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First Arcology?
vortmax(OU) writes: "OK, so it isn't that new, but I hadn't seen it posted on /. yet, so I thought I'd bring it up. According to World's Tallest Buildings, there's a proposal for a new supertall (3,700 ft) Bionic Building" in Shanghai, China. It will house 100,000 people as well as hotels, offices, cinemas, and hospitals -- a "vertical city" as the London Sunday Times put it. If actually built, it will dwarf the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lampur and the Sears Tower in Chicago. It should be interesting to see if it goes forward... The complete story is here."
Would you mind to use the metric system?
The NASA lost already a satellite because
some dork used feet instead of meters.
"The more prohibitions there are, The poorer the people will be" -- Lao Tse
Wow. The world's biggest phallic symbol. :P
What were they, elevators to the moon? 500 fps is about 340 miles per hour... Maybe you meant 500 feet per minute?
Frank Lloyd Wright proposed a building once, for Chicago. It was called "The Illinois." One mile high. Big, triangular cross sections, lotsa steel, featuring a "tap root" style of construction. Of course, he did suggest things like nuclear-powered elevators, but it was 1957. It was only designed to house 45,000, but hey, a MILE high...
From the article:
I cannot begin to imagine how fast those elevators must be... That's an average of 1850 feet per second if you're on the top floor... Fast elevators I've been in are about, oh... 500 feet per second. This thing would fly you up to the top. Craziness...
-David Ziegler
-dziegler@hotmail.com
-David Ziegler
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So am I, and it's not entirely true, though in this case it probably is American billions.
If more people used milliard, we could help keep billion with its original English meaning.
http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?milliard
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rant
Prior to Columbine, I had joked
about improving the Boston skyline
by giving the Pru this treatment.
Now.. If this thing is built,
somebody's bound to try 747ing into it.
For those of you interested in arcologies, I check out the Arcologies egroup discussion. The practicality, benifits and implications of archologies are discussed and argued. Check them out at:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/arcology/
Here is the description of Arcologies from the groups front page:
"Arcology is Paolo Soleri's concept of cities which embody the fusion of architecture with ecology. The arcology concept proposes a highly integrated and compact three-dimensional urban form that is the opposite of urban sprawl with its inherently wasteful consumption of land, energy, time and human resources. An arcology would need about two percent as much land as a typical city of similar population. Arcology eliminates the automobile from inside the city and reserves it for use outside the city. Walking would be the main form of transportation inside an arcology. The miniaturization of the city enables radical conservation of land, energy and resources. Arcology would rely as much as possible on the sun, the wind and other renewable energy so as to reduce pollution and dependence on fossil fuels. Arcology needs less energy per capita thus making recycling and the use of solar energy more feasible than in present cities."
Not that big a deal. Ever flown on a commercial jet? As I understand it, cabin pressurization is not activated until appx. 5000-6000 feet altitude, at which point the valves that control air exchange are closed and cabin pressure is maintained at 6000-8000 feet. A commercial airliner taking off from an urban airport with noise restrictions in effect could definitely achieve 3000 feet altitude in less than two minutes (ie, 1500 fpm climb rate). Some of them probably do it in less than one minute. So yeah, your ears pop, but no, you don't get altitude sickness.
-Graham
When are we going to put Maxis in charge of city planning here in the US?
And you thought all that time you were just playing SimCity.
Why is it that many people who claim to support standards have such atrocious spelling and grammar?
Warning: I lost my sense of humor after taking a linguistics course with George Lakoff, so I may just be missing the Maxis humor...
Did you realize that "losing" one's sense of humor or "missing" Maxis humor are metaphors? Don't try and categorize me as one of those linguistic types though.
Scuttlemonkey is a troll
£10 billion should be $7 billion
.. $1.6 USD to a UKP .. so that'd be about $16 billion .. (with a b).
.. which seems like an awful lot.
Eh?
And of course if that was a UK 'billion' is in a million million, and the US 'billion' is a thousand million, then you'll end up with $16,000 billion (USD)
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Delphis
Delphis
I could use my normal rig at that height. Hell, I've hopped off planes lower than that.
"Now, I hope and pray that I will, but, today I am still just a bill"
Now I hope and pray that I will But today I am still, just a bill
That's a scary thought, considering that I used to economize on fire departments by just building one and then putting out fires with the bulldozer :)
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Escape gliders!
Hmm.. during a fire, the thermals will make it extra fun. People might start fires just for an excuse to use the gliders. Ok, maybe my idea ain't so good.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Electrolyze it. Hydrogen floats up, then ya burn it. Not only moves water from bottom to top, but energy too.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
What's the tube for? Every time I step outside, the low pressure of the atmosphere 20 miles above me, sucks me up into the air and out into orbit. It's a major inconvenience.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
It looks like anoter Three Gorges Dam-style massive project. It's interesting what huge projects can be created in a centrally-planned economy, like the BAM in the Soviet Union. China is luckier than the Soviet Union though in that they're actually making lots of money (despite | because of) the way they run their economy. It will be interesting to see if this plan materializes, and what it means for the viability of a (at least somewhat) centrally-planned economy.
Photos of bits of the past hiding in the present: afiler.com
> I wonder if myoelectric fibers(a technology pulled straight from my ass that sounds plausible)
Ouch.. sounds painful... pulling technology from that part of the body is not a good idea.
(Actually the bad idea is putting it there to start with)
I don't actually exist.
I found that some city officials can not tell the difference between apartment living and homeless.
As far as they are concerned if you don't own a house you are a transient.
I don't actually exist.
Um, I hate to correct you, but that's not 1850 feet *per second*, that's 1850 feet per *minute*. It works out to about 30 feet per second - still rather fast, but not impossible.
Mind you, that's assuming a direct run, top to bottom, no stops en route, and no time for accelleration and deceleration - those will alter the 30 fps figure somewhat.
Lemon curry?
Oh dear god, the flashbacks... Thanks for the Monday grin.
Kevin Fox
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Kevin Fox
He didn't say they could move diagonally, or would be driven by a half-crazed candy maker. Or, for that matter, that they could go into outer space.
And fight evil purple(?) things.
Yep.
-gleam
this
This looks like the beginnings of the Caves of Steel to me. So, when will the positronic brain be invented?
-- John
From that height you could keep a close eye on all of those pesky reconnaissance planes.
---------
Who is willing to bet that it will have some sort of opening roof that will suck in nearby spy planes.
:)
...in fact msot serious hacking is done by UNIX, and UNIX based systems such as Linux or C++...
You know its true
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My sometimes helpful blog
"come off crisp and play up to the cynic
clean and schooled right down to the minute"
SEO Copywriter. Just Say ON
This is true, but not relevant. The problem isn't that China doesn't know how to regulate construction effectively. The problem is that China doesn't have the resources to effectively regulate every two-bit bridge and shopping mall in a country of 1.3 billion people.
For high-profile projects, Chinese construction is world-class. I suggest that anyone who has the opportunity visit the Jinmao Tower in Shanghai (the world's third-tallest building). A finer building you will not find anywhere.
Technically, China did not invade South Korea; Chinese troops were supporting a North Korean invasion of South Korea. And they only got involved in the first place because Douglas McArthur was going around claiming he didn't consider Manchuria to be part of China (and showed every intention of crossing the Yalu to prove it).
The brief campaign in North Vietnam was an action to "teach them a lesson" after a persecution campaign against Vietnam's Chinese ethnic minority created a serious refugee crisis (you'll remember the "boat people crisis" of '78).
And China's invasion of Tibet was not an invasion of a "country", as Tibet has never been recognized as a sovereign independent state in any modern sense of the word. Tibet wasn't any more a country than Navaho was. (Which is not to excuse in any way the mistreatment of the Tibetans--or Navaho for that matter--but merely to point out there are gradations of "invasion".)
In modern history, China has not pursued a foreign policy of hegemonism, and has not been guilty of unprovoked aggression against neighboring countries.
"*Every* country in the region has suffered a Chinese invasion at some point in its history. Some have managed to fight back, some haven't.
That's about as accurate, and meaningful, as saying, "*every* country in the Mediterranean region has suffered an Italian invasion at some point in its history".
The difference being that there hasn't been a "Bamboo Curtain" for over 20 years. There are regular direct flights between major American and major Chinese cities. Chinese invariably outnumber Americans on those flights, both ways (which may partly account for why Chinese are so much better informed about America than vice versa). You should hop on a plane some day and see for yourself how much is smiling propaganda and how much is reality.
"Taiwan would certainly take issue with you there"
Uh, you may not have noticed, but the formal name for Taiwan is "The Republic of China". Taiwan's official "National Day" is the anniversary of the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty and creation of the Chinese Republic in 1911. Taiwan is "Chinese people".
You may have a point, though. Before their defeat by the Communists, and subsequent flight to Taiwan, the KMT did invade Outer Mongolia, and to this day, the Taiwanese government officially claims Mongolia as part of their sovereign territory.
No, Taiwan says Mongolia is part of China. China says Outer Mongolia is an independent country (with whom they enjoy healthy diplomatic relations).
Inner Mongolia is part of China, and has been pretty much since the Yuan Dynasty (during which the Chinese Empire was run by Mongolians).
But remember, they'll need the power from the dam to run the mile-high building...
-S
However, I've heard/read many times that the great wall could be seen from the moon (seen as in "with your bare eyes"), which is completely ridiculous.
You've obviously never been to Boston or New York.
Especially during baseball season
--The basis of all love is respect
Hrmm, have to read that again, But i thought the article said the Great Wall was not the only man made structure to be seen from space.
They even had a sat pic that you could see the Great Wall in.
Somebody's gotta go back and get us a shitload of dimes.
Most Chinese who live in the cities wouldn't have a car. Maybe a small motorbike. In big cities like Shanghai and Beijing there are very efficient transit systems. Chinese who don't live in the cities are too poor to afford transport and walk everywhere. China is very different demographically from America.
Also, 2.2 kids means 1.2 illegal children under the One Child Policy. Of course, there would be two or more generations living in the house: retired couple, their son, his wife and their son (generally as daughter's aren't prized as highly).
dave
China already has a national birth control program. The One Child Policy has been in place for over 20 years now and has mainly produced a generation of spoilt boys.
dave
China has a lot of engineers and quite a lot of experience building tall buildings. The expertise to do something like this would certainly be available in places like Hong Kong where standard public housing is 40 stories high.
