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Can urban planners save the planet?
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Hellios View Drop Down
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Posts: 1933 		  Quote Hellios Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: Can urban planners save the planet?
    Posted: 25-Oct-2006 at 13:39
Some believe that cities are bad and only suburbs or rural areas are good places to live.
 
The traditional arguments are things like crime, pollution, cost of living, tranquility, etc.
 
Vast swaths of nature have been zoned into low density developments.
 
I think efficient big cities are the solution to issues like over-population, the environment, energy crisis, and other issues.  "Efficient" meaning effective crime control, strict pollution controls, good urban planning, mass transit, etc.
 
 
 


Edited by Hellios - 25-Oct-2006 at 13:48
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Posts: 1230 		  Quote Adalwolf Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 25-Oct-2006 at 13:59
I don't think big cities are the answer. Big cities are absolutely discusting. Who in their right minds would want to live in a city where millions of other people live? I think lowering the population of the world down to about 2 billion is the way to go.

Improved city planning isn't a bad idea, however. Proper land managment should be one of a city's major concerns.


Edited by Adalwolf - 25-Oct-2006 at 14:10
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Posts: 6003 		  Quote Cywr Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 25-Oct-2006 at 14:10
Some believe that cities are bad and only suburbs or rural areas are good places to live.


It goes both ways, there are those who believe that suburban life is a blight on the landscape, and that the lifestyle encourages greater segragation, and is unsustainable, and so on.

However, there is no one-size fits all solution, different cultures have evolved different cities, and it can be very localised too, so cultural inertia tends to work against grand designs.
Large scale planning approaches that emerged with modernism, stressing as they did better improved modern lifestyles, and efficiency and the like (as in your picture), realisticly need massive government intervention. Not exactly cheap.
On the other hand, leaving it to the 'invisible hand of the market', means that most urban renewal will be very conservative in scope for the most part, and aimed at a nich market of well off people, who typicaly shun the 'efficient' living envisioned by modernism, and prefer surburbs of some sort (be they fake-inner-city types, or fake-rural types). But again, it depends on where you are.
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Posts: 1230 		  Quote Adalwolf Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 25-Oct-2006 at 14:15
I think I would rather go live in a log cabin than a city that looks like that, Hellios, no offence to you, or anyone else who likes cities. I personnaly can't stand cities. They are so lound, crowded, and dirty! People are rude and everything is overpriced- at least that's my experience.  I'll stick to the good old suburbs and rural areas where people are friendly. 
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Posts: 1933 		  Quote Hellios Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 25-Oct-2006 at 14:26
Could cities like these help keep mankind away from nature and possibly save the planet?
 
 


Edited by Hellios - 25-Oct-2006 at 14:29
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Posts: 1230 		  Quote Adalwolf Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 25-Oct-2006 at 14:34
Originally posted by Hellios



That would be an awesome city. I wouldn't mind living in that one too badly.

Also, I don't think mankind interacting with nature is a problem. The problem is mankind destroying nature. We need to learn how to interact with nature in ways that don't adversly affect nature.


Edited by Adalwolf - 25-Oct-2006 at 14:36
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Posts: 1933 		  Quote Hellios Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 25-Oct-2006 at 15:17
Is it just science-fiction or is it truly possible for there to be cities in space like this in order to solve the earth's over-population problem?
 
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Posts: 6003 		  Quote Cywr Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 25-Oct-2006 at 15:33
They are theoreticly possible, but the logistics of building and supplying such orbital cities would be a nightmare.
And there has to be something up there to make it worthwhole for x million people to live there.

I think if there is going to be any solution for over-population, it has to be down here.

Who in their right minds would want to live in a city where millions of other people live?


Those millions of other people, presumably.
Meh, i prefer cities to suburbs, more to do, and you don't have to drive everywhere.
The friendlyness of suburbs is more of a cultural thing, in Britian for some reason, suburban neighbours don't talk to each other much.
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 25-Oct-2006 at 16:30
Originally posted by Hellios

Is it just science-fiction or is it truly possible for there to be cities in space like this in order to solve the earth's over-population problem?
 
 
No. It would not work.
 
Cities in space will be build for the rich people to escape from the mess down here. There is not way they could help to solve the over population on Earth. To bring a single individual to space and mantain inthere for a life time will cost in the order of one million dollar each, and the space does not have enough things to trade with Earth that can pay those expenses.
 
Moreover, if someone needs to found a new civilization in Space why it would need to put 10 billion people in there? A few hundred thousand people is more than enough to develop the most advanced civilization ever. After all, places like Greece and Venice had around those populations at theirs peak. Populations by the billion are more a liability rather than an advantage.
 
The problem of over population will have to be solved in planet Earth. The only way to go is to increase education in the poor countries that are suffering from the population explosion, and encourage them to limit the growth.
 
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Posts: 2419 		  Quote JanusRook Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 25-Oct-2006 at 19:09
No. It would not work.
 
