenging prospect. England, perhaps did not serve as the best example

Then give another example. Japan? China? Earth? Can you put numbers on one scenario in which "land use will remain a challenging prospect"? If not, why do you say that it will?

Quote:

but it is clear that in this model a lot of land is left, and in the future it will be cheaper to house people like this, then in older conventional model cities.

It is indeed clear that in this model a lot of land is left---but the same is true in any reasonable non-suburb-based model. It is NOT clear that "it will be cheaper"; you took that as an assumption by positing a miracle carbon nanotube material. (If these nanotubes are available, remember, it makes *ordinary* buildings cheaper, not just arcologies.)

[L.Y.S.]

Originally Posted by ben m

Then give another example. Japan? China? Earth? Can you put numbers on one scenario in which "land use will remain a challenging prospect"? If not, why do you say that it will?

It’s not that land use in a sort of “oh we’re running out of land!” predicament, but land use in modern cities is simply inefficient. Things like traffic, pollution, microclimates, unsustainable models existence, and large ecological footprints can be eliminated under this model. We both agree that increased urbanization is a positive solution to most of the world’s ecological problems, but one model goes beyond the conventional model. The arcologies model gives humanity the ability to decrease its footprint to the point of allowing most of the planet to return wild. And most importantly, it prevents the natural tendency of current 2-D cities to create urban sprawl from occurring.

Now in retrospect, nations like India, or China would benefit much more from arcology than western nations. For example, if we were to take China, a population of 1.3 billion, and put them all into arcologies that can support roughly 500k people, it would take roughly 2600 arcologies to support them. If each arcology possessed a base of roughly 10 sq. km (which is conservative in the arcology model) it would take roughly 26’000 sq. km. of land. If we were to divide this amount of land with the total amount of land available (9.7 million), it comes out to be roughly .0003, or roughly 3/10’000ths (.03%, correct me if I’m wrong) of all of China’s land to house the entire population. Another problem seems to be that many of China’s cities are swallowing up a lot (not all) of its arable land. Under this model the good land being voraciously consumed by cities will be freed up, and the abusive and exhaustive methods used by rural farmers would be substantially eased. This would lead to long term sustainability of crop production and China’s high population, something to be considered by China.

Originally Posted by ben m

It is indeed clear that in this model a lot of land is left---but the same is true in any reasonable non-suburb-based model. It is NOT clear that "it will be cheaper"; you took that as an assumption by positing a miracle carbon nanotube material. (If these nanotubes are available, remember, it makes *ordinary* buildings cheaper, not just arcologies.)

1. In this model more land is left than in most if not all other models

2. Again, the initial cost will not be cheap, but one model has it where the initial costs are expensive and the subsequent savings over the long duration of time are tremendous. While the other model has very reasonable cost in the beginning, but the long term maintenance of auxiliary services is very expensive. It is clear that compacting infrastructure into one unit is much cheaper in the long run than dispersing out infrastructure in several areas. It is clear that there are a number of energy and cost saving benefits in building such a structure. As for the carbon nano tube material, the program I showed earlier in the thread put the date of construction sometime in the early 22nd century, making it entirely feasible that the this cheap and durable material will exist.

[Cuddles]

Originally Posted by L.Y.S.

1. In this model more land is left than in most if not all other models

The point Ben has made, and which you seem to be completely missing, is that simply having "more" land is not relevant. What matters is how much more, and what that actually means in real terms. Sure, you might be able to fit China's population into 0.03% of its land area. But if putting them all in regular cities only takes 0.06% of its land area, so what? In one scenario you have 99.9% of land free for other uses, in the other scenario you have 99.9% of land free for other uses. Note that Ben did not ask you to just calculate how much land you think arcologies would use, he asked you to calculate how much land both arcologies and other options would use, and then compare the answers to see how much land you'd have left over in each case. He has already done such a calculation for England:

Originally Posted by ben m

One of them has 128439 km^2 of non-city. The other has 130385 km^2 of non-city.

They're practically the same thing. The difference is a rounding error. If you were living on a 130395 km^2 island with 128439 km^2 of wilderness, that's actually lots and lots of wilderness already. Who is going to look out on a 128439-km^2 wilderness vista, and say "geez, I wish I had a carbon-nanotube-based method for turning that into a 130395-km^2 wilderness!"

All you've done in response is continue to argue that arcologies would allow you to have 130385 km^2 of non-city. Yes, we already know that. What we don't know is why you think we should care, given that it's such a negligible difference in overall land use.