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!GUYX/6jp3w
06/05/10(Sat)18:41:54 No.9348044  The
'city of the future' looks a lot like the malls, airports and other
large indoor structures that you're already familiar with. Except
mixed-zone, with apartments in some areas, restaurants in others and so
on.
In the same way that you look back on rosy predictions of
the flying car and wonder why nobody realized what a poor idea it was,
we look back on your predictions of massive future cities and arcologies
and wonder how you thought you were going to pay for it, who was going
to build it, and where the magical new materials for it would come from.
It takes about five years to build a new hab via autolabor. And
we're talkin' one that houses maybe 8,000. Smaller ones go up quicker
but the trend is towards larger, partially-buried habs for the
insulation and energy savings, Older habs house as few as 4-5k, and the
biggest house around 15-20k. They're built mostly with materials you
already know about, and with methods you're familiar with, albeit
automated.
Most look, from the air, like either one or a series
of geometric ziggurats; four, six, eight sided with walls that lean in
towards the flat roof. All are painted white (for high albedo) anywhere
they're not coated with solar collectors.
Some of the open-air
northern cities do look roughly like your illustrations, toned down a
bit. But most of you won't live there. You'll live in the habs. |
