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In Case of Armageddon, Break Out the GIS
ADiva writes "There's a detailed, three-dimensional, interactive map of New York City which captures the five boroughs down to the square foot, incorporating everything from building floor plans to subway and sewer tubes. Could the city be rebuilt if destroyed? Should it?" As a New York resident, let me say that if something Bad happened to the city, I hope it is built anew rather than trying to recreate the 1910-era buildings that make up half the city's housing. An "Old New York" in the Metaverse might be fun to visit, though.
chances are, we will have bigger problems than building acurate reproductions of the original. There would definitely be wholesale destruction to clean up. And it isn't like the people there couldn't be moved to somewhere else.
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Crudely Drawn Games
Every day, everywhere else, and doing it better almost every time.
--Blair
If you notice in Armageddon, the World Trade Center is hit by a meteoroid fragment, yet remains standing, albiet with a huge chunk of it taken out... Unfortunately, reality isn't so kind...
Why would I as an engineer, part of a company that makes money by imploding buildings and building newer ones, make buildings that last for hundreds of years?
I'd go out of business. Instead, companies opt for cheaper materials in which during scientific studies they know it's rate of decay will be enough to ensure proper bankroll.
Then, after that predetermined amount of years, show up again ready to implode and build anew and get another contract!
That's why we live in a disposible society. Common sense, I know...
Because somewhere along the line everything started going to the lowest bidder instead of the better builder. Also, the modern train of thought is something akin to: "As long as I make my buck, I don't care who I screw as long as I don't get sued." I'm sure everybody here can come up with several companies that have adopted this philosophy are. And the consumers' mindset is something like, "I don't have a million dollars, but I sure would love to make my neighbors think I do; so, I'll buy this really cheap piece of crap that looks a lot nicer than what they have!" The sad part of this is that small companies that build quality products tend to get bought out by the larger companies wanting only the quality name or just simply go bankrupt because nobody buys their parts.
And yet, it would be a pointless endeavour to recreate the entire city from plan. Though some of those buildings are exceptionally beautiful, the vast majority are horribly designed. A city should adapt to suit its citizens, never otherwise. Architecture should be organic and evolutionary, and the failures of past should not be ressurected simply out of nostalgia.
Pax Digitalia
As a resident I have to speak up...
First of all, New York doesn't have nearly the sprawl a lot of cities do, mainly because the boroughs are built primarily on a series of islands that limit the soulless overbuilding you find most places. Sprawl isn't densely packed buildings; it's constant development outwards of strip malls, ugly housing, and too many roads.
Granted, Manhattan has little greenspace other than Central Park, but there is some; there are several parks, and the northern edge of Manhattan Island (the Inwood section) is actually very pleasant, with impressive views of the palisades and a lot of parkland.
You're also ignoring the outer boroughs, which make up most of the population. Brooklyn and Queens have plenty of backyards and parks. The next time you're in New York and want to see what I mean, take the elevated J train towards Jamaica, and look north. Queens is almost a forest, with a VAST canopy of trees with the occasional house and building poking out.
The Bronx, despite its reputation, has some of the loveliest sections of the city, with extensive parkland, beautiful old houses, and the Zoo and Botanical Gardens (both very sizeable). The Bronx also has, I believe, a little old-growth forest that has never been built on.
Staten Island is for the most part suburban, though admittedly the landfill probably doesn't qualify as greenspace.
As for the recycling issue, it didn't quite happen that way. What basically happened is the city realized that a) they were losing a lot of money recycling plastic and glass, and b) most of it was ending up in landfills anyway. They're planning to revamp and reintroduce it next year, and we still recycle newspapers and cans. Personally I think it's better to admit something's failed so we'll have to deal with it, rather than give people the illusion that they're recycling and just throw the stuff in a hole.
Seriously. How was the city destroyed? Conventional bomber attack? Nuclear weapon (of what yield), Earthquake? Biologicals? Come on, throw us a bone here...
Using New York as the example, lets assume an ID4 level of armageddon... Y'know... Where a giant UFO brings his destructo-beam of fun to bear on the city, causing wide-spread "conventional" damage (if you can call a giant destructo-beam of fun conventional). Anyway, you'd be facing an engineering debacle of the Trade Center proportions, but on an epic scale. Any structure that hasn't been leveled would probably be dicey in terms of structual support. That goes all the tunnels beneath the city as well. It'd be a grim task to have to sift through all the damage, clear it out and rebuild... An entire city... Hell, the refugee camps set up to take survivors would probably become full cities before New York was even habitable again. I'm also assuming this would be the senario for carpet bombing and earthquake/giant tidal waves.
Nuclear? We all know the answer to that, though the yield of the weapon makes a hellva difference. Biologicals and chemical devistation could hopefully be delt with after the inital blow and loss of life, as the city would be realitively intact. You'd just have to watch out for masive decay and the diseses it spaws if you go in within a few weeks.
In short, assuming your New York sized city suffered a major conventional casulty, you'd probably be better off writing it as a loss for the next decade. Of course, that's nothing compared to a good Slashdotting...
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There's a degree of false sorting in the belief that the things built that long ago are better. Part of the reason that those 100 year old buildings seem to be so well built is because the badly built buildings from the same time period have all been replaced already. The 1900 equivalent of our lousy apartment buildings and cheaply built houses have either been knocked down for those newer developments or have degenerated into the awful old slum housing that you've probably never visited.