I would tend to worry more about the massive corruption in China which would lead to cost-cutting, graft and the potential for quite a massive disaster.
dave
Beijing is a very large city which isb't really all that dense. The sraticle is talking about Shanghai, however, which is more constrained by the river and it's location.
Boring Fact: The most densely populated place on the planet is Mong Kok District in Hong Kong with over 250,000 people per square mile.
dave
The architect may be european, but most of the construction and engineering would be done locally.
Us engineers have special low terms for architects. "Useless, clueless twits" is one of the more polite ones.
dave
here's my rant. the towers in kuala lampur and the sears tower are among the tallest buildings in the world. the CN tower in canada is not. why? because its not a building. just because you have a really big antenna with a couple of floors in it, does not mean its a building. canadians need to learn what a building is. (this is a public service announcement to all ignorant canadians, which does not mean all canadians are ignorant)
Man I hope they retrain the Chinese pilots to fly properly, oh and mix concrete properly ;-)
There are none as blind as those who will not see.. (unknown)
you better be fast then: the whole thing is in the state of collapse and has been for a few years. Several parts of it are (as far as I know) shut off for the public because of alumiNIUM rot.
nosig today
what the fuck are you talking about...
granted there are problems converting from the british system to the rest of the world (excluding the US) but nothing nearly like adding a few orders of magnitude... 10B pounds is about $15B, try a currency converter sometime.
But what if you dived just before visiting a top office in that building?
umm the swaying bridge pictures are usually the windstorm ones from ~1950 Tacoma narrows (I believe). Gotta love modes in bridges. kuroshin.org logo......
Female Prison Rape in NY
Great, just what we need, a few dozen MORE languages on this Earth (see Genesis 11:6-9)!
The elevators make that Steve-Austin-in-action sound, I guess.
...and it only fits 10 obese yanks.
Did you even read the article? It specifically said "the journey from bottom to top taking less than two minutes".
you mean per minute... 3700 ft. in 120 seconds is 30.83 ft/sec
which is about 21mph
Have you seen how normal buildings have thicker walls at the bottom than the top? From my experience in a residential building we went up 10 floors and they had 1 foot extra in their living room. Now imagine the outer walls of this... thing.... How thick would they have to be?
Also, how deep are the foundations going to be for this thing? You can only go so far down before the crust becomes unstable.
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Imagine the future where you spend your whole life from birth to death living in one of these things. You'd never need to go outside your 'module', it has all the services you need.
Instead of going overseas for holidays, you'd just take the lift down to the next module.
Wierd stuff
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Sorry, but just looking at the sketch in the article one can see it's more of a theory then a practicality. 12 flat floors held up by columns with standard office blocks & parkland on each floor? Why not combine the columns & the buildins for efficiency/stabilty? Plus what's with all of the wasted space? Nobody builds a couple hundred stories in the air only to use a dozen floors & then allocate 50% of that floorspace for greenspace.
You forgot one thing... buildings are designed by architects, architecs and efficient use of space have never been together in the same sentence (Until now).
I hate to agree with davecrazy but...
"You didn't read the article very closely. The developers seem to have considered stability in the face of winds, stating the building will sway up to 8 ft at the top. This is apparently the same as the Empire State Building in New York. That seems stable enough. Additionally, the foundations are designed to stabilize and strengthen the height of the building: they resemble a tree's root system, radiating outwards in a circle, anchoring the structure firmly."
Even a tree gets blown over. A tree also snaps and falls. A lot of weight is going to be near the center of the building because these floors are the biggest. This will add extra weight to the swing. This would vary with the amount of wight on these and upper floors. If I remember my physics correctly (it has been a few years), it would swing faster with more weight in the middle. I don't think the have accounted for all varriables. I think this owuld have been better if it graudually tapered to the top of was the same width at the top. You will not catch me in that tower when it is built.
At the next eco-hypocrisy-meeting, count the private jets used to get to the meeting. Should be interesting to see that
I don't know how it will stay up under high winds. All the prevous towers, or structures, had a base at ground level that was the size as most of the building gradually get smaller to the top. This doesn't. The widest point is in the middle, and that is in the air! One go Tsunomi(sp?) or Monsun(sp?) season and this tower will fall. They is NO WAY this tower will be stable!
How are the going to build it? Do we(the world in general) have cranes that to reach up to the top? Are they planning on errecting it lieing down and then raising it?
What about water pressure? I wonder how they will handle that? Will they keep a large amount of the water part way up the tower to reduce the pressure need to get the water up the tower?
Why not go with something practical like a VERY BIG pyramid?
I deffinately do not want to be in there when there is a fire.
At the next eco-hypocrisy-meeting, count the private jets used to get to the meeting. Should be interesting to see that
Go to the website. Notice the drawings. Also notice the dimensions 166*133 max. All of the pictures on the website suggest the bottom of the tower (that is above ground) will be smaller. I think this is also hinted at with (max) in the dimensions. Plus the base diameter is 133*100. I still say it will fall down. It doesn't have any good footing.
At the next eco-hypocrisy-meeting, count the private jets used to get to the meeting. Should be interesting to see that
I don't know why people alway think the Petronas twin towers are the tallest building in the world... It is clearly the CN Tower in Toronto by over 300 ft.
From http://www.cntower.ca:
Is the CN Tower the tallest building in the world?
Yes, it is recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the World's Tallest Building and Free-Standing Structure. The Tower holds a number of other world records including World's Longest Metal Staircase and World's Highest Wine Cellar. In 1995, the CN Tower was classified as one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World by the American Society of Civil Engineers.
How tall is the Tower?
The CN Tower is 553.33 m (1,815 ft, 5 inches) tall or the equivalent of 5 1/2 football fields stacked end-to-end.
Although at over double the height, this building would clearly be awesome...
It's not possible to absorb enough nitrogen at sea level to get the bends. What people tend to forget is that going 30 ft down is 2 atmospheres. Going 70 ft down is 3 atmospheres. You can't really get the bends going from 30ft to sea level, even if you stay down there a long time, so I don't think going from 1 atmosphere to .75 atmosphere could do it.
Hmm...I've never had my ears pop on an elevator before, though.
I think he's referring to the Tacoma Narrows bridge. :) It wasn't caused by earthquakes, it was a breezy day that caused the bridge to resonate. It wobbled. It waved. If you would have had a skateboard you could have surfed from one end to the other -- until pieces of the deck started plummeting into the sound and the whole thing snapped like a broken guitar string. :)
Get off my virtual lawn, you damned virtual kids!
Other than having bragging rights for the world's tallest building this is a serious waste of material. In the 3000' diameter hole you are creating for the base of the structure you can fit a dozen 75 storey high rises. What are the benefits of multiple shorter structures as opposed to one large one?
Distributing the population among multiple towers is much wiser.
Lifting water and people a hundred floors is done all over the world, all the time. Go with something proven.
When was the last time a conventional skyscraper built with current technologies blew over? When was the last time a conventional skyscraper's occupants were blown out of the structure by high winds? Additionally, I would not want to live within two miles of this beast. The debris raining out of it during a typhoon would be spectacularly dangerous.
As for simulators being able to predict the behavior of structures in adverse conditions, what about London's gloriously wobbly Millenium Foot Bridge, which was closed the day it opened because it was too unstable?
I suspect, at least I hope, that when/if sensibility prevails this structure will not be built as it is proposed. If this tower is built, then I am pretty certain that some day we'll watch the tragedy of this structure's demise unfold on live television.
Get off my virtual lawn, you damned virtual kids!
forget lifts....start thinking vertical subways!
Not bad. BTW The shrinking Chinese idea is, of course, Kurt Vonegut's.
you got it
damn, what do i change it to now?
echo $email | sed s/[A-Z]//g | rot13
That's $140K per person over the life of the building. Assuming the building lasts 200 years, that is quite reasonable. Well, you would have to add some for upkeep etc. but I don't think its way out of line with reality.
Obviously, apartments would be cheaper on a cost per person basis initially, but you have to take into account things like transportation and energy costs, as well as other benefits.
Also, they are housing business facilities as well, so that has to be factored into the analysis.
echo $email | sed s/[A-Z]//g | rot13
This is another example of China's odd path of development. As it is the same in many developing countries of today.
The problems is like this. On one hand they have the "high tech" stuff already to some extend. On the other they still have people starving and dying from a mountain of problems.
Sure building this thing is a great idea in some ways. But I am sure bet you that there'll be problems and you'll never hear a single thing about it.
The way china works with projects like these is to make them and leave them.
A while back China had a terrible flood. Because 3 major dams they built were badly maintained. As a result the flood gates where slited up. What happened? IT flood much of china and caused what was estimated as the largest single lost of lives ever.
This is what china has always been like a disaster waiting to happen. There are laws and regulations but no real enforcement of it. And for this project they'll have a foreign company built it but most likely a chinese company's going to take over the day to day running of it. And that where the problems will occure.Not to mention the possible cost cutting that might happen at the contractor level.
Personally If this works out great. But then again i would cheer just as much if it falls over one day to prove we can't do just anything we want.
I was thinking Trigun myself...
the coolest club on
Dood, in Quake III I get over 80fps, and that's old technology! These Chinese are getting fscked!
Here's quite a good site for all things mega-construction related: Mega-Scale Engineering.
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, on a planet called Coruscant.
Give me an apartment on the top floor, a parachute, and a rather sturdy hammer, and ask me if I'm worried about fires!
That was the darco.
http://www.freebsd.org
Screw gears (and practicality). I want rocket power.
t
Call me a cynic, but its free advertising.
This project in China hasn't spent 1 dollar on it so far, and both sides are getting advertising out of it.
t
What is the point in going to the moon?
If there was some sort of econimical point, rather then braging rights sure we would go to the moon again.
Thats the problem trying to goto mars, the technology is more or less there, just no one is willing to foot the bill for a more or less pointless (but really cool) goal.
guvf vf zl fvt
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I like to watch.
I actually visited Arcosanti just last weekend... very interesting place/very ambitious project, but it needs corporate and governmental support, IMHO.
So is this thing going to jump out in front of a Chinese F-8 killing its brave patriotic pilot?
Read my plan to save the Bengals
Everyone (who's addicted to Newsradio on TV in the USA, now in syndication) knows that Jimmy James thought of this idea a long, long time ago. Of course, it was near Central Park in New York City, and was going to have the largest damn disco in the world (complete with flashing lights on the outside of the building), and would look like two large letter "J". Hmmm... I think his idea was just as plausible.
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dman123 forever!
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dman123 forever!
Filtering out the -1s and 0s since 1999.
