dsrtao: dsr as a LEGO minifig (Default)
dsrtao ([personal profile] dsrtao) wrote2010-01-15 06:01 pm

Arcology proposal for Boston

If that doesn't get James Nicoll's attention, I don't know what will. Photographic evidence of Orson Scott Card torturing a kitten, maybe.

Anyway. an apparently serious design proposal (though I don't think there are any backers, yet) to build a floating concrete arcology in Boston Harbor:

http://www.archboston.org/community/showthread.php?t=3208

Some initial questions spring to my mind:

- What about the traffic when people want to, I don't know, leave paradise to visit their undeserving friends? Where will they park their cars?

- Will any poor people be allowed to live there? Anyone middle-class who has, say, a job that isn't inside the arcology?

- Will this be a gated community, or can mortals walk around inside to worship the gods?

- Is it designed to fold up the drawbridge, hoist anchor and sail away in the event of zombie plague?

- Thirty years afterwards, will anybody be able to escape?

[identity profile] pale-chartreuse.livejournal.com 2010-01-16 02:22 am (UTC)(link)
There is no such thing as a serious design proposal with no backers.

This is what is politely know as "unbuilt architecture". Otherwise known as "what architects doodle while standing in the unemployment line". There are entire books of stuff like this from the 1930's.

Nothing here could escape a typical Boston permitting process. Never mind global warming.

[identity profile] metageek.livejournal.com 2010-01-16 02:08 pm (UTC)(link)
Nothing here could escape a typical Boston permitting process. Never mind global warming.

Yeah, I noticed they said, "this floating city isn’t worried about the threat of rising oceans"—but it's going to be economically dependent on a city which would be absolutely devastated by rising oceans.