How Do You Move a City? 172
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."
SubjectsInCommentsAreStupid (Score:2, Funny)
Re:SubjectsInCommentsAreStupid (Score:5, Funny)
Especially if they Built This City on Rock and Roll
Re:SubjectsInCommentsAreStupid (Score:5, Funny)
Especially if they Built This City on Rock and Roll
Surely one would require a starship for that?
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Ok then, Number One. Make it so!
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Have a word with Jefferson, I believe he's got it covered.
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Just make sure he knows that we'll need at least one crewmember who can play the mamba.
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Re:How Do You Move a City? (Score:5, Funny)
The same way you move a file across filesystems: copy and delete.
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Exactly.
Its not like there is any rush. This has been done many times, for other mines. Some cities in Northern Minnesota have been moved for open pit mines. You simply forbid building where the danger zone.
Just put up a couple big malls in the desired spot and the downtown will more or less move itself.
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Just put up a couple big malls in the desired spot and the downtown will more or less move itself.
Malls are not a city centre. City centres have soul. A mall is just a big, ugly shopping centre.
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Nevertheless, malls have closed more city centers in the US than any other phenomena.
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The article asked about moving it. Closing it is not the same thing.
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He essentially answered the question. New buildings and infrastructure are made at the target location, and various policies are set to drain businesses and residents from the source location.
A city or state has a number of options depending on regional laws: tax credits, rebuilding/relocation of existing structures, government purchase of the land, condemnation of endangered properties, government seizure of the land, relocation assistance programs, tiered/progressive zoning restrictions, and probably a lo
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No he didn't. If you think a mall is the same as a "proper" downtown I'd like to know what you're smoking. And I'm pretty sure you can't get it at some characterless steel/glass/concrete edifice.
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You haven't lived or worked in many mining towns north of the Arctic Circle, have you? (And for sure you haven't done so south of the Antarctic Circle.)
These places are built to service the mines. They have enough facilities to make life sufficiently tolerable for the workers and their families, who choose to move there for the duration of their careers because of the increased wages and then leave.
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Exactly.
Its not like there is any rush.
If fact this is old news. According to Wikipedia "The ground deformations became apparent in 2003, and the redevelopment started in 2007."
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You're right. THIS. . . .IS. . . . SWEDEN !!!! (and why do I suddenly have the urge to kick the poster into a large snow-bank. . . )
So. . . localizing for Sweden. . .
Hin-de-foo, de buildie da malls a few-a kilo-meters a-vay, mit de chocolate mooses. Here. moose-moose. . . . .
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The same way you move a file across filesystems: copy and delete.
"Don't copy that city!" -- the architects' trade union.
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How Do You Move a City?
With a very moving song?
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I got out the old ouija board and asked Johnny Cash how he would do it:
I'd do it one piece at a time
And it wouldn't cost me a dime
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Chinese (Score:5, Interesting)
Ask the Chinese. They moved 1.3 million people, including several cities, to make way for the Three Gorges Dam.
Re:Chinese (Score:5, Informative)
Or ask Hibbing, Minnesota [wikipedia.org]. From 1919 to 1921, the entire city moved about two miles to make way for what became the largest open-pit iron mine in the world.
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Or ask Hibbing, Minnesota [wikipedia.org]. From 1919 to 1921, the entire city moved about two miles to make way for what became the largest open-pit iron mine in the world.
Home of Robert Zimmerman, aka Bob Dylan [youtube.com]. Also, that baseball home run champ, Roger Maris.
Re:Chinese (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Chinese (Score:4, Insightful)
You take "great pride" in attending a school you did not choose, and that you had no hand in designing, building, or maintaining? Do you also feel full after someone else eats a meal? How peculiar.
It may surprise you to learn this, but some people have not yet become cynical assholes and can appreciate being a part of something special. even if it is just in a small way.
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Wow, thanks for the link. I can see how my own high school (Great Falls HS, GtF MT) was patterned after it, albeit on not so grand a scale -- but the same general style and layout, including the balcony and chandeliers (if not nearly so fancy) in the auditorium. It was a great place to learn in.
