Carbon-Neutral Ziggurat Could House 1.1 Million In Dubai 393
Engadget is reporting that a new pyramid-shaped city of the future, dubbed a "Ziggurat," is being touted by Dubai-based environmental design company, Timelinks. Claiming that their design allows for an almost self-sufficient energy footprint and, obviously, economy of space, the real trick would be getting 1.1 million people to live in such close proximity. "Martijn Kramer, managing director of The International Institute for the Urban Environment told WAN: 'As a general reaction the Ziggurat Project is viable from a technical point of view. However reflecting from a more sustainable holistic approach we do wonder if the food supply and waste system are taken care for, as the concept seems rather based upon carbon neutrality and energy saving.' Kramer's initial reaction to 'Ziggurat' also raises a very important issue: are people willing to live in a mega building of 2.3 sq km? Will the thought of living in a machine comfort people?"
right up till... (Score:5, Insightful)
Someone crashes a A340F full of explosives into it. Or sets fires in it, or...
Well you get the idea. Good idea but a great target.
vapor? (Score:4, Insightful)
Who cares? Show us something real.
Control of personal space (Score:5, Insightful)
People can live in very different conditions if their basic needs are met, if there is a cultural web to participate in, and if they have control over their personal space and possibility of advancement.
I see challenges of propinquity here, but there are very crowded, thriving urban environments to use as examples.
The key question to answer is: What is the reason for the people to live there, rather than somewhere else? That's the question that builds cities - or ghost towns.
Where does the food come from? (Score:4, Insightful)
Carbon and energy neutral food I mean?
Beats mcmansions in Bakersfield (Score:5, Insightful)
For all the billions Calif* spends propping up worthless mortgages, it could build gigantic ziggurats & actually house people.
Willingness (Score:5, Insightful)
are people willing to live in a mega building of 2.3 sq km?
Sure, why not. It's not like there won't be parks, squares, expedition, lanes, views.. dense cities are essentially one mega building already.
Re:Where does the food come from? (Score:2, Insightful)
Carbon and energy neutral food I mean?
From carbon and energy neutral farms. geeze! Stop with this whole analyzing and coming up with glaring holes in the idea! Its' a dream and PR stunt! Let's keep it that way.
Book Plug (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't remember much else about this book, but the idea of a giant city-building stands out.
_Oath of Fealty_, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.
http://www.amazon.com/Oath-Fealty-Larry-Niven/dp/0671532278 [amazon.com]
Re:Ziggurat (Score:5, Insightful)
Integrated greenspace is a must (Score:3, Insightful)
as are varied views within the structure. No one wants to live in a big, faceless glass box, nor look at big, faceless glass boxes. But if you have a large structure with integrated greenspace and human-scale details within the superstructure, to help fix the eye and give a sense of place, then it's not hard to imagine a million people living within it happily.
Think Central Park--There are tens of thousands of people in it at any given time, but because it's made of little hills and dales and stands of trees you never see more than 20 people at one time and it doesn't feel crowded. If you did a similar thing in three dimensions it could work.
Re:Where does the food come from? (Score:4, Insightful)
You hit it right on the nose. Forget about where air, food, water, and energy come from or where wastes go, or about trapping a million people or more in a building for generations on end, or what happens in the event of a major fire or other disaster, etc, etc.
Let's just shut our eyes and think happy, unquestioning thoughts!
Re:The reasons are convenience and the environment (Score:2, Insightful)
That is an empty, unsubstantiated pipe dream. I challenge you to demonstrate that it is even remotely feasible with hard numbers for volumes of air, water, energy, and food inputs, and waste air, sewage, and garbage outputs. Where will they come from? Where will they go?
This is little more than a cute fairy tale.
Re:Beats mcmansions in Bakersfield (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Arcology (Score:3, Insightful)
I grew up in Arizona, and my dad took us to visit Arconsanti when I was in grade school. It was an interesting afternoon. It was pretty obvious then (late 70s) that it was not going anywhere. I'm really surprised it's still there. I always point at it when we go by on our way back to Phoenix from Strawberry. Should probably take my kids while I can.
This kind of thing is always much, much easier to think up, draw, plan, etc. than to actually build and use.
Re:right up till... (Score:5, Insightful)
Be fair. It could happen any place.
