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How Do You Move a City?
Zothecula writes "The town of Kiruna in Lapland, Sweden, is known for its Jukkasjårvi Ice Hotel and for hosting the recent Arctic Council summit. It also sits within the Arctic Circle, on one of the world's richest deposits of iron ore. Now in danger of collapse due to extensive deep mining, the city center is to be relocated."
Earthquake.
Slowly and carefully.
Attach a stardrive to it, after getting a few Zero Point Modules.
Ask the Chinese. They moved 1.3 million people, including several cities, to make way for the Three Gorges Dam.
It seems to me if you approach it section by section, you can just pour concrete or other filler back in to the section. Using offset parallel channels, you can brace your mine the same time you dig out adjacent channels.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Here I was thinking that this would be an advertisement for some bigass truck.
(Which most of their customer base will buy to tool around the suburbs in.)
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
The iron mine is owned by the Swedish government, and it is the mining company who will be paying for the townâ(TM)s re-location. It might seem there is a pretty strong case for shutting down the mines and opting for the preservation of natural environment, and of the longstanding community. But this iron mine is far too important to Swedenâ(TM)s economy, accounting for just under one percent of the countryâ(TM)s overall GNP and a significant portion of the world's iron supply.
Well that answers all my questions right there.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
keep digging and it will move vertically (generally, on the whole).
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
I think the government tells you what your property is worth, gives the $ to you, and then kicks you off the land. The US gov EPA has done it a few times after areas become contaminated or unlivable from natural disasters or decades of some company or the EPA contaminating the area in one way or another.
Tar Creek in Oklahoma comes to mind...
1. Build settlers until the population is reduced to one.
2. Build one final settler.
3. Confirm that you want to disband the city.
4. Settle somewhere else.
When hurricane Katrina trashed New Orleans, it was the perfect time to relocate to a more sensible place. But everyone had the "we're tough and we'll rebuild" attitude, instead of the "this is a great opportunity to build in a better spot". So they rebuild in the same place so it can happen all over again.
They moved 1.3M people out of the city! 18k should be a snap for them.
they were already moving things then. normally, Slashdot is only 2 years behind.
To borrow from a children's rhyme:
Here are the streets
Here is the steeple
Look in the houses
The city's the people!
I mean the question you get when applying for a job at Microsoft or Google and they ask you how you'd move mount Fuji.
Ask Hibbing, MN how they moved their city when it was found to be sitting on a huge Iron Ore deposit. They did it.
This has been done before. Soldgier's Grove Wisconsin was moved due to flooding by the Kickapoo river. One interesting outcome is that this happened in 1979 during a time of rapidly ising energy prices so the new business district was designed to be heated by solar energy. Several million residents who lived in towns near China's 3-gorges dam were also relocated.
They're not Eskimos. They're Sami. And they have 180 words for snow.
No! We will not do your job for you.
Very carefully...
No!
Actually, if you are in a hurry, you can gift the city to an unfriendly neighbor, like Norway, and then attack it relentlessly until it is conquered, and then raze it to the ground. Move all the corpses to the sweet spot and cast a high-level necromancy spell.
Most of them are neither. And they have even more words for tobacco.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dillon,_Colorado
'nuff said...
This has been done before. Soldgier's Grove Wisconsin was moved due to flooding by the Kickapoo river. One interesting outcome is that this happened in 1979 during a time of rapidly ising energy prices so the new business district was designed to be heated by solar energy. Several million residents who lived in towns near China's 3-gorges dam were also relocated.
They moved several million Chinese residents in 1979 due to flooding of the Kickapoo river? That seems odd.
You move it SpongeBob Style
Maybe they can open a Petting Zoo featuring that Balrog of Morgoth they have unleashed.
Or copy the city like Springfield. See? Cartoons have all the answers.
Twinstiq, game news
Easy. Just do nothing and the city will move itself. Down.
They keep digging up all that iron ore, so close to the north pole, who knows where my compass will point next.
Even TFA got it wrong. It is Jukkasjärvi, not Jukkasjårvi.
Direct translation is "The Lake of Jukkas". And "The Loke of Jukkas" sounds funny (å is pronounced that way) in native Finnish tongue.
Yeah, it is so close to Finland, the name is in Finnish, even though it is a part of Sweden.
Valmeyer, Illinois was moved after the flood of 1993. I think that a lot of these communities that are mentioned are somewhat smaller than Kiruna. The linked article seems to say that they intend to move the town center farther west, but it is the west end of the town that is in danger of collapse. I would think moving the center farther east would make more sense in this case.
Peter Militch was born in Leigh Creek, a town of 900 people that was about 200 miles from the next town and 400 miles from the nearest real city. Leigh Creek was a government owned town - the government owned all the houses, "even the pub," said Peter. "There was no television, no radio, and only a couple of phones in the town. A couple of years ago the government figured out that the town lay right over the biggest seam of coal in Australia and bulldozed the town and built a new town for the inhabitants," Peter added. "So the town where I grew up is now a hole in the ground, 3 miles long and half a mile wide."
Nice to see my hometown on Slashdot!
Personally, I view the move as a necessary evil.
I prefer the old Town Hall to the plans for the new one, the relocation plans are realistic but will locate the town in a valley, (we're currently on an mountain) and I doubt the competency of the municipal politicians who are supposed to represent the citizens side in the negotiations with the (in my oppinion) much more powerful and skilled mining company.
We will get a cool cable railway though town, though. Unless it gets scrapped due to budget concerns. (Hint: it will.)
There are also worries that Kiruna will become a new Malmberget, a neighbouring community that has been split up by mining activities by the very same company.
