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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."
Slowly and carefully.
Ask the Chinese. They moved 1.3 million people, including several cities, to make way for the Three Gorges Dam.
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.
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.
They moved 1.3M people out of the city! 18k should be a snap for them.
Especially if they Built This City on Rock and Roll
It's still an active mine with a huge body of ore beneath the city. The problem is not mainly that the rock is like swiss cheese under Kiruna, but that further mining risk destroying the city. Filling it up would require new tunnels to be built anyway in order to get the ore up, hence the need for unorthodox moves.
Correct. Expropriation is done on the basis on market value in Sweden. Guess what the market value is when there's a mine about to devour the house? Exactly the same issue with the town of Malmberget, located 100 km or so south of Kiruna, where the mine has created several holes mid-town that has grown and engulfed numerous buildings over the last few decades.
Or you could have the people who want the iron ore to buy what is above it.
Time Bomber the Book coming soon.
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.
Maybe they can open a Petting Zoo featuring that Balrog of Morgoth they have unleashed.
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.
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.)
Especially if they Built This City on Rock and Roll
Surely one would require a starship for that?
From the daily WTF:
Not too long ago, I applied for systems administrator job. The interviews were going very well, and I had to return twice because they flew people in to meet me. One of them was a guy who, God love him, seemed like a great person but his interview skills were a little hackneyed. He asked a lot of Job Interview 2.0 questions, which, up until this point, I had never heard of.
"If you had to move Mount Fuji," he asked, "how would you do it?" I recall thinking, "why is he asking this? What does he mean by Mount Fuji?"
"You mean, Mount Fuji, the volcano in Japan?"
He looked confused I asked. "Er, yes. How would you move it?"
What he didn't know was I was a science fiction author as well. I spent a lot of time asking odd questions like these. "Why kind of life form might evolve on Mars?" and so on. But like a writer, I had to have a principal motive of the protagonist.
"Why?" I asked.
The man chuckled as if he had never thought about that before. "Just how would you move it?"
I felt I didn't explain my question. "I mean, who is my customer? Why does he or she wish to move Mount Fuji? I mean, to move Mount Fuji seems like the middle of a plan; it's a verb that has an end mean. Like, does my client want the rubble? Do they want to move it 10 meters to the left? What drives such a vast plan?"
"Yes, say you want to move it... a mile to the left. How would you do it?"
I rolled my eyes in thought. "Wow, um. First, we'd have to get the permission of the Japanese government. I would imagine my client would have to be pretty persuasive to get past that hurdle; Mount Fuji is a national treasure of Japan. Whole economies are connected to it. It would vastly interrupt tourist industry and all surrounding towns connected to the mountain."
The man looked at me, completely dumbstruck.
"The environment impact would also have to be addressed. One does not simply move a volcano. I would imagine I'd study the geological hot spot in detail because once an exposed magma chamber were released, I could only imagine the risk of millions of people with hot lava, volcanic gasses, and the pyroclastic flow and eruption potential. Then you'd have to explain to all the environmentalists and convince the scientific world that this sort of project was necessary. And who is funding such a project?"
"You're over-thinking this," he said, "I just want to know how you would technically."
"Again, for what end result? I can't answer that without knowing what the client wishes."
"He just wants to move it."
"But why? I could imagine a lot cheaper and less destructive ways to get what someone might want. And frankly, what would be different than taking a kilometer of rock from one side and slapping it on the other? Is that considered moving it?"
He paused for a bit. "How man piano tuners are there in the United States?"
I paused. "This... is for the systems administration job, right?"
I didn't get the job. Not because I didn't understand his project prospective, but the following Monday, they had huge layoffs and a hiring freeze.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
sudo mv /big_hole/a_city /away_from_big_hole/a_city
Have a word with Jefferson, I believe he's got it covered.
I'd put quotes round the name, because otherwise it'll think I mean two files.
# mv "Mount Fuji" new_name
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The port of New Orleans was open in time to export the US midwest's crops several months after Katrina.
The tourist trap part of New Orleans is alive and well.
But nobody builds new slums. Slums are the leftovers, where people who can't afford to live anywhere else land.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'