Re:Chinese (Score:4, Informative)
Or ask Hibbing, Minnesota [wikipedia.org]. From 1919 to 1921, the entire city moved about two miles to make way for what became the largest open-pit iron mine in the world.
I'm pretty sure the Simpsons did it, too...
Ahh yes, here we are: Trash of the Titans, S9 E22 [wikipedia.org].
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Oh man, I still get the garbageman song stuck in my head, why did you bring this up?
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Or ask Hibbing, Minnesota
These were wooden buildings, where it was possible to actually, physically move them...
Quoting from the article:
In all, about 200 structures were moved down the First Avenue Highway, as it was called, to the new city. These included a store and even a couple of large hotels. Only one structure didn't make it: the Sellers Hotel tumbled off some rollers and crashed to the ground leaving, as one witness said, "an enormous pile of kindling". The move started in 1919 and the first phase was completed in 1921. Known today as "North Hibbing", this area remained as a business and residential center through the 1940s when the mining companies bought the remaining structures. The last house was moved in 1968.
With stone buildings, this might be not so easy...
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With stone buildings, this might be not so easy...
They moved London Bridge from London to Arizona. Stone by stone. Not as easy, but certainly not unprecedented.
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However, they left all the buildings behind. And most stuff they owned.
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Re:Chinese (Score:4, Informative)
Nope, they built entire new cities for the people to move into and relocated shrines brick by brick. Netflix has a documentary on it... really quite impressive.
Why not just fill the mine? (Score:2)
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.
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Or you could have the people who want the iron ore to buy what is above it.
That might work for gold, but the iron ore isn't valuable enough.
They would rather instead force people to move, and offer them subsidized loans to build the replacement structure outside the area where there is iron ore to be mined.
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Also the MacKenzie brothers are Candian sophisticates, not hicks.
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Concrete on that scale would cause more problems than it's worth. Concrete off-gasses and pressure can build up, faults can form, etc. Not to mention the fact that a massive pour of concrete on that scale would probably take hundreds of years to dry if you tried pouring it all at once (dams usually pour it in small sections, contrary to popular belief).
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Concrete doesn't "dry", it hardens. It's a chemical process that happens naturally over the course of x-many hours after mixing (the 'x' will depend on the actual composition), doesn't require expose to air and in fact proceeds normally when poured under water or in vacuum. The majority of the hardening happens within a few hours, but the process doesn't actually complete until years have passed. Most concrete doesn't reach its full strength until months after pouring.
Dams and other large structures are
How Do You Move a City? (Score:2)
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.)
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bigass truck.
http://xkcd.com/37/ [xkcd.com]
What the? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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A blacksmith left them lying there?
Keep digging (Score:2)
Ask the EPA (Score:1)
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...
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Easy (Score:5, Funny)
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.
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Ah, you beat me to it. :)
Faster Method (Score:2, Redundant)
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.
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Not even close -- low-level at best.
In this town a certain man, very wealthy, but, as it afterwards appeared, a great rogue, having been buried, after his death sallied forth (by the contrivance, as it is believed, of Satan) out of his grave by night, and was borne hither and thither, pursued by a pack of dogs with loud barkings; thus striking great terror into the neighbors, and returning to his tomb before daylight. After this had continued for several days, and no one dared to be found out of doors after dus, -- for each dreaded an encounter with this deadly monster, -- the higher and middle classes of the people held a necessary investigation into what was requisite to be done; the more simple among them fearing, in the event of negligence, to be soundly beaten by this prodigy of teh grave; but the wiser shrewedly concluding that were a remedy further delayed, the atmosphere, infected and corrupted by the constant whirlings through it of teh pestiferous corpse, would engender disease and death to a great extent; the necessity of providing against which was shown by frequent examples in similar cases. ...
It would not be easy to believe that the corpses of the deat should sally (I know not by what agency) from their graves, and should wander about to the terror or destruction of the living, and again return to the tomb, which of its own accord spontaneously opened to receive them, did not frequent examples, occurring in our own times, suffice to establish this fact, to the truth of which there is abundant testimony. ...
