[extropy-chat] urban sprawl as defense

[Emlyn]

Upload us all and store us in server farms deep underground, under
miles of concrete. Yeah!

-- 
Emlyn

http://emlynoregan.com   * blogs * music * software *


On Wed, 18 Aug 2004 22:36:14 -0700, J. Andrew Rogers
<andrew at ceruleansystems.com> wrote:
> 
> On Aug 18, 2004, at 10:07 PM, Spike wrote:
> > Most would agree that there is a growing threat to
> > western civilization of an attack by some sort of
> > weapons of mass destruction: bio, gas or nuke.  We
> > are developing antimissile tech, but seems to me
> > another parallel defense would be to encourage
> > urban sprawl.  An enormous smeared out suburbs
> > would be far less vulnerable to attack than an
> > enormous highly concentrated city, would it not?
> > The argument is made that urban sprawl is bad for
> > wildlife, but the alternative may encourage an
> > attack which would be bad for both humans and
> > wildlife.  Perhaps cities have outlived their
> > usefulness.
> 
> 
> The economic optimum would probably be something closer to clusters of
> dense "micro-cities" connected by very efficient transport networks.
> 
> You could sweep huge amounts of suburbia into a very small footprint if
> you built vertically such that the density was more like Chicago.
> Separate each of these so that there is 3-5 miles between any two
> micro-cities, with farms, open space, and whatever else is needed in
> between.  My back-of-the-envelope seems to indicate that this would
> work pretty well, at least in theory.  I don't know that people would
> like living in high-rises though, and it would require some adjustment
> of economic assumptions.  Much more environmentally friendly though.
> 
> 
> j. andrew rogers
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat
>