We are on the brink of a mandatory paradigm shift in everything we do, provoked by the imminent disappearance of petroleum and the requirement that we slow and reverse global climate change! We must convert from petroleum to 100% sustainable and renewable energy sources, starting with our cities, which will rapidly die without the food sourced by the 95% petroleum inputs that our current system requires! Why not consider linear cities that provide a far greater perimeter than our roughly circular cities, which have the minimum that is mathematically possible. These differences are compounded when you stack floors on top of each other to create vertical cities, which become impossible when all their inhabitants must walk into fields to grow their own crops because there is no more petroleum to produce the food and bring it to where people can eat it! Linear Cities can be built at right angles to prevailing wind directions, where everyone can walk into fields to grow their own food, and to supply those who are still stuck in existing cities, and towers! They can both power, and be supplied by high-, medium and low-speed speed rail, which are the only form of transportation outside of ships and electric vehicles that can be driven by wind, and which use only about 1/3 of the energy/passenger mile of cars and aircraft. Wind turbines along the top edge of the north to south linear city capture the energy of the wind that has accelerated as it passes over its 3 – 5 stories. Our current motorways can be used to deliver building materials to the cities just alongside them, and we can start by installing conventional wind turbines first, followed by both high-speed rail and a “high temperature” superconducting induction track/grid in the roadway to drive electric vehicles.
Mr Kim Gyr, Green Millennium, United States of America
4th International Urban Design Conference - 22 - 23 September 2011
When faced with an incomprehensable conclusion, one must always check their premises:
ReplyDelete- We are not running out of petroleum
- We are still in an ice age (if we weren't the polar ice caps wouldn't be there)
- Climate change may or may not exist, we don't have enough years of records to say if it does or doesn't, Seriously check the data
- Cities have cultural value, it is not your place to knock down and rebuild linear cities, you don't mention this but it's either everyone move out to a new build or the old one is rebuilt
- I'm sorry but not everyone is going to become farmers when the petrol runs out, it is true that we will eventually need to convert to new forms of energy, but that isn't needed for a long while and industry will do so when it isn't profitable to produce petrol anymore
- Not going to question the statistic about wind power, true or not, people want to use planes and I challenge you to make that affordable with non combustable materials
- Wind power doesn't produce enough energy to be viable unless you have them everywhere, many people (I don't mind them) see them as an eyesore and a noise polutant. They aren't a very good investment yet either, some companies are building them now, but you can't force people to build wind turbines when fossil fuels will do for now. Improvement comes from failure and necessity or need. As the saying goes, if it ain't broke don't fix it
- How much energy do you think it would take to transport all of those materials, and to run all the factories. Don't you see that it eliminates the point of stopping polution?
- That last bit made me laugh, a "High temperature" superconductor. Now I've heard it all.