Seriously, cars are needed by most people that live in the U.S., simply because everything is so spread out. A city with no cars might as well be a 'vertically integrated' skyscraper, and either way will be horribly overpriced for people to live in- far more than they will save by not having cars!
What a worthless ideal! Cars exist for a reason; they get you from one place to another at a reasonable speed, with little effort, and on YOUR terms. Unlike walking or bicycling or mass transit.
I recently looked at using public transit to get to my business, and was disappointed to find that in order to use the bus, I would have to close my shop an hour earlier. Until public transit is universally available, at all hours, and goes reasonably close to all destinations, it's worthless to those that have even the simplest requirements for transportation.
And that's why you'll never be rid of personal transportation vehicles.
My father actually designed a good portion of the pipes &tc. for a similar project in Hawaii (probably not be the Kona project mentioned, he was working on this recently). It was intended to provide power to a very rural section of the islands, as well as supporting an aquacultural project in the same area. The cold ocean water was drawn up from the depths through a VERY long pipe, then fed through the aquacultural facility. Deep, cold ocean currents carry a great deal of nutrients and is relatively rich in dissolved oxygen as compared to the surface water, and the fish they're raising just go gangbusters with it.
The major problem they ran into was designing an exclusion system to keep local fish from being sucked into the uptake. They used a cone-shaped netting system in the end, as I recall.
My father is the head designer at Ershigs, Inc.'s Bellingham, WA location.
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Seriously, cars are needed by most people that live in the U.S., simply because everything is so spread out. A city with no cars might as well be a 'vertically integrated' skyscraper, and either way will be horribly overpriced for people to live in- far more than they will save by not having cars! What a worthless ideal! Cars exist for a reason; they get you from one place to another at a reasonable speed, with little effort, and on YOUR terms. Unlike walking or bicycling or mass transit. I recently looked at using public transit to get to my business, and was disappointed to find that in order to use the bus, I would have to close my shop an hour earlier. Until public transit is universally available, at all hours, and goes reasonably close to all destinations, it's worthless to those that have even the simplest requirements for transportation. And that's why you'll never be rid of personal transportation vehicles.
My father actually designed a good portion of the pipes &tc. for a similar project in Hawaii (probably not be the Kona project mentioned, he was working on this recently). It was intended to provide power to a very rural section of the islands, as well as supporting an aquacultural project in the same area. The cold ocean water was drawn up from the depths through a VERY long pipe, then fed through the aquacultural facility. Deep, cold ocean currents carry a great deal of nutrients and is relatively rich in dissolved oxygen as compared to the surface water, and the fish they're raising just go gangbusters with it. The major problem they ran into was designing an exclusion system to keep local fish from being sucked into the uptake. They used a cone-shaped netting system in the end, as I recall. My father is the head designer at Ershigs, Inc.'s Bellingham, WA location.