Antigravity elevators, f00. ;)
Well, if you were lucky, you could get a Plymouth Arco by the mid 90's, but hell, this this is huge!
Bigger than the Launch Arcos even...
Um.... 100,000 / 900 = 111.111111... != 12 Not only that but I found a bug in slashdot. It doesn't count numbers as lower case... PLEASE DON'T USE SO MANY CAPS. USING CAPS IS LIKE YELLING
"If I can see farther it is because I am surrounded by dwarves." -- Murray Gell-Mann
Yes, it would take you forever to go to the top of this thing.
It tells you specifically how long it will take, 2 minutes.
Read topic, discuss, read topic, discuss. Forget about actually getting some real information out of it, that would take too much of my time.
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Couldn't we also "vertical-ize" the food resources as well? It's not my field, but I can imagine several ways in which to make such a thing possible.
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"Today's payslip has more deductions than a Sherlock Holmes novel."
Technically, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle never wrote any Sherlock Holmes novels. The Hound of the Baskervilles (and some other stories) might be considered novellas, though.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
It's an engineering nightmare! My guess is, it was proposed by an engineer who was bored with 'easy' projects. Another guess is, whoever wins (won?) the contract will bring in the absolute best. But will it work?
Do you think China has the technical know-how to pull it off? Do you think we (U.S.A.) have *any* of the necessary components to pull it off? When was our last great engineering marvel? ISS doesn't count, it's an international effort.
Peace,
Amit
ICQ 77863057
[o]_O
Whoever lived at the top would be popular - "Join the mile-high club in the comfort of my bedroom".
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Tarkwyn.
While building a 3,000 foot structure might help China's development, it would be a really big problem during a war. Let's say the US and china get into a war. One powerful missile knocks the building over, causing more than 100,000 people to die. Plus, not only do they die, but the whole building falls on shanghai, taking out even more people. China's morale level would decrease if something like this happened, so personally, I think that China would be foolsish to do something like this.
Ok, it was late, I didn't read too clearly...
Buildings like the Sears tower are nearly always on the verge of bankruptcy because they can't fill their floors. (yes, the power of generalization is strong on slashdot)
Granted, Bejing might be a special case since it has such high population density, (and govt regulated industry) I know the petronas (sp?) towers have overcome the "lack of lease" somewhat, but the last time I checked many of the towers' floors were still technically under construction. It may be too soon to tell.
I'm sure someone more well-informed than myself will put me in my place.
I do love the observation deck on the sears tower though. especially at sunset.
tcd004
Punishments fitting for Micro$oft
Hopefully they can work out that nasty monthly air crash problem that SimCity 2000 has when you get enough arcologies. In all seriousness, this is something of simply massive scale. I'm curious as to what previously neglected natural force will become a design consideration. I can think of one. The air pressure at the top may be noticeably different from that at the bottom. I can imagine people living on the upper floors developing problems if they have to make a lot of trips out, especially if they're used to spending all their time within the building. From an engineering standpoint, this shouldn't impact the structure itself, although the winds up there should be interesting, but it's something they may have to account for in order to acheive the ultimate design goal, which is to make it livable.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
As much as i know most Elevators in ultratall Buildings arent built with cables anymore. They work with wheels and travel like a vertical train...sorry, i dont know the exact english words but i think you get the idea ;-)
Lispy
You must remember that they *could* just leave the 14.4B in the bank. (BTW: Even at a moderate 5% return, 14.4B would generate about 770mil per year - which in turn equates to an additional $650 per month / per resident)
Point is, part of the calculation with a sum of money this large needs to take into account the 'loss of invesment' due to the expenditure of the capital in the first place.
Taking those things into consideration, I don't forsee how this thing could ever realistically be profitable. If their goal was profitability (which it obviously isnt), they should be a complex of medium-height buildings (each about 30 stories).
If you figure about 15 apartments to the story and 30 stories per building, you are looking at 450 apartments per building. Figure that each holds 2 people on average and thats about 900 people to the building. Given these assumptions, about 12 buildings would be sufficient to house 100,000 people. There is no way that 12 buildings like that could come close to even requriring half as much capital as 14B would.....Someone needs to be hit in the head with a cluestick over this one...
Just my .02 /
-dm
News release -- "Come visit the new tallest building in the world. After jumping off the 2726362727th floor, the average TTD (time till death) is 0.73 seconds. This is more than half that of the Sears Towers in Chicago!"
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
apparently you never downloaded the hack for SC2K...
moox. for a new generation.
why are you modding down a good troll? that makes no sense. a good troll tries to make conversation and create disruption inside the slashdot community, creating a wider variety of arguments, other than "i'm sure this building will house only microsoft's entire de bugging staff, there won't be any room left over for anyone else". Mod down the micro-bashers and beowolf fanatics, but not the inovators.
moox. for a new generation.
Or the Foundation series for that matter (specifically the Imperial capital; very similar idea, no?)
the caption reads:
6 Structure to rest on 3,000ft wide concrete base with lake to absorb earthquake shockwaves.
How can that be when the building itself is 3,700ft tall?
And what principle of Engineering permits the structure to be wider at the middle than it is at the bottom!?
Vermicious Knids, and I do seem to recall they are purple.
Heh, I was just reading Charlie and the Glass Elevator to my son a couple weeks ago. Amazing how that stuff holds up. He is still talking about Wonka-Vite.
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There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
Unfortunately, you never were able to launch your Launch Arcos into space to colonize the moon...
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
The word "arcology" is often used in reference to Arcosante, a planned community somewhere in Arizona. The place was built several years ago, in the seventies IIRC, and would have been a financial disaster for all involved if it hadn't turned out to be a viable tourist trap.
Never try to teach a pig to sing; it's a waste of your time and it irritates the pig.
As far as gymnasts go, I can tell you that they are not "freaky anarexic," but are instead extremely well fit. They work extremely hard for strength, endurance and suppleness. The routines that modern gymnasts perform would not be attainable by athletes of old. Gymnasts today are stronger, faster, more flexible and have greater endurance than ever before.
I think the Arcosanti project is one of the first arcologies. Very cool foray into sustainable living and life with saner priorities (IMHO). Check them out at http://www.arcosanti.org/
cool! this thing would double as the worlds largest sundial!!!!!
If I'm not mistaken Frank Lloyd Wright had plans for a one-mile high skyscraper for Chicago before he died. He recognized the future need of urban housing for vertical space. And it was architecturally sound...(of course it would sway a bit at the top, probably more than the 8 ft of the Shanghai building).
If they use local products, they will have a 3700 ft high water fountain. I've see quality of their plumbing and pumps way too many times. But hey, they can always bring some people to carry all necessary water in stairs with buckets ;-)
Road to Hell is paved with frozen door-to-door salesmen.On weekends many of the younger demons go ice-skating down it
Recently, China detained a US flight crew for more than a week and they have yet to return the plane. All in violation of every applicable international law! If I takes into consideration the cultural history of the Chinese, one of domination and fierce pride, it all makes me nervous.
----
There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes. -- Dr. Who
So, dude, do you ever think about like, how wasteful cities are? Like, all those cities spread out, like, messing up the nature and stuff.
Arcologies are an excellent idea. In fact I think everyone else should live in one ;)
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
From a quick look at the sketch of the building I'm going to make the uninformed assumption that it is, on average, 250' in radius (about 7~8 times higher that it is wide???). From the article it has 300 stories.
(pi * (250' ^ 2)) * 300 = 58,904,862 sq. feet of space which is approx. 589 sq. feet per person (which needs to include a hell of a lot of infrastructure; sewage, elevators, etc.) Still, over 2000 sq. feet for a family of four isn't unreasonable.
Of course, if you start to fill of levels with sewage treatment plants, nuclear reactors, 25,000 parking places, the mayor's penthouse that takes up 4 floors, etc. etc. etc. The space available per family starts to decrease.
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
Allegedly, the resulting material is as strong as steel-lined concrete, but much more flexible, so it resists typhoons better.
(sorry if my terminology is incorrect, my english is not that good)
------
C'mon, flame me!
No sig for the moment.
First of all, this technique was not pioneered in Beijing, but in Hong Kong, back when it was still a British Colony.
Second, the bamboo is deep inside concrete, in the supporting beams, so I would like to see a form of life being able to creep inside and survive without oxygen (and no, anaerobic bacteria doesnt seem to be able to eat enough cellulose to bring one of these down)
There are 15-20 year old buildings that have used this technique in Hong Kong, and they seem to be getting along just fine.
------
C'mon, flame me!
No sig for the moment.
Phantasy Star?
I think millions of Tibetans would disagree with you.
-- "On second thought, let's not go there. Camelot is a silly place."
but I bet they'll have one heck of a nice internet connection (with a nice bottleneck at the bottom)
-Stype
-Stype
Bus error -- driver executed.
Or the 'Chung Kuo' series by David Wingrove? In that series, China had taken over the world, and everyone lived in arcologies.
___
__
Do ya feel happy-go-lucky, punk?
You make some good points, but one thing that always amazed me and still amazes me about China is how well they scale up. Yes, there are still problems, but somehow they either cover them up or they've solved them.
That said, I can just imagine an earthquake one day causing that building and its occupants hell.
Not to mention that, but what about the sway? Ever been to the top of a really tall building? The top bends over quite a bit...
Humorless sig goes here.
You might want to check out Paolo Soleri's ``arcology in progress'', Arcosanti. I'm not sure what its current state is, since its web page is down, but it is/was an interesting project: construct an arcology starting without billions of dollars...
The real Millennium begins with a world record parachute jump at the Petronas Towers in Malaysia. Fifteen parachutists from the USA, Europe and Asia jumped from the world's tallest buildings just before midnight, beginning their jump in the year 2000 and landing in the year 2001.
But if you jumped from this thing, you'd bounce off the building itself as it arcs out - would be painful!
sulli
RTFJ.
These are some good questions. However, remember that they're planning on burying the roots some 600ft. into the ground. You could presumably construct dedicated sanitation AND power plants in that kind of space.
I'd be a little worried about parking. I would think that your average Chinese citizen granted the privilege to live in this place might have a car for his or her family. That's roughly 25,000 cars, assuming 2.2 kids. ^_^
I also worried about the prospect of pumping clean water UP 3700 ft. How much power is this going to take? Would atmospheric condensers be a viable solution to at least some of this problem?
Luckily, you don't really have to worry much about sewage. If your sanitation plant is down below, just dig a hole and say "Look out below!" Who's to say that what works for outhouses can't work for a huge skyscaper?
