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One City
A one or two compact cities instead of many | |
I thought I am not a kind of person who would miss people, but... Now, when the international study program, where I got to know many good people, is over... Realizing, that I may not be able to see some of the people in my life ever again, just because of world's large distances, made me feel like crying.
So
here I had this thought, that it would be convenient if we created One City.
The City would have a population of 6.5 billion, distributed in an area of 1.3 million km² (Two countries such as France would make up 1.1 million km²), with the population density of Tokyo (5000 per 1 km², or 200 m² per individual).
Let every country have a portion of the area proportional to their population (See [link]).
Build an advanced high-speed subway, and at least by one subway station for each "country".
[...]
Here are the three reasons why concentrating into a one city might be good:
1. Saving energy for transportation.
2. Saving time to meet all the people you love.
3. Have the best environment.
(If we were to create a city of the World somewhere, we would have a chance to choose the place beforehand. We could choose the place with the best climate, low earthquake, tsunami, hurricane threat and so on.)
Doubts or questions that I thought of:
How we could design it, how area would be separated for different countries, what location on the Earth we would select, how would we communicate?
What buildings would we create? What would we have a seas somewhere near? How would we make it a beautiful city, and how to start really creating it?
Would we have to build two or three of such large cities on Earth to prevent vulnerability in case of catastrophe, such as a meteorite colliding with Earth?
[...]
I searched for this concept, but did not find it yet on the net.
Inyuki Googlepage
http://inyuki.googl...ea_Distribution.htm
One City, Area distribution [Inyuki, Jul 21 2006]
Midgar
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midgar
[notmarkflynn, Jul 25 2006]
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Inyuki - if it helps at all - the World really is already One City. I (and many, many others these days) have friends spread across all manner of continentry, and, although I don't get to see them as often as I would always like - what with work and cheap airline tickets, I really do get to see them surprisingly often. |
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If you want to, you'll easily be able to get yourself a job that includes some international travel - and get to meet your friends almost as often as you want. Or, your friends will - either way (or both!) I'm sure it's going to work out just fine. |
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[+] For the sentiment anyway - even though rush-hour would be chaos. |
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[zen_tom], thank you for the sympathy. I understand. I believe I will meet some of them one way or another, but it might be much more difficult to meet them all at once. |
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Tickets might be getting cheeper, but the oil prices - are getting higher and higher. Also, flying by airplanes creates some air pollution, which has connection with the overall pollution and the global warming problem. |
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Of course, future promises new means of transportation, new sources of energy, so there are many ways to go. |
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I was also thinking of a virtual world, on the net, like the game, named "Second life", but it is long time until we get it somewhere near to the Reality. |
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Wars would get really ugly. Or disappear. Hopefully the latter. |
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Well, that depends on the people. I think essential for that would be education. |
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Maybe limiting the entrance to the main city by some psychometric tests would be reasonable to protect that, and for those who do not comply, there could be some very friendly education programs for preparing to become the citizens of the city. |
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People in the centre would die of heat exhaustion every year. |
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Too much pollution concentrated in one area. |
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What about going to work? Concetrating people in one area means that they have to spend hours on a plane just to get to a jobsite. Many people work outside of offices. |
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It would still be unfeasable even if you ignore the WIBNI aspect of every nation suddenly becoming friends. |
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[Cuit_au_Four], can you describe in more detail, what are your projections about the pollution, heat exhaustion in the center of the city, and the feasability of the concept? What are the percentage of people working in a non-rural area except the agriculture industry? |
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I admit that the transportation efficiency is a problem even in a relatively small city as Tokyo in rush hours. The long distance ticekts would perhaps become expensive in rush hours. |
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The cooling problem. Maybe we could take the cool air from the mountains building something like air-pipeline. (Is this baked?) |
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Inuki - I presume you are quite young, but
that doesn't excuse poor research. Where
will the folk live, who would farm the huge
area of land required to feed the whole
world for example? |
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You might want to look up Megalopolis
and also Buckminster Fuller. Giant cities
are nothing new, so where's the invention
in what you have described? |
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The threat of a terrorist nuclear bomb going off in a city is already scary enough as it is - there is no way you could get everyone to live in the one place. |
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Besides, I would expect this to limit the amount of variation within the human race - there would be necessity for fewer languages, cultures would clash, this idea just couldn't work. |
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[Ian Tindale], function of today's city is the same function. Scale different. |
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[xenzag], the invention is not in the size of the city. Let the World's population be only 20 people scattered around the Globe. Idea is the same - make it easy them to meet each other by changing their locations to make the distances smaller. |
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[fridge duck], terrorist nuclear bomb is really the scariest thing to imagine... :-( |
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Pollution? If you concentrate all of the garbage and air pollution of 6.5 billion people into France, I think you may have a problem. Specifically the air pollution aspect. |
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As for heat, you can Wiki "Urban Heat Island." |
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While transportation between persons may be reduced, and a centralized manufacturing district might help logistics for some items, transportation of other goods may be greatly increased. For example, rice paddies that only exported to SouthEast Asia may now have to ship half the globe. In addition, many small shipments of goods will still have to be made to small communities of those who work at natural resource extraction facilities, just as they are today. Drinking water and electricity also factor into this. By spreading around the globe, there is more direct access to drinking water and the renewable sources of electricity. By concentrating, transporting water is now a huge issue, requiring much more energy, and there will also be transmission losses in electricity from hydro dams. |
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This agglomerating of industries in one location could have interesting effects on the number of monopolies. I don't know whether the net result of putting everything in one location would ultimately benefit or harm a free-market economy, however. |
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Finally, if you are so interested in an international program, you would want to keep seperation of states. Accumulation fosters assimiliation, and a monoculture would inevitably arise upon subjecting everyone to a single legal code. (Unless different groups are to get different rights, which effectively divides them back into seperate states, which isn't a good idea, considering that many of these groups hate each other and are now just down the block from each other.) |
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Prediction: The world population would stop growing. |
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Grounds: Because of population density, people would realize how large is the world's population; Some limitations of the space in the city. |
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One step closer to Coruscant or Midgar is not a good step in my opinion. I don't want to imagine the amount of pollution and trash that will clog up the innermost areas. |
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So, I also do not agree with a "standard city" conception. |
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If the goal is merely to improve the transportation, maybe there are better ways of arranging the infrastructure. |
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The interesting thing, in my opinion, is that this is to 'build a city from scratch' rather than it being a Mega-City. Cities and conurbations tend to evolve, growing in size and swallowing surrounding settlements. They do this because for whatever reason (usually industrial or commercial) it is desirable to live or work in the city. But just starting a city from scratch is novel... |
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Most capital cities in Europe are built on a water way - obvious historical trade centres. I would think that is a good starting point for finding a location for MegaCity HB-1. |
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So can anyone think of a big river that hasn't yet got a city on it's banks? |
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