Toyko, Oklahoma, or the Middle East.
One of the sad rules of the Universe is that it is a lot easier to destroy than to create. It only takes a few evil nut jobs willing to die to create a lot of misery.
Re:vapor? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:right up till... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's pretty dangerous to exit a skyscraper from the side halfway up. A pyramid, however, can have dozens of exits all over it's surface. They may not be all that safe, depending on the slope, but better than straight down. After all, it's an emergency exit.
Re:Live in a bathroom! (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:right up till... (Score:1, Insightful)
Jesus. You must be American if the first thing you think of is a terrorist attack.
I would suggest its a safer civilian environment than open streets and roads.
Re:right up till... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Culture vs. Need vs. ...? (Score:3, Insightful)
OTOH, something that doesn't seem to be taken into account is, what happens when families change? A single guy only needs 'x' amount of space. Now when that single guy gets married*, has 4 kids, and a parent becomes decrepit/disabled and decide to move in...? Obviously there's going to be a lot of change in how much space the guy can be comfortable living in, no matter what culture we're talking about here.
Also, what happens when some fatal communicable disease starts making the rounds? shutting folks into their 'homes' will only work for so long before even the most gregarious human being starts to get cabin fever (for lack of a better term).
Well, you could just have everyone be required to have their own rooms. That way husband/wife/kids would have to have separate living spaces. That would make sure if they got divorced they'd each have an apartment and that the kids would already be allocated space. I'm sure there would develop rules for the kids to move off into different sections of the city.
As for plague/sickness, I think you are thinking about it the wrong way. A normal city can't shut out the outside world when a plague or flu season starts. This thing could have medical scans of everyone entering/exiting to make sure they don't bring in the flu or plague.
Re:Culture vs. Need vs. ...? (Score:3, Insightful)
So after you get sick of the Ziggurat building owners jacking up your rent astronomically every year when your lease renews (even though new tenants get far lower rates), you have to move to a totally different city?
And if the building owners also run the police, the court system, etc., then what's your recourse when your landlord refuses to fix the broken plumbing?
This doesn't sound like a very good idea at all.
Re:right up till... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:right up till... (Score:1, Insightful)
In order to create some thing, one must destroy a number of things.
Were it harder to destroy, no creation could take place.
Is this the creation of a 2.3 square kilometer habitat or the destruction of a 2.3 square kilometer ecosystem?
Creation and destruction are merely emotionally-loaded terms for change.
There is no creation.
There is no destruction.
There is only change.
Re:Ziggurat (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Willingness (Score:3, Insightful)
I have some conditions:
I would only live there if the ziggurat itself was owned by the public and maintained with taxes. The public spaces, police department, fire department, and etc should all be cared for by the 'city'. I don't want to live in a huge gigantic apartment complex "cared for" by some corporation. Apartment complexes suck enough without the added problem of having to leave the _city_ in order to get away from a bad landlord.
I would want to be able to own, buy, and sell "land" in the ziggurat the same way I can own, buy, and sell real land, condos, and etc.
Because we all know how good the *government* is at efficiently and fairly managing and caring for it's resources.
The lesser of two evils... (Score:2, Insightful)
Uh, there ARE a few engineers here, right? (Score:3, Insightful)
Surprisingly - I don't see anyone calculating volume per person...
2.3sqkm base means it's about 1.5km wide at the base. Looks like it'd be about 1km high from the picture. 1/3 base area * height = 0.767cu-km, or 767 million cu-m. Looks like the thing is about 3/4 open or shared space (streets, parks, corridors, elevators, theaters, stores, etc, etc), so about 190 million cu-m of living space.
So each individual would have about 175cu-m. A family of 4 could have 700cu-m, or about 200sq-m of floor space with high ceilings - a pretty large apartment. So it isn't quite as cramped as people seem to think.
Still, the mega-scale design is a monument to the ego of a poorly educated architect. Building collossally big is fine. Failure to build within that on a livable "human scale" is just arrogantly ignorant. It treats people as identical units to be slotted into storage compartments optimized to fit within the glorious "structure" designed by the architect.
Re:Control of personal space (Score:3, Insightful)
if they can do it without turning the lower floors into slave pens.
That's not necessarily a deal-breaker.
Just so long as I get to live upstairs, of course.
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