Personally, though, I think that the main accomplishment of this project wouldn't be the world's tallest building, or even the world first arcology, but the world's largest artificial sundial.
"Thats all I have to say about that."
An intelligent person would realize that since the Chinese GDP is only about $1.1 Trillion, or about that of California, a cost of $14.4 Trillion dollars is utterly ubsurd, thus concluding that the number must logically be $14.4 billion. The US's GDP is only $10 trill, for god's sake!
Numbers 31:17,18 Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man,but save for yourselves every virg
>Pioz says the risk of fire has been taken into
>account, with sealed compartments built in to
>act like fire doors. People escaping from a fire
>on one level would need to flee only 40 yards
>away, upwards or downwards, to the closest safe
>area, he said.
Ok, but don't you know you cannot use elevators when there's a fire? I don't know about you, but I'm not that fast at climbing 40 yards up.
368 lifts?
Image the space they will take!
What will be left for useful floor surface?
Ni!
.. if you turn each city into a skyscraper.
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
Sorry to be picky, but what was wrong with calling it The UK Sunday Times?
Take care,
Mark..........
--
--
If the world were an oyster, it would be mine.......
What's your point?
China [the culture] and China [the country run by the Chinese Communist Party] are two entirely separate things. China [the country run by the Chinese Communist Party] has been very agressive towards Taiwan who, despite being Chinese [the culture] is not enamoured with the idea of being run by China [the country run by the Chinese Communist Party].
--- On the other hand, you have five fingers.
The Chinese people had never been agressive towards their neighboors
Taiwan would certainly take issue with you there, as would South Korea and India.
China DID send their troops to North Korea during the Korean War, and fought several (unpublicized) border skirmishes with the USSR.
Historically you're right. The Chinese spent more time building civilization than conquering. However, this Communist government is much more agressive than you want to see...
--- On the other hand, you have five fingers.
That thing doesn't look very stable to me, but I'm not an engineer. I do wonder how big the base will be; I didn't see it in the article.
And just think how easy they will be able to control like that! One building a little too rowdy? Lock the doors and suck out all the air! Weee!
---
"Watch these suckers jump when I get Administrator."
Has anyone else read _Oath of Fealty _ by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle? In it, a huge arcology is built in a near-future Los Angeles. I don't remember the size specifications, but I think that it was 1 kilometer long, 1/2 kilometer wide, and 1/2 kilometer up.
So even though it takes up more area in the horizontal, wouldnt a similair-shaped building (rectangular) be a more effeceint use of the space, and cause less hazards, like falling over, tower of fire scenarios, etc...?
Think this will be low-income housing? I know they indicated that the tower would include business but I don't think that could sibsidize the enormous costs of construction. Do you really think you can find 100,000 wealthy people to move into a huge tower? This strikes me as a project with a huge chance of catastrophic failure and a small chance of becoming a succesful novelty.
M period. Fresh, comma
It sounds as if this is just another project like Three Gorges, considered by many a move by the Chinese government to distract an uneasy populace from the daily problems they face. I'm all for getting something like this built somewhere, but shouldn't the Chinese focus on solving fundamental infrastructure issues instead of building this monster?
The only certainty is entropy.
Read "The Caves Of Steel" written by Isaac Asimov
vinlud
Repeat after me: We are all individuals
Better, some sort of beaming pad like in 12,000BC in ChronoTrigger. We must harness the power of Lavos!!
I send you this message in order to have your advice.
Well before you start, make sure you read, in addition to the Larry Niven and Issac Asimov books listed in the other two replies, this book, which also encompasses this very similar premise. When I first saw this news story I thought "urban monad." I read Silverberg's book over twenty years ago and have been generally fascinated with the concept ever since. It's a pity that as an adult I developed such a fear of heights, or I would be clamoring to live in one of these.
One day I feel I'm ahead of the wheel / the next it's rolling over me / I can get back on / I can get back on
Sorry, Robert Silverberg beat 'em to it by about eleven years. His conception of this was called an Urban Monad and was basically exactly the building described in the article. Hundreds of stories tall, everything self-contained. I read the book in the late seventies and it was quite captivating. I no longer remember the title of the book, and when I do a Google search on Urban Monad I see that there was a whole series. I am guessing I read The World Inside but I can't remember for sure. Time to warm up the library card and see if it's still in circulation. And yes, at the end of the book as I recall someone commits suicide from the top of the building. A little too good an opportunity to pass up. . .
One day I feel I'm ahead of the wheel / the next it's rolling over me / I can get back on / I can get back on
Nah, wouldn't work. The weight of the air itself would hold it down. That's why the air we have at sea level doesn't escape to space. Sure there's a pressure gradient, but just because you put it in a tube doesn't mean it'll behave any differently than air does outdoors.
Nah, as long as you could clear the first 100 feet or so (while building speed), you can "track" away from the building. From 3700', you could easily reach terminal velocity (~130mph in a "belly fly" position), and at that speed, you can almost fly away from the building as fast as you're descending. Put on a "wingsuit" and you can go even further...
FYI, jumping from 3700', and opening at 1500' (still high for a base-jumper, a little low for a skydiver though), you'd have almost 17 seconds of freefall!
Not bad from a building!
MadCow.
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
Heck, I regularly skydive from 3000' or less (preferably 13000' though), and you can base-jump under 300' !!!
MadCow.
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
Great idea, no problems with escaping fire. People could just go out the windows and slide down to safety!
"My mother works for Microsoft now. A whole other cult."
Shoving water 3700 feet straight up will be quite an undertaking. That's going to take some incredible water pumps, plus think of the pressure on pipes, fixtures, joints. What a project!
"My mother works for Microsoft now. A whole other cult."
Oh yah... a lot safer in underground or in an ocean.... Let's see... We have an underground building this size, and then have an earthquake. The whole building collapses inward from the shifting rock/soil, killing everyone. It's so deep it'd take months to dig to the bottom, so they just stick a tombstone on top of where the building used to be and call it a day. sounds safe to me... And if it was in an ocean... Let's see.... just how thick of walls would you need for that? Imagine the mess you'd have if you got a leak. right... not the kind of places I wanna live.
One foot is 0.3048 meters.
1128m (this new tower)
452m (Petronas Twin, Kuala Lumpur)
321m (Eiffel Tower)
244m (Canary Wharf, London)
137m (London Eye)
10 billion should be $7 billion - but as a non-native speaker, I'm always confused with the million/billion trickery - so I might be off some 1,000 times ;-)
Sidebar near picture: tower predicted to oscillate nearly 2.4m at its summit, structure to rest on 914m wide concrete base.
Altavista's Metricfish said: UNLIKE the Great Wall, it would not be seen from space. But a 1128m Bionic Tower that China's leaders are considering building may come to rival the wall as a feat of human engineering and symbol of national might.
Officials in the teeming port city of Shanghai are discussing plans to tackle urban overcrowding by creating a 300-storey home for 100,000 people. Its European designers describe it as a "vertical city".
The concrete, metal and glass tower, costing about $7 billion, would be 43m higher than Mount Snowdon, the highest peak in Wales, and would contain hotels, offices, cinemas and hospitals.
Dwarfing Kuala Lumpur's twin Petronas Towers, the world's tallest buildings at 452m high, it would be set in a gigantic, wheel-shaped base incorporating shopping malls and car parks. The Spanish architects envisage 368 lifts, with the journey from bottom to top taking less than two minutes. Water and energy would be transported along 92 vertical columns.
"Of course, we'd all like to live in a house on the beach, but Shanghai's population is expected to reach 30m over the next four to five decades," said Professor Javier Pioz, the head of the team that designed the Bionic Tower. "We need a new way of conquering vertical space."
Pioz has created a root-like system of foundations that would descend 200m, surrounded by an artificial lake to absorb vibrations caused by any earth tremors. The top of the tower is predicted to oscillate by a maximum of nearly 2.4m, as much as the Empire State Building in New York but so slowly that it would not be perceptible to inhabitants.
People would be banned from opening the windows of their apartments, but could breathe fresh air on concourses thanks to openings in the outer glass and aluminium shell.
They would live on 12 levels and although some people would move in as soon as the first level was completed it would be 15 years before the building work above them finally stopped.
The designers have met Xu Kuangdi, the mayor of Shanghai, and urban planners, who have indicated a willingness to proceed and have set up a group to consider possible sites and how to meet the cost from both private and public funds.
Marco Goldschmied, the president of the Royal Institute of British Architects, said the project could herald a much-needed new way of thinking about urban sprawl in China, which is already building the equivalent of 600 cities the size of Bristol. In Shanghai alone 10 new districts are expected to be built over the next five years, each big enough to house 100,000 people. "If you can send a man to the moon you can certainly build a tower for 100,000 people," said Goldschmied. He hoped the project would form a blueprint for future developments that would help preserve the environment.
However, he added a warning: "The main pitfall is the towering inferno scenario - what happens if fire breaks out? It could be the ultimate disaster. Imagine 100,000 people suffocating. And you'd have to organise the place pretty well to stop people feeling like rats in a cage." Pioz says the risk of fire has been taken into account, with sealed compartments built in to act like fire doors. People escaping from a fire on one level would need to flee only 40 yards away, upwards or downwards, to the closest safe area, he said.
"When the Eiffel Tower was built, many people said it was too dangerous - they wanted to kill Mr Eiffel. But it's still standing."
my other sig is a 500 page novel
Dam, as an ex-arch student, I know that is going to be the most complex building in the world. Several of you have mentioned the lift problem. Do you know how air powered bank tubes work? Several designers have made elevator designs on the same concept. They use controlled air channels to lift the car almost unlimited heights. The only problem is pumping air fast enough. This thing is gona take so much power, expect a small nuke plant in it to power the thing.
;) And that was nearly 8 years ago. The Cost/sq-ft ratio builds up too high for economic sense at 100 floors on a building. The Chinese can conscript all the labor they wish because they are communist ( the Chinese are really not socialist, in a socialist government, they would be responsible for the welfare of their citizens, and guarantee jobs, and provide housing & food, the Chinese govt. does not do any of this for all of its citizens.), so the labor factor is severely reduced. I do hope the competition from the Chinese creates another tech/space race here in the US. We need competition to fuel national projects of great magnitude.
:)
Why do the Chinese want to do this?
