Vertical towers contain all of life functions. Don't hop in the car to go to the shops or to the pool, get in a sky elevator and take it to that level.
I am talking about massive footprint buildings (say whole city blocks big) with light and ventilation controlled through intelligent facades, with parks, cinemas, restaurants, social services, galleries and everything we are used to travelling to available on some other level along with office space and living quarters.
this would preserve far more ground cover than spreading everything out at not a major cost to the quality of living, also reduce our reliance on transportation.
the problem is mobilising that much capital at once for such big projects, and convincing everyone its ok to live on level 223. maybe I need to talk to the omar of brunei, or maybe bill gates? this would be a project worth say $15billion.-- williamsmatt, Sep 17 2008 Extreme Engineering: Tokyo Sky City http://www.blinkbox...ng-Tokyo-s-Sky-CityThe program I saw, I think. [jutta, Sep 17 2008] Dubai "Vertical City" http://sabbah.biz/m...4-km-15-miles-tall/Prospectus of the design firm. [jutta, Sep 17 2008] Glen Howard Small: Vertical City 1965-1967 http://www.smallang...m_arch_pop.1.2.html [jutta, Sep 17 2008] "Vertical City of the Americas", Miami http://www.etchevar...camericas/site.html [jutta, Sep 17 2008] japan expo http://www.trhamzah...nagoya-tower01.html [williamsmatt, Sep 17 2008] Yeah, this is a pretty well known existing concept, or at least something architects flirt with. "Vertical City" has been a romantic name for a city full of skyscrapers for a while; once an expression like that takes hold, it's not that far-fetched to take it literally and start thinking about what it would take to do this for real.
If you do a web search for "vertical city", you'll find mention of both existing and projected mega-skyscrapers that might fit the bill; I've seen a feature about at least one of them on TV. Have some links.-- jutta, Sep 17 2008 I don't think "Arcology on the Slope of Mt.Erebus(Antarctica)" is taken yet if you want to do that one: infinite (for all intents and purposes) supply of fresh water and heat, plenty of wind to convert to light for winter months...-- FlyingToaster, Sep 17 2008 Hey, thanks for the comments and links. Very interesting. The main issue I was thinking about was how to get the amount of money and sales together at once to allow such an enourmous building to be built. the engineering and technology is there to go big, but the current financial modelling for construction has its limits.
one interesting proposal was stacking the japan world expo vertically [link]. needless to say it did not win despite the fact around 150ha of native bushland could have been preserved. and thats a lot in japan.-- williamsmatt, Sep 17 2008 random, halfbakery