
Old Man River City – A Community Dwelling Machine - costcopizza
https://solutions.synearth.net/a-community-dwelling-machine/
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nrp
Part of the power of cities is that they balance density and modularity. You
don't need an enormous capital outlay to build a city all at once. It can grow
and shrinks organically at an individual building, street, and transit line
level based on the needs of the population and industry, and can update itself
piecemeal as new materials and construction techniques come into play.
Building an integrated "community dwelling machine" seems to disregard all of
that, and the practical reality if it would even have been possible to fund
the thing in the 1980's would have been an incredible, outdated, derelict hulk
in East St. Louis by 2019.

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topkai22
I don’t the modularity is necessarily lost with a mega structure like this-
interior remodeling of office, residential, and space happens all the time. As
for the updating- East St. Louis had extremely out dated housing stuck in the
1980s when this was proposed and it hasn’t gotten better AFAIK.

I think the real problem (outside the aforementioned capital outlay) lies in
the issues with the interface with the rest of the world/community. The
Arcology is just to self contained and reality isn’t. It’s often hard enough
to find locations within a current large office building or complex, it would
be even harder inside this concept. That’s really going to limit the retail
and service industry inside a mega structure like this. The circle shape is
also a problem- circles don’t pack well, so there is a natural stand off are
between the Arcology and the rest of the community. Integrating the internal
and external transport networks and infrastructure would be darn near
impossible.

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crooked-v
The endless miles of windowless and half-populated internal corridors seem
like they'd be both be awful to live with and serve as a substantial
enablement of crime.

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pharke
From this part of the description I get the feeling that it wouldn't be a
solid block of interior levels but would likely have some sort of atrium space
that is spanned by bridges

>Inside-that is, below the moon crater’s three-and-a-half-mile-eircumferenced,
surface-terraced mountain mass-are all the communal services not requiring
daylight: for instance, all the multilevel circumferential trolleyways,
interlevel ramps, roadways, and parking lots, with numerous radial crosswalks
and local elevators. There are radial crosswalk bridges at every four terrace
levels. These provide bridges-never more than two decks up or down-for walking
homeward, outwardly from the interior community bowl, to one’s individual,
terraced, tree-hidden dwelling area.

So it would probably look more like any of the countless building atriums
currently in existence, see
[https://www.google.com/search?q=building+atrium](https://www.google.com/search?q=building+atrium)

he also describes the crater structure as being an A-frame so I think that
lends credence my supposition.

You could certainly have filled in sections where needed to provide office or
retail space. It would actually be quite practical to partition the interior
space at regular intervals with a wall consisting of offices facing in to the
atrium space behind which you could place retail and a main thoroughfare
spanning from the inner to outer parts of the A.

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topkai22
My immediate thought was that Apple Park (the spaceship) looks like a
miniaturized commercial space only decedent of this idea. Even the scale is
roughly constant- Apple Park houses 12000 employees in roughly 1/10th the size
of the Old Man River City, which was to hold 125,000.

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LargoLasskhyfv
There is another, similar building in the United Kingdom.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Doughnut](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Doughnut)

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topkai22
After reading that, I realized the US pentagon building is also a roughly
similar concept, and is almost exactly the same diameter as Apple Park.

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unholythree
Arcologies always seemed like a neat idea to me, but I've never seen an in-
depth look at their proposed infrastructure.

What would power and communication distribution look like? HVAC? I assumed
chill water with several distributed plants. This place is going to need lots
of loading docks or it's own trainyard for food and other consumables.
Domestic and waste water would probably both need to be handled on site.

I've never seen those aspects of an Arcology design explored.

~~~
pharke
I think the key to working this out would be extending current practices
employed for large buildings with an eye to interconnection. Maybe the best
strategy would be to modularize the arcology so that it would be composed of
many interconnected structures that are each more or less self sufficient. You
could apply this to the Old Man River City by designing it as individual
slices of a toroidal pie and then replicating this design until you have the
full shape.

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Animats
At one point, Google was proposing building a dome over their part of Mountain
View. What happened with that?

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WarOnPrivacy
My take: This project's success would have depended on the ease and
affordability of maintaining it.

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harimau777
"Thus landscape-partitioned from one another, the individual homes beneath the
umbrella dome do not need their own separate weather roofs."

Is this saying that the houses themselves wouldn't have roofs? That would seem
like a pretty significant privacy and security issue.

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waste_monk
At first I thought it must have meant that the dome would make weatherproofing
individual roofs unneccesary (e.g. no need for a waterproof membrane if the
dome diverts all rain), but from the line "The experience will be that of
living outdoors in the garden, without any chance of rain and out of sight and
sound of other humans" I think you must be correct.

Putting aside the facts that A) some of us like the rain and the dome would
prevent that, not to mention forcing total reliance on artificial irrigation
if you want to have a garden, and B) it relies on the assumption that the dome
will never be cracked or compromised in any way, I must agree with you on the
privacy and security issues.

The design seems built around the idea that good spaces make good people, and
good people make good neighbors. This could not be further from the truth. I
live in a "nice" area and most people are selfish assholes, with absolutely no
consideration for their neighbors or (seemingly) any awareness that their
actions effect other people.

I have had to call the police multiple times for noise disturbances, have
caught my neighbors leaning over the fence and spraying my plants with
pesticides (I have a bunch of native plants and ground covers (well groomed,
not runnning wild) instead of a traditional manicured lawn, which I believe
they find offensive and were trying to kill - plus I have pets which chew on
the plants and don't want them getting poisoned), constantly have people
throwing rubbish over the fence into our yard, have had stuff stolen from the
yard (fence materials, paving stones, etc. that we were in the middle of
building with) etc.

If this city plan came to fruition I have no doubt it would degenerate into a
anarchistic hellscape within a month. My house walls and roof protect me from
the weather, but more importantly they protect me from the society in which I
live.

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pharke
Your initial assumption was correct. The sentence you quote is probably
describing what is now known as an indoor-outdoor area that combines elements
of a garden with a living space. Most of the house would be enclosed:

> The floors of the individual homes on the outward terraced slopes penetrate
> inwardly of the “mountainside” to provide an 85-percent-enclosed family
> apartment set back into the “mountain’s” surface

I do agree that the idea of only separating the exterior parts of the houses
with landscaping is a bad idea. Continuing the walls out to the edge would
make more sense, good fences make good neighbours and all that. The biggest
difficulty would be the visibility of your exterior space from above since
lower levels project out further than higher ones. No nude sunbathing unless
you aren't shy.

Honestly the dome overhanging the whole structure is the most ridiculous part
of this plan. It doesn't make any practical sense. I could see an argument for
doming the inner area like a sports arena though. It would be far more
practical and useful to extend a glazed roof over the outdoor area to provide
protection from weather and equip it with a retractable shade that can block
the hot sun and prying eyes. Combined with walls on either side and you have a
nice sun room that is more private and secure while still being much more
luxurious than a simple balcony.

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harimau777
Now that you point out that all of the houses are mostly "underground" the
dome seems especially odd since climate control would likely be relatively
easy.

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aaron695
Good advice for sea steading.

City's are easy if modular.

Buildings like this are only good for dystopian science fiction.