Simple, we don't respect them. We do not see them as a super power. Their nukes (bombs) are primitive, and their government cant see spending money on weapons that they will never get to use. So, they are busy on two fronts; a manned space flight mission, and creating this engineering masterpiece. Could we do this? Yes, it isn't really a technology problem as a money problem. Donald Trump was thinking of something like this to show the world how much money and power he had, till he lost a big chunk to the ex wife...
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Hey, at least I didn't use the BLINK tag!
Ever noticed how most massive, high-profile public works projects are undertaken by corrupt regimes with inferiority complexes? Albert Speer's brainfarts, Chicago skyscrapers, the Aswan Dam, Brasilia, the Three Gorges Dam, Petronas. Costly attempts to deflect attention from the slimy (in some cases, murderous) activities that got the rulers where they are. Similar to the old investor's rule of thumb: look at the corporate headquarters. If it's grandiose, better put your money somewhere else.
Get your teeth into a small slice: the cake of liberty
Such a magnificent building will not be placed in the capital of China, Beijing, why? It's political issues.
About 5 Years ago a billionaire in Hong Kong attempted to build a biggest(not tallest) multi-purpose building in the world. It was called 'Eastern Oriental Plaza' something(direct translation from Chinese). It occupied large area in one single piece.
However, the government 'leaders' didn't like to have a biggest building which signified 'capitalism'. At least it shouldn't be bigger than 'Tin Tan', a historical palace in Beijing.
They had to break the whole structure apart into 13 different seperated buildings. Never ever anyone dare to speak of building something like that.
The Spanish architects envisage 368 lifts, with the journey from bottom to top taking less than two minutes.
Jedidiah
--
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
People would be banned from opening the windows of their apartments, but could breathe fresh air on concourses thanks to openings in the outer glass and aluminium shell.
Um, yeah, nice. Can't open my window... not a huge problem, except all the air is going to have be seriously circulated, which doesn't appeal
The there's the potential for problems, which I'm sure they have nice cunning plans on:
However, he added a warning: "The main pitfall is the towering inferno scenario - what happens if fire breaks out? It could be the ultimate disaster. Imagine 100,000 people suffocating. And you'd have to organise the place pretty well to stop people feeling like rats in a cage."
Pioz says the risk of fire has been taken into account, with sealed compartments built in to act like fire doors. People escaping from a fire on one level would need to flee only 40 yards away, upwards or downwards, to the closest safe area, he said.
40 yards sounds real nice, but that's escaping to a safe area that still 200 floors up
I'm not saying that I'm against living in a place like that
Jedidiah
--
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
They're called magnets =)
Magnetic lifts are very good for this kind of thing, with the extra benifit that they can make "layout" tracks - horizontal pathways that the elevators zip into when stopping on a floor, so that many elevators can travel in each tunnel.
what the hell are you smoking? the thread was specifically about terrorist attacks on dams. I think the example from the Korean war qualifies, as even the US military admits these were purely "political" targets, of no military value.
Think of riding in a car driving at 60 MPH, or 88 ft/sec. The drive itself can be comfortable as long as you don't do a lot of accelerating (stop and go traffic, busy highway or lots of turns)
Chris Kuivenhoven is a thief, beware
Can we grow pot on the root there?
Get your Unix fortune now!
There was a huge damn that exploded in china, the 70's i think maybe earlier.
They told no one and didn't do much to help out.
Hope this is different.
Get your Unix fortune now!
As always that was an off topic reply.
Who said anything about war or anything? I'm talking civil problems. No one blew the god damn damn up, it was a natural disaster.
Yes we all know of all the problems we've had in the past how x blew up y and q at the same time blah blah....
could someone send me a copy of OTO VIII?
Get your Unix fortune now!
The building itself has a good chance of being a great success, despite the fact that so many resources will need to be concentrated in such a small area (food, water, fuel, medical supplies... the list goes on and on). The designers will probably take all this into consideration, and will hopefully leave lots of room for error through over-estimation.
But that's not the real problem here. This building is intended to solve a problem itself: the overflowing population in Shanghai. Sure, it will alleviate the scarcity of real estate for some people for some amount of time, but what about the future? Will we just keep building stuff like this to avoid the fact that our numbers grow exponentially? Any engineer is aware that an exponential function is not something you can work with beyond a certain threshold. i.e., you can't fight it by trying to accomodate the large values it produces- you have to find a way to change the situation producing the function to one that is more workable. This is the same kind of thing that computer scientists do when finding faster ways to compute things like matrix products etc.
My point is, by building this huge building to deal with the massive population of shanghai, we are just postponing the inevitable, and are not solving anything. How much is a project worth that doesn't actually solve anything? This is like using duct-tape to fix your car engine. We need to think of ways to limit the unchecked growth of our own population.
I love kids just as much as the next guy. Everybody loves kids. But we need to think about how many kids we can have and still ensure that they will all have a place to live (preferrably not a giant 300 story cage).
China is already in that list. The Great Wall sound familiar. Guess what. It is in China.
Also, the Three Gorges Dam is a wonder. 1.2 billion people. You try to feed them. America couldn't. A powerful government is needed to do it. Not to start a political fight, but FDR was a leftist president. Leftism is needed to give a job to everyone, including when there is no job to give them.
Oh yeah, also, you may have seen some obscure photos, but I grew up in China and I never saw such things as power lines over trees. At least not in a non-contruction site. Take a trip to Shanghi, come back, and reply.
What comes first, finding a teacher or becoming a student?
I may be pro-china but I think it must be noted that the Chinese have been able to create some of the worlds greatest creations. One they are still working on (and i wish america would stop lambasting them for) is keeping a country with 1.2 billion people to feed one of the most powerful in the world. I hope they do this. The Chinese people need something to make themselves feel superior a bit. It helps 1.2 billion people keep going. American's have always had all the cool things to be proud of (In the past 200 years at least.)
That and another point is that this must be a local decision. Beijing and Shanghai have a rivalry like no other city i have ever been to before. I am on the Beijing-is-the-most-21st Century side, but i would still like to see Shanghai build this. It will be hard to pay for if it is just Shanghai though, maybe the Beijing government will chip in since this will make China as a whole look amazing, even if Shanghai has to get a good deal of the domestic credit.
What comes first, finding a teacher or becoming a student?
God forbid you try and get a Cable Modem there. 100,000 people all on YOUR little network? I can see there will be alot of "covert" operations before big clan matches to go and cut neighbors' cable lines! :p
Maybe you can get DSL, lol.
Most hospitals employ a similar technology. When a fire breaks out, the rooms are immediately shut to trap the fire in the room of origin. If it is a rapid fire (aka explosion/fire being fed by NO2 or O2, etc.) you may not be able to get to the patient in the room, but the fire won't spread.
Also, heat has this tendancy to do wierd stuff, like expand metal beams which then contract. That may not sound like much, but think of it this way. You get a good fire going in the place. It heats the steel beam that supports the floor above it. That beam then expands, pushing the walls that it is attached (or support structure) outward. Then the automatic sprinkler system kicks in and cools the fire. Suddenly the heat source is removed, the beam contracts, and the floor collapses.
I work on the 28th floor of a building, and I think every day of carrying a personal rappelling kit (more as a joke than pure paranoia). But I am quite happy there, so let's find other ways to buld, ummkay? Thanks.
Random Musings
It's over a kilometer!
You wouldn't ever have to leave the complex. You'd live on the 47th floor and go to work on the 120th. That's not that bad a ride.
Dancin Santa
10 billion British Pounds? Just start giving out free vasectomies, hysterectomies and birth control pills. It's cheaper, doesn't use up as many resources and solves the problem way better.
"Engineering Greatness of the European-designed Symbol of National Pride" oh you mean like the statue of liberty?
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -- Carl Sagan
what is a 'real' american. you? because your ancestors have been here as long as mine? go fuck off and die you racist shit.
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -- Carl Sagan
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -- Carl Sagan
But since i couldn't resist, go kill yourself biznatch.
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -- Carl Sagan
Hopefully that will stop the infantile discussion "mine is bigger than yours" between the pro-Petronas towers (mainly Malaysian, the Petronas Towers are a symbol of almost national identity over there) and their detractors.
Oh wait, what about "mine is the second biggest".
Never mind.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
The problem is the same: supply and demand, it does not matter if it is office or appartment buildings.
During an economic downturn people will not have money to buy any appartments, even worst for fancy ones in stupidily tall towers that I am sure will be more expensive than anything around in town.
So nobody buys, empty space in the tower, 50% or less ocuppation, loans to building company default, Chinese goverment bails out company with tax money.
It will be all the same all over again.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Tell your cardiologist or vascular system specialist (whatever that is called in English). It is not gratuitous that deep-sea divers need to adjust to changes of pressure.
Your blood presure could have problems and as anybody knows, blood presure irregularities has very few symptoms, specially if it is high blood presure.
I know of people that had to stop commuting between towns with differences in height similar to the ones mentioned in gorunds that is not good for their health.
A person living in the top would be basicaly trapped in its golden cage...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I was trying to explain that sudden (1 hour is sudden for our bodies) changes of pressure, specialy if they happen in a fairly regular basis, are not good for your health. It was not me, but the doctor of a friend that was commuting by car every morning between two places with very different heights.
About your last comment, is nice that you find comments of idiots so interesting that you bother to reply to them.
Thanks.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
> alumiNIUM rot
That's what those foolish Europeans get for not using aluminum.
I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth.
> That's more than twice the main span of the
> Golden Bridge Gate (1.28 km)
The Golden Gate Bridge is a twinkie bridge that only impresses Californians.
The Macinac bridge between the upper and lower penninsulas of Michigan is well over a mile between the two towers, and, until this Sicily-to-Italy bridge gets built, has the longest stretch of road between two towers as far as I know.
I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth.
That's absolutely correct.
I was watching the BBC when in Europe in 1990 or 91 when the official BBC news threw in the towel on the billion debate. Already John Major used billion in the US sense all the time during Prime Minister's Questions.
I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth.
> That means they only gross about $77 a month.
Remember that's at the official government exchange rate. Communist and other heavily socialized governments use that to get loads of real, hard Western currency. The exchange rates are massive ripoffs, and the government keeps the vast difference since they spend money in the west to buy generators, missles, missle plans, presidents, whatever. It's all costly.
I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth.
> Of course, he did suggest things like
> nuclear-powered elevators, but it was 1957...
...and silly environmentalists weren't invented yet.
> Whoever lived at the top would be popular -
> "Join the mile-high club in the comfort of my
> bedroom".
Hehe, excellent opening line.
I wonder if it works in a Denver bar?
I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth.