Cities in space will be build for the rich people to escape from the mess down here. There is not way they could help to solve the over population on Earth. To bring a single individual to space and mantain inthere for a life time will cost in the order of one million dollar each, and the space does not have enough things to trade with Earth that can pay those expenses.
 
Uh....no, it only costs $3500 per pound to  launch something into orbit, which ideally could be made cheaper. Also, we don't have to bring people back if they're going to live there cities floating in space won't be the starting point though, we'll have cities on the moon first.
 
Overpopulation will not be solved by space travel, science has shown us that a population will tend over time to fill up all the space it can and then stop growing, once we conquer space the population will get larger and larger to fill up more space. 
 
To bring a single individual to space and mantain inthere for a life time will cost in the order of one million dollar each, and the space does not have enough things to trade with Earth that can pay those expenses.
 
Space has more metals and rare elements, plus tons of natural gas locked away in asteroids than all of earth, I think this is an economic goldmine.
 
The future of cities are going to be arcologies I think, but that's far in the futures the first one's are going to be blights on the landscape and horribly inefficient but their predecessors might make the early stages worthwile.
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Posts: 1933 		  Quote Hellios Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 26-Oct-2006 at 06:31
Putting aside our personal preferences, I think efficient big cities will become the only way to stop the suburban & rural sprawl that is chewing up our natural habitats & ecosystems.
 
For people to believe this, the big cities of today are bad examples.
 
JanusRook, I agree with you that arcologies are an interesting solution:
 
Arcology examples:
 
 
 


Edited by Hellios - 26-Oct-2006 at 06:54
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Posts: 1230 		  Quote Adalwolf Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 26-Oct-2006 at 10:46
Or, a better solution, would be regulating population, and lowering the world's population by a few billion. The aborigines of Australia had a sustainable population of about 300,000 to 1,000,000 people for 50,000 years that did not destory their environment. I'm sure the world today could come up with some system to regulate an easily sustainable population without packing people like sardines into nasty cities. 

Edited by Adalwolf - 26-Oct-2006 at 10:47
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 26-Oct-2006 at 11:08
You bet. Space colonization is not the solution. It will come one day, but it will be too late to solve the problems of today. Countries of billions are just non-sense. Smallest populations live better. Large populations only add to the desperation of people in poor overcrowd countries.
 
If every people in the planet would enjoy the standard of living of the U.S. right now, we would not have a planet anymore!
 
The world is a dissaster right now particularly because of the population boom that affects the poorest countries.
 
And big cities are source of crime, and places where the people don't know their neighbour.
 
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Posts: 1933 		  Quote Hellios Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 26-Oct-2006 at 11:11
Originally posted by Adalwolf

Or, a better solution, would be regulating population, and lowering the world's population by a few billion. The aborigines of Australia had a sustainable population of about 300,000 to 1,000,000 people for 50,000 years that did not destory their environment. I'm sure the world today could come up with some system to regulate an easily sustainable population without packing people like sardines into nasty cities. 
 
There are some weird theories that there will be a shortage of manpower when humans begin colonizing the Moon & Mars in a few decades; that our rate of propagation won't be able to keep up with our rate of expansion...?
 


Edited by Hellios - 26-Oct-2006 at 11:12
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 26-Oct-2006 at 11:30

Colonizing the Moon?

Hardly. The last landing was in the 70s and more than 1/4 of a century has happened since. Perhaps in another quarter of a century there will be a new moon landing.
 
At that pace the first colony on the moon, for ten people, will be put in place not sooner than in 2400 Big smile
 
And if our current problems are not solved by then, our "spaceship earth" perhaps would be non-functional anymore.
 
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Posts: 1933 		  Quote Hellios Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 26-Oct-2006 at 11:43
Pinguin, plans are already being made and huge amounts of money being spent developing such plans.  I'm not totally in agreement with it but it's a reality, not science-fiction. Wink
 
Future crater colony:
 


Edited by Hellios - 26-Oct-2006 at 12:00
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Posts: 2419 		  Quote JanusRook Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 26-Oct-2006 at 17:47
At that pace the first colony on the moon, for ten people, will be put in place not sooner than in 2400
 
Agreed, NASA is a horrible diseased beast that needs to be wiped out and replaced, I don't know about the former Soviet Space Program (what does russia call it now) but then again the entire country of Russia is a horrible diseased beast (no offense, but russia does need some reforms) so their space program won't do anything. And the ESA is just there so the French can put up more satellites.
 
However Pinguin I think you are wrong about the moon not being colonized till 2400, I think China will have a claim on it within the next 50 years, which will then prompt a land grab like what happened to colonial Africa.
 
Hellios, no offense to you since you didn't make the drawing, but a crater colony that looks like that would never be created. Mostly because it would be far cheaper (and safer) to build a moon colony several meters underground. The false atmosphere (it seems) that the station creates is AFAIK beyond our current technology, and it would be way too expensive to upkeep.
 
 
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