Designing a Future City

Though I do not plan to major in Civil Engineering, the concept of cities has recently sparked the imagination of my ever-more contemplating mind. The concept was pushed even further into my face when I decided today (the current date of writing) to dig out some good ol’ software games that I used to play when I was ten or so. The game that really kickstarted my imagination was titled Sim City 3000 Unlimited, in case you wanted to know. Anyways, I really started to think about what was wrong with today’s city designs, what was right with those designs, and what was acceptable but could be improved upon in those designs.

Though I would tend to agree that current city designs are highly convenient if you don’t want too much distance in traveling from A to B, there come many drawbacks that come with it. For one, due to the common clustering with buildings in order to make this convenience in the first place, cities are usually very invasive to the natural environment in which they reside. Think about it. By just looking at a bird’s eye view of the core of a typical city, one can see that the ground around the buildings is almost completely inundated with pavement and perhaps concrete. It’s almost like there’s a rule that no grass or trees are allowed. Setting aside that major flaw, there’s also the problem with cities being way too invasive with the surrounding animate wildlife as well. For example, the fact that lights are literally on day and night in a typical major city can really mess up, say, a deer’s perception of day and nighttime, thus distorting their sleeping patterns. To top it off, there is still one still more prominent problem with urbanized areas, that being pollution. When it comes to urbanized areas, there also comes a higher concentration of people in one area at one time. From that, there is also a greater concentration of pollution resulting from the peoples’ presence. Such pollution ranges from obvious things, such as trash, to the chemicals that are put off in the air in order to generate energy to sustain the “gradient” of the area. Pollution, along with all the other negative attributes of a modern city’s invasive nature, have thus caused negative effects on the environment and its people. For example, the air pollution generated by, say, New York, has induced cases of Asthma with some of the people residing there. So, what can be done about this?

To overcome these sorts of problems, I believe that current urban design will need a complete overhaul. In fact, the only thing that I believe should stay, really, is the clustering of different places in a relatively small geospace. Anyways, let’s start out with the very foundation- it is a pretty integral part in the design of the city. First off, let’s deal away with our flat habits, Americans. No more building on pure flat ground. Instead, let’s choose, or if not possible, terraform a terrain that possesses an inverted cone-like dimple in the surface of the land, spanning out 20 or so miles by the radius. At this scale, the slope to the center would presumably be very small, so it’s not like people would be constantly sliding to the lowest point. This dimple would then predominantly be covered with a forest or other wildlife habitat that exists in the area. At the very base of the cone would house a water reservoir (e.g. large pond). Rainwater could collect here as it flows down from the slopes of the cone. That reservoir could also be drained somewhat from time to time to prevent over flooding and for use in urban applications.

On top of this cone dimple would rest a cascading array of buildings knitted together like cubes connected to cubes connected to cubes. Do you not understand what I am saying? Think of a wireframe cube, then divide it into smaller and smaller cubes in the inside and you pretty much get basic the idea. Anyways, buildings would structurally follow this basis. That way, movement from one building to another would not be constrained to a roadway on a single, flat surface. There would also be an improvement in the overall structural integrity of the city itself, as each of the buildings would literally be helping each other out. There would also be an easier method for adding new buildings, too. You could, for all practical intents and purposes, keep building upwards, as long as the bottommost supports put out. Speaking of supports, the supports would be a lot like trusses that would rise from key points in different areas of the slopes in the foundation dimple, up to the “true” ground level, where the cube array would begin. That way, all the buildings are held up, but there is very little invasion to the environment underneath. These supports, perhaps, could also lead to underground constructions, but that is just another ambitious thought. There would also be shock-absorbing horizontal supports connected to the edges of the cone dimple in order to protect against shocks from, say, high wind, or earthquakes. That is how the city would be designed structurally, now on to the next part.

Each horizontal and vertical support would be equipped with different green energy generators, such as solar panels. The outside building units would be primarily used for “tower farming.” The inside is where all the other activity of the city happens. Transportation would predominately be mass transportation, which would be integrated sort of like shuttles in an airport, only they would be able to move up and down as well -sort of like Willy Wonka’s Elevator, come to think of it.- Anyways, any personal transportation would be perhaps air-based, with the helicopter pad-like stations being located at the very top of the cubical “beehive.” One may ask why there would be such a disproportion between mass transportation and personal transportation, so I’ll answer them. For one, mass transportation would be integrated throughout this design, so there would be no need within-city. Also, because it would be a city in the first place, needing to leave in search of something else would be redundant. There is also the growing availability of virtual transportation, thanks to the ever-advancing Information Age.