Houses might lose their value (Googletranslated) and risk standing alone next to the ravine in the years between ones and ones neighbours relocations.
Not moving isn't really an option, as the mines employ a huge share of the towns population, either directly or via subcontractors.
There's more information about the competition at the Swedish Association of Architects website:
Town Hall competition, Googletranslated
City Center competition, Googletranslated, PDFs in english to the right.
(Note that the winning team are cited as sources in TFA.)
Posting as AC as I didn't get an account ten years ago and missed out on those lovely low number IDs.
And the neighbouring villages name is Jukkasjärvi. It is a Finnish/meänkieli name, and they don't even use "å"! (Except in Swedish loanwords.)
Ask the people of Detroit!
... the same way we built it - on rock and roll
And now the song is stuck in your head, too. You're welcome.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Sooner or later, the City Center will move all by itself... vertically.
âoeAny society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
Spindizzies!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trash_of_the_Titans
Nothing new, see Centralia, PA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia,_Pennsylvania
A REALLY big 3D scanner and a REALLY big 3D printer. It's the future, folks.
Use it's Stardrive and fly it to the new location...
You could use a spindizzy, you could use volucite, or you could just have it roll on a road (though that appears to be more realistic than it might seem).
just a ghost in the machine.
with a fuckton of money.
They did this in a Simpson episode
A 500 Mega Tonne thermonuclear detonation at 1 km above ground!
According to the UN agencies, Global Warming aka Climate Change is caused by Humans.
To end Global Warming aka Climate Change, kill Humans.
Simple arithmetic.
Ha ha
Mod parent up
Spindizzies were invented before thte Stargate people came up with Atlantis
and I'll show you how to move a Town Center.
In 1918.
In this area, we don't mess around: we have a big flood, we build a SERIOUS flood control system to avoid having it happen again.
That's the Dayton Way.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborn,_Ohio
Data: I seem to be missing several memory engrams.
[Geordi shows him several microchips he is holding in his hand]
Data: There they are.
Be careful of overly curious androids.
That's funny.
Cholera, diarrhea, dysentery are very known and in sufficient 'dosage' very lethal.
To combat Global Warming, Humans must die. Humans and Al Gore much die equally quickly.
That is the way to Christian salvation.
Humanity wants a fight, Give them a fight, Death to the Enemy, Death to the Humans and Al Gore. Fight my brothers fight.
Just ask Patrick.
David Copperfield!
sudo mv /big_hole/a_city /away_from_big_hole/a_city
Huge empty space underneath? :)
Don't move it. Just built all the new buildings so that they retract into the geofront
Bisbee, AZ has been moved several times, based on the copper mining in the area.
No, not Zoning law. "Zoning" is the nickname we gave the D9 Cat.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Would it be cheaper to build a support structure underneath the town than to move it?
Use it as a storage site for radioactive material. The current citizens will leave on their own.
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
*Jukkasjärvi, not Jukkasjårvi :) ä is pronounced "ae" while å is pronounced "ao" like the vowel sound in the word "law"
... if they relocate the center of the city, how can it still be called center at all, hmmm?
Jukkasjärvi. Umlaut, not a ring. Å and Ä are seen not as accented As but as different letters in Swedish where our alphabet ends in "XYZÅÄÖ".
I will seriously never understand why houses in tornado areas are not UNDER the ground. It would be far cheaper than having to rebuild the god damn things every time.
Now the only thing that will be ruined is the garden, trees, maybe roads, cars left up on the road instead of in the underground garage.
I know there are some reasons for not doing underground, such as earthquakes, flood risks, but is that REALLY a problem in most of those areas?
Imagine how nicer a landscape would look with all the houses under the ground. And it leaves more garden space!
The most interesting relocation of a city was probably Chicago. It was only moved 6' but they didn't rebuild or even pause business.
Here is an article that outlines their plans:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iP4VHSEkqJnn_6xvHvC58umph8mw?docId=CNG.b1cf7bba53e09623c881384352cd6325.b81
Why was this even submitted and posted? I found those details in about 15 seconds. It is over a year old.
You can also plug "urban relocation" into Google or Wikipedia for more general information. What kind of slashdot user has problems doing a web search?
I like seeing good questions, but anything that be answered with basic search in under five minutes is just crap.
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According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
Being a swede myself I kind of had hoped planning had gotten further by now...
from an intersting book: Cities in Flight
You'll need lots of cheap labour, so do like these people did: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Vaisseau_de_pierre (in French) ;-)
..
Ask your Friendly Neighbourhood Necromancer to resurrect an army of revenants to help move their descendants' stuff.
Maybe that FNN can also dig up some extra-strong local workforce to subcontract to
then sail away on the Torne Älv
PS: A big thanks to messrs. Pierre Christin and Enki Bilal
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
The Illinois town of Valmeyer was moved from the flood plain to a nearby bluff after the Mississippi River flood of 1993. I'm not sure how much of the actual town (other than its charter) actually moved.
It got pretty damp there (ahem), and there may not been much worth salvaging, even before taking into account the cost of the move. (Not that the cost mattered. It was free. The federal government paid for it, so it didn't cost anybody anything. ;-) ) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valmeyer,_Illinois
There was a time when massive buildings were moved several blocks, and it was no big thing. As in banks-built-during-the-19th-Century massive. Cheaper than tearing it down and building a new one, or selling the old one and building a new one where you wanted it, I guess. Just like moving a one-story frame house, only a bit more challenging. https://www.google.com/search?q=moving+large+structures
So if they wanted to move some of those buildings when they move the city, it might (possibly) be worth doing.
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.