Like, Perl, Python, C++, Java, or your own favourite?
A World in a Grain of Sand / Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Infinity in the Palm of your Hand / And Eternity in an Hour.
Right, only the air pressure differences might blow your ears if you don't swallow often enough. (Ermh, no homophobic comments, please!) I'm not quite sure about the technical aspects of that, could someone help us out? Would they have to build the elevators or the whole building as a kind of pressure chamber to avoid those effects?
A World in a Grain of Sand / Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Infinity in the Palm of your Hand / And Eternity in an Hour.
What about elevators with out cables.
Anyone thought about just using airpreasure.
Think of the elevator shaft as a sealed tube and the elevator as ping pong ball. At the bottom of the shaft you have a device that can fill and empty the elevator shaft of air keeping the ball(elevator) going up and down. I am sure this could be built to fill all safety measures.
The elevator and shaft could be fitted with some kind of magnetic devices on each floor to help stopping the elevator.
Things might be sharper during a partial eclipse.
I'd re-title that article to How I Got Everyone to Live in a Prison Without Really Trying
Except that a British "billion" is not the same as an American "billion". Whereas an American or French billion is "a thousand million" or 1,000,000,000, a British "billion" is a million millions, or 1,000,000,000,000.
So 10 billion pounds is really $14.4 trillion in American numeration....
I dunno... What do you wanna do?
Save us from those dastardly Chinese! How dare they look after their own interests ahead of ours!
m l
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Claric
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There's no problem that cannot be solved with a suitable amount of high explosives
I would tend to think that an arcology would make a better target for a biological attack, whether it be with an airborne agent or something introduced via the water supply. I would tend to view the hvac systems on such a beast needing to be designed with security, cleanliness, and redundancy in mind..."sick building syndrome" could be disasterous here.
People would be banned from opening the windows of their apartments, but could breathe fresh air on concourses thanks to openings in the outer glass and aluminium shell. BANNED from opening the windows? On the TOP FLOOR???!!! Yeah right I can imagine..... "Now all you folk have got to PROMISE not to open the windows on the top...... hey YOU! Where are you going with that old TV Set?"
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While the worst are full of passionate intensity
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If I were looking for a way to discredit the butchers of Beijing, I don't think I could come up with a better one than to make them look corrupt and self-serving at the expense of the people.
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Using steel at a density of 7.9 g/cc and a working strength of 15,000 PSI (call it 100 megapascals), you'd have a weight of about 77000 N per cubic meter; 1e8 N/m^2 / 7.7e4 N/m^3 = 1298 meters, or about 4250 feet (even without tapering to reduce stress). You can get ten times that with Kevlar, easily.
The elevators would be the smallest of the problems. You couldn't build a structure that tall out of anything other than steel; weaker materials would fail, and stronger materials would be too expensive.
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Looks like the Shanghai tower will be a hugely expensive publicity stunt. Just what a developing nation crying for investment capital needs... </sarcasm>
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... have a problem, because having your tissue nitrogen levels low enough to be safe at sea level doesn't mean you might not have a problem at 4000 feet. You're supposed to allow extra time to purge nitrogen between diving and going on a commercial airliner if you were close to the limits, too.
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(Then you could zip off downwind and land someplace, avoid the cops and get your ass on a ship outta there where you could peddle the helmet-recorder videotapes.)
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Water treatment requires a lot of heavy stuff, and that's without considering the water itself. It probably makes more sense to do that down on (or under) the ground. Blowing stuff through nozzles and turbines on the way will give the bacteria a good head start on decomposing it.
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Of course, they may need to build a dozen or so of these things, to handle the population being displaced by the Three Gorges Dam.
This reminds one of Arthur C Clarke's 3001 - A Space Odyssey .
He talks about large needle-like towers, extending into space.. Commander Frank Poole just takes a inertia-less space drive to wander through space..
Well we're still a 1000 years back .. but i guess we're in schedule for Arthur C's vision..
Well,there has been a lot of posts about disadvantages of tall buildings, but none actually about Arcology, and what it signifies. Here's a lil primer..
Arcology as a word was derived from Paolo Soleri's book "Arcology: The City in the Image of Man". It literally means Architecture + Ecology. The goals of the theory are pretty noble,as can be found here.
Everyone has pointed about that they need the Great Open spaces, how unstable these buildings will be. But structures like this are going to be prevalent quite soon, atleast in the 3rd world countries, barring one of the following events.
Discovery of a viable alternative to earth for human occupation.
An Effective Population control programme on the part of all countries. (esp China, India and the like)
Another World War
While I appriciate the space issues in China and the associated impending space issues for the planet, how well can this be recieved by people?
Sure, the idea of living in an arco is cool, but is it possible psychologially? I'm not sure I'd enjoy living in an enclosed space like the one described in the article. For all intents and purposes, it would be akin to living in a mineshaft.
Perhaps this would be a great way to utlize the planet in the future. I know I'd love being able to house the Earth's population in such a small area. Think of the positive impacts on issue like the environment and food production. More natural habitats along with more land for farms. Great ideas, but I don't know if it'll ever fly.
UNLIKE the Great Wall, it would not be seen from space.
This is a common myth, albeit a misconception. The Great Wall of China can, in fact, not be seen from space. Read that in Maxim. ^_^
The One,
The Only,
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the liberator who destroyed my property has realigned my perception
www.quantumheresy.com
I can see these things in ten years, when the bubble has REALLY burst, and they've only gotten 15 or 20 stories completed and there's an entire shanty town housed inside of it. It will be home to vagaobnds, bohemians, and terrorists, a la the remnants of the Bay Bridge for those of you who have read William Gibson's "Virtual Light". All I know is it's gonna need its own sewer system, and when that thing breaks down, everybody's in trouble.
Things you like to hear from geeks: Thank you You're welcome
Higher densities allow better public transport (its hard to make a bus service break even in the suburbs) which in turn cuts down on pollution from cars. Higher densities use less land, allowing for more parks and farms. It takes less resources to build a hi-rise to house X people, than to build houses to house X people. building up, instead of out is the way to go.
The absolutely most wasteful way to house people is single-family dwellings. Hi-rises preserve the beavers and rats natural habitat.
Anarchists never rule
Describes life in an Archology, and presumes such a building would tend to become a city state. You wouldn't ever have to leave the building, work, play, etc... in it, nice safe controlled enviroment with cameras everywhere.
The building in the story has a diving board at the top for the benefit of suicides (land marks like this are always popular with suicides). Of course, under the board is were the automatic nets are.
Anarchists never rule
The Chinese are not known for their strict building standards unlike the US and Japan. Well, if it ever did collapse atleast being a communist country they know how to handle the situation. "Building? What building. There was never a building there."
China says Mongolia is part of China.
China entering the Nuclear race with a mighty slap to our intelligence...
My wife passed out while we were driving up Mauna Kea. Fortunately I was driving. If the interprative center at 9000 feet had been open, we might have properly acclimatized, although we did also stop for a few minutes at the first observatory level to take pictures of ourselves in the snow.
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Yes, the nick is flamebait
Wasn't the school that exploded actually a weapons factory?
Reboot macht Frei.
I can see how this will help house population, but this will become the tallest building in the world, and it'll no doubt be seen from space. Do we really want aliens to make their first landing at the highest artificial construct, and find a communist dictatorship that has a spy plane and a bunch of Taoism?
According to my game of SimCity, this shoulda been out years ago. :P
When tall buildings already have multiple elevators. I remember going to the top of Empire State Building I have to use 3 different elevators.
The reason is if you want to put enough elevators going top to bottom. The entire bottom floor would be elevators. So tall building have different sets of elevators.
Wow, China could house it's entire population in only ~12,000 buildings of this size.
I've never been to Shanghai, but I think getting 100,000 people (plus those that merely work there) to and from the building would be a challenge even on an open prairie. The fact that it is described as a "teeming port city" doesn't help. And I don't think the idea of a vertical city is going to work. I'd still be tempted to get out every day. Let's not forget the movement of goods, supplies, and freight throughout the building. I'd imagine a dedicated freight rail line to the building would be in order.
On another issue... I wonder how clean the "fresh air" on the balconies is at 3700 feet? Somehow I think you're better off inside.
Gawain
If you did a base jump off the top, how much freefall time would you get? Mind you, reports only say the chinese are "seriously considering" the project, slightly different kettle of fish to actually starting construction, and they don't have the best reputation for using top-quality building materials.
This is a fake news about one month ago. Shanghai local government has already denied this. They see no economic and social advantages on this kind of "proposal". Slashdot is still crazy on this today? You are so pity. These several days there are so many topics related to China (Thanks to the mid air collision). I always treat Shashdot a nice tech topic forum. There are a lot of insight minds on tech issues. As far as political ones, especially related to China, you are just emotional and naive.
Q
It seems rather odd that According to <a href="http://www.enonline.sh.cn/news/local/local02 2801-4.htm">Enonline </a> not only did the London Times publish this story before anyone else, but the urban planners and city officials in Shanghai weren't privy to the advancing status of this project. Could it simply be a government plot to deny there own people the foreknowledge of a great civic accomplishment? Perhaps someone over in GB screwed up. Anyone see Tailor of Panama?
The book has been written.
It's called "Oath of Fealty" by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle...
This sig left unintentionally blank.
Well some projects do get built. And even if they don't the idea work that goes into them does get used for something at some point. Someday someone will build a building like this. It might not be in china, it might be anywhere. But having folks think about this is a good thing.
The question is not "Can we build this" for which we would have to respond yes, it would be hard but so what. Its more a question is it worth building this? And ofcourse that one will get readdressed every so often.
And its always good to dream!
Erlang Developer and podcaster
don't pump water.
pump steam.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
A joke?
Look at the shape of that thing!
It's actually going to be a giant vibrator for Galactus' girlfriend. (Galactus, Devourer of Worlds, Marvel comix? Remember?) Hey, it's built to wiggle as much as 8'. (does Galactus' gf have an 8' "button"?)
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Maybe modify your calculations;
put 100,000 people into a building for 10 years, you're going to have a lot more than 100,000 people at the END of that 10 years.
Unless you had a system to distribute condoms...
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
might not be so far from the truth. . .
put a big tube going all the way to the top, open at the ends, atmospheric pressure at the top is less than that at the ground, so you could build a constant suction device!
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
crime is not caused by population density, it's caused by economic disparity.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
damn.
.
can't fool you. .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
you can watch the shadow of your finger on the ground move. All it takes is patience.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Dammit, that wacky Jim just keeps needed to compensate. Of course, with a moron like Kathy as his minion, I suppose he deserves it...
