Arcologies: Theory and some Calculations.

[VetLegion]

Originally posted by DRoseDARs
The notion they're having is that an acrology absolutely must be built in an all-or-nothing shot:

Well, put your pen/CAD to use and show us a sketch of an Arcology, and I'll point you out on your particular idea why it won't work

[Az]

The strongest basic point against archologies is: they're NOT needed. Just build dense, and you'll be ok. Actually, I really appreciate what the government here is doing for change.

[Colon™]

I'm quite fond of my somewhat chaotic, organically grown city to be honest. A city like Amsterdam already gives me the creeps because of its orderliness and samey architecture. I think you'd quickly see me jumping of the 3067th floor if you'd ever try to squeeze me into an arcology.

[VetLegion]

Of course they're not needed (and probably never will be). We can still discuss the pros and cons of various designs.

[Gatekeeper]

Well, KH, in the future world of arcologies, you can just play the role of the spooky, crazy old man who lives in the dark, thickly forested foothills.

Gatekeeper

[VetLegion]

Originally posted by Colon™
I'm quite fond of my somewhat chaotic, organically grown city to be honest. A city like Amsterdam already gives me the creeps because of its orderliness and samey architecture. I think you'd quickly see me jumping of the 3067th floor if you'd ever try to squeeze me into an arcology.

What impresses me is the degree to which you can use architecture to shape society. You can design a building so that it engourages socialization or so that residents never meet each other. You can alter the temperament of a city by opting for wide boulevards instead of small arabic-style sokaks.

Arcology has social engineering written all over it too.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Az
Oh no. The idea is very human - if you're talking about colonies on small planets/moons/no breathable atmosphere.

But this has no place on earth.

It depends on how many people there is and how much land we want to pave with cement.

I think there is some optimal height for buildings for maximising energy efficiency, so making buildings too tall will have the opposite effect (takes a lot of energy to make people, water, and things up).

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by VetLegion
If there is a need to tear down a building in a city to make a park, it's trivial to do it. Same with building a parking lot over a park.

But in an Arcology, once built, you can't change parts just like that, as the whole structure can collapse to the ground if you want to, say, make the 56th floor a floor without pillars, just for fun. After an Arcology is built, you're much more limited in reconstruction options than you are with 2D cities.

There really is nothing in an acrology that forbids you from changing the use of a particular floor as long as you obey the laws of physics.

[Colon™]

Originally posted by DRoseDARs
I guess I should throw in my own opinion too. The valid point was made earlier that (old Soleri and Le Corbusier -style) arcologies are pretty much as-is in terms of their ability to change with city culture. But Soleri's are the monolith type and Le Corbusier's are complexes of buildings. They are both very old and were conceived based on old understandings of nature and modern culture. Neither fully understood or expected the unimaginable expansion, nay, infection of the Earth's surface by the car and such urban sprawl as we know it. There is no written rule that once you build one (Soleri) archology in an area you can't build any more there. Just build another next to it. Several, in fact, creating a complex as envisioned by Le Corbusier. Dense urban environments like Tokyo or New York whose only option for growth is to build upwards are not failed ideas, they're a step in the right direction. As far as being built as enormous, soild blocks of metal and concrete where only a few lucky people get rooms with windows is not a fundamental design feature of the arcology, it's a fundamental feature of bad design and a failure of imagination and design effort on the part of the architects/engineers designing the project; they didn't "rise" to the challenges of arcological design, instead opting for cost-efficiency and ease-of-construction aka cop-out construction.

The problem with Le Corbusier, arcologies and other idealistic schemes is pretty fundamental. What they all have in common is that they lay out habitations according to a certain vision and all people who live and work in those have to conform to that vision. People differ from each other however, and they change. Most cities in the world, including New York and Tokyo, reflect this and that's what makes them viable places to live. They're varied and adapted to the people who live in them (rather the the opposite) since they were build in a bottom-up process, by multiple generations.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Smiley
Those looking to solve land shortages should lookat more than just housing, which is relatively easy to highrise. It's stuff such as warehouses, highways, shopping centers, parking, golf courses, airports, etc. that eat up lots of land.

Warehouses aren't that difficult. You can stack them on top of each other. We have a whole bunch of these here.

The demand for highways and car parks decrease as we move away from cars. We can also build car parks underground.

Golf courses are environmental hazzards and should be banned

Shopping centers can be part of multi-purpose highrises (we have loads of them here also).

[VetLegion]

There really is nothing in an acrology that forbids you from changing the use of a particular floor as long as you obey the laws of physics.

Exactly. You can level a city block without destroying the city, but you can't remove a floor from the middle of an Arcology without affecting structural stability.

What happens if half way through building an Acrology a flaw is found with the design, or an error somewhere near the base? Like the poor quality of concrete in the Ryugyong hotel. You have to tear down the entire thing.

The equivalent to the 3D structure (frame) of the Acrology in the normal 2D city are the city roads and utilities. You simply can't screw up with that.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by VetLegion
Exactly. You can level a city block without destroying the city, but you can't remove a floor from the middle of an Arcology without affecting structural stability.

Yeah, but you are comparing oranges and apples.

The same argument goes for all buildings more than a storey high. For example, you can't remove the ground floor from a two storey building without it collapsing.

I don't see a point in that.

Originally posted by VetLegion
What happens if half way through building an Acrology a flaw is found with the design, or an error somewhere near the base? Like the poor quality of concrete in the Ryugyong hotel.

Nowadays we use lots of various simulations for such buildings (many buildings for the Beijing 2008 Olympics went through the simulator phase), so I envison the same thing will happen for an acrology, but on a much bigger scale and more thorough.

As for an error in the base the same can be said for any skyscrappers. You need proper procedures and controls in place to eliminate these errors, that's all.

Originally posted by VetLegion
The equivalent to the 3D structure (frame) of the Acrology in the normal 2D city are the city roads and utilities. You simply can't screw up with that.

Roads and utilities got screwed up a lot. Who are you kidding?

[monolith94]

The Ryugong hotel is North Korea. This is America, home of the Empire State Building. We may not be the greatest in a great number of things, but we are at least pretty decent in construction.

[VetLegion]

There are elite neighbourhoods in cities, but there is a top and bottom in Arcologies. The bosses would be at the top. The Arcologies would start as police states, deteriorate into God-King theocracies and dissapear in flames of communist revolutions.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

when talking about personal preference - I hate cities, let alone something like Arcologies

but, if this world sustains itself long enough, I'd say that style of building will first happen on the moon, than on some different planet like Mars/etc... and eventually will come down here to Earh, as the culture/tech will change enouh so that models like these will become desireable for whatever reason.

But prior to that happening we will already have discovered how to do Fusion, and have virtually unlimited amounts of energy available to us, and space travel within solar system will become day to day reality... - take a short break on the Moon will be a holiday option, and I can't see all that happening within next 100 years, so it will be somewhere towards mid of this millenium if the earth + humanity survives in the current shape/form.