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In Case of Armageddon, Break Out the GIS

Posted by michael on from the what-me-worry dept.

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.

11 of 262 comments (clear)

  1. agreed by SlugLord · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I want this to be put to good use, namely as a FPS with the actual city. It would obviously be too big for 8 players, so maybe 200. Call it a MMOFPS?

    1. Re:agreed by x136 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      How many people live in New York City now? Let's say a million. What would be cooler than an RPG set in an exact replica of NYC, with millions of people walking the street? You live in real apartments, walk along real sidewalks, and throw fireballs at your foes on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

      Yeah, you'd need octo-42GHz CPUs and a few terabytes of RAM, but so what? :)

      --
      SIGFEH
  2. I vote for 100 year old designs by doom · · Score: 4, Interesting
    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.
    As a San Francisco resident who has seen the difference between buildings put up at the turn of this century and at the turn of the last one, I would sincerely vote for building replicas of 100 year old designs.

    Somewhere along the way, modern industrial culture lost the ability or the desire to build anything that isn't a piece of crap. If anyone can explain why that is exactly, this thread might not be a totally useless fluff magnet.

    1. Re:I vote for 100 year old designs by denshi · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Yes and no. Certainly, there was some tenement construction 100 years ago that simply couldn't survive to today, but they explicity *were* tenements, not fully-fledged homes for long term usage. Non-tenement construction before WW2 aimed at designing buildings to last 200 years; a very substantial motivating factor was that construction costs were high enough to warrant building to last -- we just couldn't afford the 'build for 20 years' mentality prevalent after the war. Homes built now (or even worse, the 50's-70's) are not designed to last that long, although recent years of 'green' urban construction has started to reverse that trend.

      Another substantial problem is legal: zoning laws over the past 60 years have grown to make 1910-style construction more or less impossible. You can't build brownstones, Victorian row houses; you can't build a house without a huge strip of lawn around all side, there are modern parking demands you are constrainted to build, mixed-use neighborhoods are forbidden, and there are huge packages of material and design constraints. This is a huge topic, easily dwarfing this NYC thread. But believe me when I say that affection for 1910-style construction is more than just nostalgia.

  3. combine this with more buzzwords! by timothy · · Score: 2, Interesting

    blogging is one, and I'm not sure the best buzzword for the other, though it's probably something close to "disintermediation."

    Point is, I want to be able to walk through the NYC metaverse and read notes posted like "THIS RESTAURANT SUCKS! Despite being in Chinatown, this place is slow, and serves vomitous food with slow, resentful service. And not even the vomitous food that you ordered."

    Or "Landlord here is a sucker; if one of your housemates is a cute girl, have *her* do the rent negotiations."

    Or "This museum is worth the price, especially on Wednesday (half-price day)"

    Or "This park is dangerous between the hours of midnight and the next midnight."

    (details facetious, idea serious.)

    timothy

    --
    jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
  4. Most places should get virtual copies made by philipsblows · · Score: 4, Interesting

    With the advent of these new standardized 3D file and render formats (see here) I would think that there would be plenty of room in the virtual museum business, along with maybe virtual architecture, virtual chamber of commerce, etc, to construct virtualized cities from the past and present for everyone with a copy of Mozilla 2.0 to view and enjoy.

    Granted, it is a lot of work...

    I really like this one, a temple in ancient Thailand reconstructed for walktroughs and everything. It's only a small area, of course, but this sort of thing would at the very least change the way history is taught in the future... especially if it is easily editable.

    Of course, being able to play 2nd generation and later online multiplayer games in super-accurate virtual cities from around the world would be pretty cool, to say the least.

  5. Gaming... by pyxl · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Wow.

    This could be the basic structural data for a TRULY EXCELLENT large-scale online or gaming environment - either as a self-contained world like Liberty City in GTA3, or as an online multiuser environment for gaming...or just as a huge 3D cool-ass online "place to go". I'd love to live in NY and be able to invite folks to visit my online apartment....hell, that's something I wouldn't mind paying 5-10 bux a month rent on, just to have. And the client feature possibilities are sooo cool - you could have a software agent that monitors visitors to your online pad, and pretty much extend any other environmental metaphors to cool features and interaction possibilities. Furnishings, lighting, parties...entirely too much coolness.

    And this is ignoring the excellent possibilities for gaming - from missions, to large-scale team based warfare, and suchlike.

    *droooool*

    --


    Given enough hydrogen, just about anything is possible.
  6. Did anyone else read "Aftershock"... by phillymjs · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ...the book (also later a miniseries) that had a huge earthquake levelling much of NYC?

    Not a bad read. The plan to rebuild what was destroyed was interesting... It's been years since I read it, but IIRC there were ideas something like, make it a city for the people, a social and cultural mecca even moreso than it was, packed full of parks, museums, libraries, etc. No internal-combustion vehicles allowed on the island, just people-powered and non-polluting vehicles. Subways would be repaired, but used to move freight, not people, with the rationale, "why force people underground to travel quickly and clog the streets above with trucks full of cargo?"

    I'm just kinda rambling here, and that's all I remember now, so time to click "Preview" and "Submit."

    ~Philly

  7. New York: Viridian version.... by detect · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Haven't you guys read:

    Newer York, New York: After the Great Blaze of 2015, Manhattan went green - thanks to Bill Gates and bambootekture.
    by Bruce Sterling?

    Detailing a new ecologically sound/networked New York City...

    Good read if you have the time.

    --
    // The fastest Alt-Tab in the West
  8. A lot more at stake than rebuilding the city... by doormat · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm sure the people who use the GIS data care more about its usability on a daily basis rather than to rebuild it if it gets destroyed. In fact, as someone who works in GIS (I write pieces software for use with Arc/Info and Autodesk Map), the value of having the whole city layed out with associated attributes is extremely important when it comes to utilities and roads are much more useful during or just after a disaster in compairson to long after the disater is over.

    --
    The Doormat

    If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
  9. Get over it by K. · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Considering that the USA and the rest of the world lived under the threat of nuclear annihilation from
    pretty much the fifties to the dismantling of the USSR, you're letting this pissant terrorist threat thing get to ye far more than it should. It's hard not to wonder if you aren't in fact just being cynically manipulated to distract you from the ridiculous amount of domestic problems your current administration is causing and/or ignoring.

    It's about time you got over it, either built a Ground Zero memorial park or used the space for buildings, stopped beating up on random eastern countries, implemented decent accounting laws, and returned to being the arrogant but lovable bunch of tech-obsessed golden boys that we all remember from the 90s.

    And ratify Kyoto already - have you seen the weather lately? Can't you take a hint?

    --
    -- Proud descendant of semi-nomadic cattle-herders.