Moreover, were I to write down all the instances of this kind which I have ascertained to have befallen in our times, the undertaking would be beyond measure laborious and troublesome
-- William of Newburgh in The history of William of Newburgh: The Chronicles of Robert de Monte [google.com]
Katrina - perfect time to move a city (Score:1)
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.
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There is no better spot
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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.
Put Detroit Politicians In Charge Of The City (Score:4, Funny)
They moved 1.3M people out of the city! 18k should be a snap for them.
+1 funny (Score:2)
That's funny.
our 2010 stay in the Ice Hotel (Score:2)
Just leave (Score:2)
Here are the streets
Here is the steeple
Look in the houses
The city's the people!
Been there done that in MN (Score:2, Informative)
Soldiers Grove, WI relocated and solarized in 1979 (Score:4, Informative)
Dillon, CO has moved several times (Score:2)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dillon,_Colorado [wikipedia.org]
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They flooded it once, so how did it move several times? Or are you simply referring to the sprawl known as Dilverthorne?
Isn't it obvious? (Score:1)
They Dug Too Greedy, They Dug Too Deep (Score:3)
Maybe they can open a Petting Zoo featuring that Balrog of Morgoth they have unleashed.
Ask Superman (Score:2)
Do nothing (Score:2)
Easy. Just do nothing and the city will move itself. Down.
Jukkasjärvi (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Valmeyer, IL (Score:1)
Leigh Creek (Score:2)
Bitter Local (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [google.se] (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 [google.se]
City Center competition, Googletranslated [google.se], 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.)
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Posting as AC as I didn't get an account ten years ago and missed out on those lovely low number IDs.
What, exactly, does that have to do with the price of fish? I don't exactly have a low ID either but I rarely see this mentioned unless you are talking absolute rubbish, which you are not... Or maybe you are? Posting as AC is somehow less suspicious than having a high ID? Is this some Swedish thing I'm missing?
We move this city... (Score:2)
And now the song is stuck in your head, too. You're welcome.
simpsons did it (Score:2, Redundant)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trash_of_the_Titans [wikipedia.org]
several options (Score:2)
You could use a spindizzy [wikipedia.org], you could use volucite [wikipedia.org], or you could just have it roll [thenightland.co.uk] on a road [thenightland.co.uk] (though that appears to be more realistic [techyum.com] than it might seem).
Don't know why it hasn't been posted yet. (Score:2)
Don't move it. Just built all the new buildings so that they retract into the geofront
Zoning. (Score:2)
Easy (Score:2)
Slashdot is Not Google (Score:2)
Here is an article that outlines their plans:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iP4VHSEkqJnn_6xvHvC58umph8mw?docId=CNG.b1cf7bba53e09623c881384352cd6325.b81 [google.com]
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 unde
need cheap labour: necromancy! (Score:2)
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
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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.
Easy. They didn't give me a deadline or a destination, so all I have to do is wait and let continental drift take it wherever it's going.
If they clarify and specify something like, "10 meters east by next Tuesday", then the next best solution is to just hack all the mapping software.
If they start getting snippy and say, "really physically move it 10 meters east by next Tuesday", then at s
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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.
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LOL, as far as I can recollect I've never heard this. Swear on a stack of Bibles. The 10 meters is a pure coincidence. Of course, questions like that have become cliches and I'm sure there are plenty of other stories like that. My favorite is always, "If you could be any animal, what would you be?" with a response of "What kind of animals are you hiring?" and the interviewee gets the job.
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Re:At last the question make sense (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd put quotes round the name, because otherwise it'll think I mean two files.
# mv "Mount Fuji" new_name
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I'd just throw an escape character before the space.
James Blish (Score:2)
Mod parent up
Spindizzies were invented before thte Stargate people came up with Atlantis
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You put the bomb under the city (Orion style)
Ever read Footfall (Niven/Pournelle)
Alternatively you could put it on rails (inverted world by Christopher Priest)
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sudo mv /big_hole/a_city /away_from_big_hole/a_city
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