Also, when you look at the wonderful 100 year old buildings that impress you so much, you have to remember that they're not necessarily exactly like they were when they were built. Buildings are not static. The structure may remain largely the same but the interiors undergo periodic renovation and reconstruction. In the process, people change the things that annoy them or they think are badly done. Space gets redistributed to different needs, design flaws get smoothed over, and things are generally improved. Many, many buildings become gradually more functional over time as they're adapted to the way that people actually do things, rather than the way that architects imagined that they'd do things.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
... What makes you think that the computer holding this "detailed, 3d, interactive map" would survive too? If NY blows up, I'd say we're a bit too fucked to care about some map data :/
I guess living in Canada changes my perspective some, but a lot of this seems to hold true in any city I visit (American or Canadian):
:), and these large gaping ducts which always seem to trap the most useful things - including pets.
For the most part, I'd much rather live in a newer building than one built 100 years ago. I don't know if people have grown, or we just need more space, but a lot of old buildings are VERY claustrophobic. Hell, some of the doorways are barely 6' high. Never mind the rambling tenements built to house immigrants back at the turn of the century, where having an 8'x10' bedroom was considered a luxury (this trend seems to have continued at least into the 1960's - most houses over 30 years old here have TINY bedrooms).
A building constructed 100 years ago may not have originally had much in the way of central heating, let alone air conditioning. Retrofitted, most of these buildings have atrocious heat efficiency (so sue me, I live in a -40 to 100 degree climate
Older buildings often are very difficult, if not impossible, to get modern appliances and/or furniture into - especially if they have any staircases, ESPECIALLY if those staircases try to 'save space' in the house by turning once or thrice. A lot of these places were designed for people who owned essentially nothing, or nothing that wouldn't fit into a suitcase - I've spent many an hour trying to navigate a 3-seater couch around turns, whereas it would take all of 10 seconds straight down a modern home stairway.
Obviously I'm over-generalizing, and can only speak from my own limited experience, but unless you radically alter the interior designs of most of the older buildings (let's try avoiding the mud basements from now on, eh?), I'd much prefer living in something designed with how people actually *live* nowadays.
Asthetically though, I have to agree - older is better. New houses and apartments look like utter crap.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
The only way that a virtual NYC will ever be constructed from these bits is if it is wiped off the face of the earth, so that there's no real world analogue to be concerned about anymore. I'm not particularly interested in that scenario.
My father is a construction superintendent. He came here from Italy back in 1964 knowing absolutely nothing and he learned whatever he needed to, in order to support a family of 4. Over the past decade or so, he has noticed a significant decrease in the quality of construction of commercial property. The "Bottom Line" is the ONLY thing that matters to construction contractors. They don't care if the building is put together with bubble gum, as long as it's quasi-presentable to a prospective buyer, that's all that matters. It's very sad, but it's true! If a construction company can save a few hundred bucks here and a few hundred bucks there by cutting corners on design and layout issues, ultimately that means they put a few thousand dollars in their own respective pockets! The esthetic appeal is DRASTICALLY diminished and they just don't care. In my humble this is a very sad state of affairs! If you want TRUE architecture, look at the Duomo in Florence, Italy. Now that is a work of art and a completely functional building as well. Why can't beautiful Art and functional design amalgamate today? Why do we need to succumb to the power and influence of the "All Mighty Dollar"? If you had a choice between an absolutely beautiful/functional Town House for $1,000,000, OR an average looking/quasi functional Town House for $800,000 wouldn't you much rather take the absolute drop dead gorgeous Town House for a little more money instead of settling for an average looking and inadequately functional Town House? I know I would? That's probably why I'm writing this little soap-box message on a dual 800Mhz G4 PowerMac, 160GB HD, 1.5 GB RAM NVIDIA GeForce3 64 MB... anyway, you get the picture. I appreciate quality and I'm not afraid to pay for it! Adamo =)
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A degree of false sorting yes - but having lived in multiple tract housing homes of the 1920's, and multiple tract housing homes of the 1990's - there was a substantial difference in quality.
Plaster & Lathe is much more durable for walls than wallboard.
Solid Hardwood Floors last much longer than composite hardwoods.
Solid boards for your roof last much longer than plywood.
Of course these techniques are all but impossible to replicate in this day and age at a reasonable cost.
Yes, but those are usually things like adding fake ceilings to fit AC ducts and whatnot. The number of sqare feet in a building only tells you how much room you have to walk around; more cubic feet (high ceilings) make the same space much nicer. Plus, engineering back then wasn't what is is today. I live in Savannah, and there are 2" diameter steel bolts running between floors and tieing the roof together. Those are "hurricane bolts"; they didn't know what a building could take so they used foot-thick outside walls, 2 and 3 by twelves everywhere, and those giant bolts. Those were the building codes. Guess what? My house has lived through a couple of hurricanes, and will probably survive the next. When you watch construction crews framing up a house in suburbia it's like watching somebody building a model of of matchsticks with a staple gun. There IS a difference. "Old" in and of itself might not mean anything, but if you live somewhere REALLY old that was built by the old building codes it is still sturdy as hell after a hundred years or more.