If you think that's impressive, check out Canada's Confederation Bridge. It's almost 13 kilometers long, and links the island province of Prince Edward Island to the mainland province of New Brunswick, on Canada's east coast. It was just completeled a few years ago, and threw quite a few ferryboat operators out of work.
Prior to the Big Asian Crash came the
Big Asian Bubble (natch) which was the
prompt for the Petronas.
If this is a harbinger of an even bigger
bubble, I'm stocking up on those second-hand
Y2K goodies.
They exist. Usually with gear mechanisms
(remember those Lego blocks?) that run
along the shaft and are used by gears on
the cab (with onboard motor).
What I wonder is: what if a typhoon
(or typhoon-earthquake combo) gets this
sucker?
Wow the great wall is in China? I'm absolutely amazed at your mental accuity. There is alot of controversy over the dam, it is going to be supplying central China with lots of power but is also costing the state the equivilent of 10 billion dollars. Not only the immense cost of the dam but the fact the relocation and the quelling of labor strikes has been dealt with in a particulaly nasty fashion. A million or so people are going to have to be relocated, most of these people are farmers who get to go from well irrigated arable farmland to much less desireable land elsewhere. The Shanghai tower project is more of a pissing contest than the Three Gorges dam though. The TGD at least provides some way to make up for the 10 billion being poured into it. A 3.7km vertical city in Shanghai is more of a publicity stunt with little resell value. How do you justify spending uber billions on a 300 story tower skyscraper whose functions could be more easily sussumed by cheaper and more easily built structures.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
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Vidi, Vici, Veni
The cars can be centrally controlled and are able to move both vertically & horizontally
Are they made of glass? Is there a button labeled "Up & Out"?
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--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
"Well something like this is going to be necessary as our population continues to explode. Life once again imitates Simcity. When are we going to put Maxis in charge of city planning here in the US?"
This is pretty silly. We'll run out of food resources long before we had so much population as to need these kinds of buildings for space.
Not that they buildings won't be built, and not that they wouldn't be useful, but their use wouldn't be because people are running out of space...
Warning: I lost my sense of humor after taking a linguistics course with George Lakoff, so I may just be missing the Maxis humor...
Kevin Fox
--
Kevin Fox
Imagine how long it would take to get to the top of this thing? IIRC, once elevators go over 100 or so stories, the cables will snap under their own weight. You'd probably have to take at least 3 different elevators just to get to the top of this monster.
IIRC, most tall buildings already use stacked elevators - 2 or three cars on top of each other, to carry more passengers (mostly at beginning and end of day rushes)...
Worldcom - Generation Duh!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
That was because the bomb was not properly placed. Had it been fixed to a sustaining pillar, or, better, put into a hole drilled in a pillar, the effects would have been much more drastic, as whitnessed the year after at OKC.
Guess that's why a Republican was elected, rather than a Democrat... ;-)
Windows 2000, surely. It's the code equivalent of the Bionic Building: gargantuan, mind-boggling in its complexity, and utterly terrifying to behold.
However, if a skyscraper crashes...
Imagine how long it would take to get to the top of this thing?
His book Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything has a really good chapter on skyscrapers, elevators, and proposed "alternative designs" for elevators.
Yes, it would take you forever to go to the top of this thing. So? It would take you forever to go that far horizontally on foot, too. (Going in a vehicle doesn't count, because you can't (say) shop on the way, plus you have to take time to park at your destination.)
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
I also worried about the prospect of pumping clean water UP 3700 ft. How much power is this going to take? Would atmospheric condensers be a viable solution to at least some of this problem?
There is no way for them to pump the water directly up that far. To get any sort of water pressure at the top would require a solid column of water in pipes 3700 feet tall. Coupled with the amount of water necessary, the pipes would have to be many many feet in diameter, the pumps would be pushing water weighing many many TONS, and pipes able to support it. Impossible? Maybe not. Efficient? Not even CLOSE.
Luckily, you don't really have to worry much about sewage. If your sanitation plant is down
below, just dig a hole and say "Look out below!" Who's to say that what works for outhouses can't work for a huge skyscaper?
Yes you do. Imagine if you just had a big pipe heading down. Someone flushes at the top, then their waste goes into FREEFALL for thousands of feet. How long do you think the pipes at the bottom could support those sorts of stresses? And how big in diameter would the pipes have to be to handle that much waste?
I think the only answer is to have waste processing plants inside the tower in multiple places. They could probably reduce the water issue at the same time.
Standard engineering practices for smaller buildings, such as 5-10 floor apartment buildings, do NOT scale up to something this size. Alternative solutions are required.
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"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
If there are duplex connections between the tanks, a fire emergency on the lower levels would benefit of the water stored in all above levels. Taifun-sprinkler system on the way in :-)
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
[Zappa]
It's very obvious that you havn't really studied the cultural history of the Chinese.
The Chinese people had never been agressive towards their neighboors. Yes, they are proud people, they have every right to be - their civilization has a long and rich cultural history. But the Great War of China wasn't exactly built for invading other countries, is it?
The Chinese had never been domineering. They've never sent their troops to intervene in other country's political affairs - unlike the Americans who routinely send their carrier fleets everywhere. In fact, if you look at how often the US had been invaded (never), and when the last time the Chinese had been invaded (Japanese invasion during WW II, Allied invasion (including the US during the end of the Ching dynasty), all the "oh, fear China, they're gonna nuke us all" is just plain bullshit.
And for god's sake - they're building a f*ckin' building - what's so scary aout that?
It's a good place to get mass for earth orbital facilities. What's the point of being human?
If there was some sort of econimical point, rather then braging rights sure we would go to the moon again.
There is, and "we" aren't therefore "we" can't. QED
Lunar oxygen for use in orbital transfer of geostationary satellites will be the first material to be sold for large amounts of cash and it will not be the United States of America ("we") or any of its companies that does it because that pioneering culture of the USA has now been successfully destroyed by The Culture of Critique.
Seastead this.
If who can send a man to the moon? Certainly the United States of American can't and hasn't been able to for a generation. Oh, but China doesn't have a post-Apollo NASA still living off "The Glory Years" so maybe the Chinese might be able to actually pull it off.
Nevermind...
Seastead this.
I can just imagine the mess if a bad guy wanted to attack this monstrosity. Scary!
The only good weather is bad weather.
Today I read a bit by a developer on the Star Wars MMORPG. He mentioned that most of the people of the planet Coruscant never left their home building.
How many of the people born in this building would never need to leave? This building will be done in around 20 years, so by then work on buildings for several times as many people will be in the works. Will Earth soon be home to giant city sized buildings, all just connections of sub-buildings? Couldn't we just hollow out mountains or something?
Regardless of how it works out, this whole thing scares me. I think I just found the premise for my first sci-fi novel.
The Chinese people had never been agressive towards their neighboors.
(*Cough*)
The Chinese had never been domineering. They've never sent their troops to intervene in other country's political affairs
In the second part of the XXth century alone, China has invaded (not "intervened in the affairs of"; "invaded") three different countries: Korea, Viet Nam, and Tibet.
*Every* country in the region has suffered a Chinese invasion at some point in its history. Some have managed to fight back, some haven't.
China behaves exactly like any other big, overwhelmingly powerful empire in history. The only difference with the US are time (4000 years for China, two centuries for the US) and the fact that China doesn't have the Atlantic and Pacific oceans to protect it against invasions. Yes, it has been invaded by Mongols, Turks, Japanese, and any other big empire of the region. Yet being a victim at some point doesn't prevent you from becoming an aggressor later on. Ever wondered why a region of China was called "Interior Mongolia" ?
Thomas Miconi
The point of terrorism isn't how many people you kill, but how big of a media splash you make. Taking that tower down would be on EVERY channel and newspaper for months, and people would want to know why it was done (which gets the terrorist's messsage out).
I imagine some anti-tech luddite group would have a good reason to destroy something that is so artificial, which would make people scared to live in one in the future and discourage more from being built.
he is talking about this:
http://www.todd.demon.co.uk/encyc/million.htm
british billion != american billion
so that tower is REALLY expensive!
Although constructing such a huge building scores high on the coolness factor and even generates a bunch of tourism and national pride such a project is a terrible idea.
There are several problems.
Today's tallest buildings such as the towers in Kuala Lampur are actually less useful and efficient than somewhat smaller sky-scrappers because of the amount of building space occupied by elevators. Once a building reachs a certain number of stories/height the amount of space inside the building that needs to be devoted to elevators becomes so large as to make the building economically impractical.
As another poster noted the price tag of about 15B USD is extremely high
There is also the issue of earthquakes and wind. Constructing the largest sky-scrappers today takes most to all of architects and civil engineers Knowhow to prevent them from falling over in a storm of earthquake. The proposed Arcology goes way beyond anything we seem to have the Knowhow to do, which is quite dangerous. We also have 0 experience in building things of this size.
Speaking of dangerous, China has quite a reputation for buildings that collapse due to poor construction. This is because the Chinese goverment is not regulating construction effectively. Here are a couple stories on the recent collapse of a shopping mall in China in which dozens of people died. Time of India    Chinadaily Note... this is not the recent case of a school explosion in China which killed 41.
If China needs to build large buildings to stop urban sprawl, which may well be the case, multiple 60 or 70 story buildings would be a much better solution.
With regards to China, I find it rather amusing that even after all these years, they still cling to the old faux-Marxist terminology. The hotdog fighter pilot was given the title of "Revolutionary Martyr!" Communists don't seem to understand that once you attain power, you are no longer revolutionary, you are the status quo! You're the establishment now! The left and the right switch sides, and the game begins anew. The most "revolutionary" thing the old men who run the PRC have done lately is evacuate their bowels.
True, the West doesn't respect China, and that isn't going to change any time soon. The PRC won't last another fifty years, though, and maybe the new establishment will do better.
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I like to watch.
Wouldn't that floating city thingy, complete with it's own airstrip, qualify as a arcology, albeit a mobile one?
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
I'd love to base jump it
You could quite possibly attain terminal velocity (120 mph) before having to open your canopy. IIRC, it takes a freefall of ~1500 feet to hit terminal velocity, and since the minimum opening altitude for experienced jumpers is 2000 feet, you would just be hitting terminal as you open.
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The AOL-Time Warner-Microsoft-Intel-CBS-ABC-NBC-Fox corporation:
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
Structure to rest on 3,000ft wide concrete base with lake to absorb earthquake shockwaves
Now, if my maths is right then the area that would have to be set aside for this thing is
(1500^2)*pi = approx 700000 sqr ft
This is assuming that not much else could really be built on this area.
That is 70 sqr ft per person.
Now, would you really get more people in that area by building a great big building, or by having 700000 sqr ft of mid rise (3-4 floor) housing, and which would be cheaper? Anyone know how much floor space there would be per person in this tower (there are no dimensions except the height on the times article)?
Paul Leader
..So what? Tall buildings are *so* twentieth century. Whatever happened to those great big pyramid buildings ala Bladerunner? I mean come on people, its the year Two-Thousand-and-One! Lets get with the times!
air and light and time and space
Funny, a few weeks ago I was in Mt. Shasta county in N. Cali, and I was studying a giant redwood. Large carpenter ants lived in the bark, and tended to their vertical obligations. I thought about creating vertical structures that contained complete city blocks: laundry, shopping, entertainment, services, etc: giant hotels, basically. It reminded me of some of the eagle-eye shots and flybys of the Jedi planet during Phantom Menace, how then entire planet was concrete with giant skyscrapers. (sorry, I'm not a star-wars fan...)
Sure there are loads of issues to work out (security, safety, etc.), but the idea of centralizing everything tremendously reduces dependence on automobiles: everything from commuting (shopping, work) to distribution and delivery.
Can't wait to see it.
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Air pressure...
I don't know that air pressure would be a problem. I live in a well-populated area (Salt Lake City) in which around a million and a half people live at about 4300 feet.
I routinely fly to the west coast at sea level, with no ill effects coming or going.
In fact, I can drive to almost 7000 feet within about half an hour, and that doesn't bother me either. So I doubt a 3700 feet building would be much of a health risk -- at least not on purely elevation-related grounds.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
That's a dumb estimate. The building won't even be half full. So it's at least $280k. And of course the communist government will have to use it as some sort of projects so half the people that live there won't even pay rent. But hey.. other world leaders will tremble in fear at the Amazing Chinese Engineering Greatness of the European-designed Symbol of National Pride. Or something.
---
"Watch these suckers jump when I get Administrator."
Knowing the Chinese, they won't need the help.
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"Watch these suckers jump when I get Administrator."
Imagine the shadow this thing creates! So long, you could probably see it move at its tip.
leave it to those crazy Chinese to design a building that look like a grain of rice.
I like smartasses!
Thank you for reading this comment.
Creating hydroelectric dams is of benefit if your goal is to create more power. It may not be ultimately beneficial because you may end up doing more harm than good.
Thank you for reading this comment.
First of all, there is no such thing as a communist state - the term is an oxymoron. According to Marx, the state exists only as a tool of class oppression, and hence a socialist revolution is a revolution where the working classes take the power from the capitalist classes and use the state power to oppress the capitalists, and gradually nationalise the means of productions.
The end result is supposed to be a system where the state withers away (Lenins "State and Revolution" goes into detail on this process), as the capitalist class at a certain point cease to exist as the only way the capitalists will be able to sustain themselves is to become part of the working classes.
Only from the point where the class struggle end, and indeed the entire system of economic classes seize to exist, and with it the state itself as a political power, can the government be said to be communist as defined by Marx and Lenin.
Not even the current Chinese leadership or the old Soviet leadership claimed that their countries are/were communist, but that they are socialist.
Even that is a dubious claim at best, unless you start redefining the terms.
Further, I disagree with you that the "left and right" switch sides. Normally, yes, you have a period of counterrevolutionary activity after any revolution, where the class losing the revolution attempts to reassert its power. However, after a while, the "normal" pattern reemerges and the political left is again the center of revolutionary activity.
Once you start factoring in all the businesses, it starts to make a lot more sense. Also, you need to take into account any economical advantages gained by using less ground space. China for instance does not have much arable land. And as mentioned in the article, the growth estimates for Shanghai is horrendous, and the cost of building infrastructure and allocating land to handling the influx of new inhabitants may very well be a lot higher than building a few towers of this size.
Since I doubt we'll see these structures for about another 25-40 years, I think that we may just be in sync with SimCity 2000. I remember how much excitement I felt as I approached the year when Arcologies were first available. :-) They had better be sure they build lots of police stations around these massive structures. With such dense population, crime is sure to increase and public opinion will go down, hence reducing the score.
Why bother.
Okay I just hope this thing gets built with a little better quality controls than Shanhai normally uses for public structures. I've seen pictures brought back of lopsided buildings and power lines run over trees rather than power poles. China is going to desparate measures to get their name of the list of countries with World Wonders while throwing caution to the wind. The three gorges dam is a good example of this. THey are destroying archeological sites as well as displacing thousands of people in order to make a resivoir of questionable use to the public.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Well something like this is going to be necessary as our population continues to explode. Life once again imitates Simcity. When are we going to put Maxis in charge of city planning here in the US?
I wonder if myoelectric fibers(a technology pulled straight from my ass that sounds plausible) that run the entire height of the building could generate significant energy as the thing wobbles 8 feet back and forth at its peak. I know it's not a huge wobble, but it's quite a massive distance (half a mile!), and obviously alot of energy is going to be absorbed by the thing as it moves.
Yay! One down! Now to build tons more so they'll all launch into space.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
For purposes of my having a grasp on the cost, I converted the article's estimate of 10 billion British pounds to U.S. dollars - about $14.4 billion. Now, I wondered, how long would it take for the Chinese government (assuming they built it) to gain their investment back?
If I did my math correctly, in order to gain back the $14.4 billion out of 100,000 people through rent and other profitable businesses within the tower, they would need to reap about $120 in profits per month from each person for 10 years. I think such a goal is definatley possible, especially if the 10 year goal is extended to 20. Remember, that number is the amount of profit after all other expenses, maintainence, and bureaucratic costs have been paid.
This sort of project would truly show the world that China's 1.2 billion people and vast landscape truly have an incredible amount of power. From a technological standpoint, I'd love to see this thing built.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
The US bombed dams in N. Korea during the Korean war, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians through drowning and starvation (crops destroyed, no irrigation). You don't hear about that too often. The Japanese did it in WWII as well. -brad
Why are they in the Sunday papers (or Saturday if you're in a part of the world where that's the bulky-paper day?) Because they're not really news. Rather they're mildly entertaining filler. Nobody seriously expects these projects to go anywhere, including their authors.
Rather they're explorations, a way of getting folks talking & thinking, a way of giving a bunch of students a project and a way to get a few news stories published.
Actual blueprints? Nothing of the sort. There's no real finances, no real backers, just some folks willing to make positive noises and to push their own pet projects.
A Bering-Strait Bridge (or tunnel), the tallest building, a mega-city in the wilderness, personal flying cars, etc. We read about these every month but how often do they pan out?
Oh sure there's a sorta-prototype of the flying car (though the kewl fiberglass chassis they always wheel out has never flown) & yes the Chunnel did get built. Indeed there have been some extraordinary bridges built & a number of very impressive civil engineering projects in recent years. Heck, the Petronas Towers were generally assumed to be a joke when announced (Kuala where?) but what percentage of these do pan out? 1, 2 percent, tops?
Sorry, but just looking at the sketch in the article one can see it's more of a theory then a practicality. 12 flat floors held up by columns with standard office blocks & parkland on each floor? Why not combine the columns & the buildins for efficiency/stabilty? Plus what's with all of the wasted space? Nobody builds a couple hundred stories in the air only to use a dozen floors & then allocate 50% of that floorspace for greenspace.
Mega-construction is a fascinating topic & there are lots of neat things going on but this, well it's hardly a serious effort. Lets spend some time on something a bit more likely to happen at least, a better candidate for the first arcology.
Anyone have any good links on more likely mega-projects coming up?
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
If terrorists want to kill thousands of people and wreak havoc, it's not all that hard. My guess is the only thing that stops it is that, as well as the efforts of the intelligence services, is those with the brains to plan such a thing realize that it's not not a particularly productive tactic.
Go you big red fire engine!
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
These days all tall buildings advise their occupants to go a few stories up or down & hope the 'fireproof' construction holds. Since the contents of these buildings are fairly well regulated there's not a lot of danger though it is a lot of eggs to put in one basket.
As to elevators Otis & other companies have been grappling with these issues for years. The first solution was to build high-speed elevators & express elevators. The came double-deck elevators as so to get double duty out of a single car in a single shaft. Also Sky-Lobbies were intoduced where folks going to upper floors change elevators part-way up.
The current hot technology is self-propelled vehicles using onboard electric moters & the equivalent of cog rails. The cars can be centrally controlled and are able to move both vertically & horizontally (yes, as in Star Trek's "Turbolifts".)
The reason horizontal motion is important is it allows cars to pass each other in the shafts, one simply goes onto a 'siding' or otherwise moves aside. This allows multiple vehicles to share a limited number of shafts saving building space & keeping costs down.
However my concern is more about the surrounding infrastructure. The resource-requirements of an ediface of this scale will be astounding. The sheer volume of water & sewage, food & other consumables, trash, electricity, even the transportation to get these basic materials, consumer goods, not to mention people in & out of this will be mind-boggling.
Essentially you're taking a good-sized city & placing it vertically in a few square blocks. This means that all of the support services that generally move in & around a city of that size will need to compress into those same few square blocks. Imagine the commuters, delivery vans, trucks, sanitation, pipelines, powerlines, telecomm, etc. that make up your part of the world compressed into something this (comparatively) small.
Even with extensive automation, advanced delivery systems, recycling, waste reduction & other 'impact-lowering' techniques it's going to be terribly hard to support something of this scale.
Building the tower may turn out the easy part, keeping it going may be the ongoing challenge.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Yet another story on Slashdot that shows that Slashdot is turning into all-stoner news.
(Gurgles)So, dude, do you ever think about like, how wasteful cities are? Like, all those cities spread out, like, messing up the nature and stuff.
yeah, thats a total bummer dude. like, rats, and beavers and stuff need homes to
(Gurgles)Anyway, like, what if we built like a building that was , like, a mile tall? And then we could, like, fill it up with Chinese! and they would be able to chill there and everything! They would have like, movie theaters and everything.
(Gurgles)What would be even cooler, is, if we like genetically engineered Chinese people to be, like 3 feet tall, so we could, fit, like, 7 as many people in!
Dude, and we could like, grow, them hydroponically and stuff!
(Gurgles)Yeah, and we could run the whole thing off a nine-volt battery!
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.