Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
Speaker 1: podcast that looks at the future and says skyscrapers and
Speaker 1: subways and stations staring up at the United Nations. I'm
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren Foam, and I'm Joe McCormick. And
Speaker 1: this is going to be part two of a two
Speaker 1: part episode. When we were in the studio talking about
Speaker 1: the future of tall buildings and skyscrapers and vertical civilization,
Speaker 1: we we got so into the topic that we ended
Speaker 1: up going very long, so we decided to split it
Speaker 1: into for you all. So so, uh, it's not to
Speaker 1: overburden your ears. It's easily digestible chunks. Yes, So if
Speaker 1: you didn't listen to part one, go ahead and go
Speaker 1: do that and we'll meet you back right here. And
Speaker 1: now we're gonna talk all about some engineering, incredible feats
Speaker 1: and science fiction ideas and uh, probably some stuff about
Speaker 1: lad Yes. So yeah, as long as you have caught
Speaker 1: up on the first episode, please continue with what we're
Speaker 1: about to say right now. One of the things that
Speaker 1: occurred to me when I was first researching this topic
Speaker 1: is that when you think about it from my perspective,
Speaker 1: I wonder what you guys think about this. A super
Speaker 1: tall building isn't just a building. Like when you think
Speaker 1: about a building, it's mostly pretty static. I mean, depending
Speaker 1: on how many you might have utilities coming into a
Speaker 1: home or something like that. But if it's it's not
Speaker 1: just like building a very very large shed. Building a
Speaker 1: skyscraper is more like building a gigantic machine with many
Speaker 1: moving parts and functional difficulties you have to face and manage. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the taller building gets, the more engineering challenges you're going
Speaker 1: to face. Yeah, And so I wanted to start with
Speaker 1: one example that's sort of, uh, one of the frontiers
Speaker 1: of future super tall building design. Water distribution. Right, So,
Speaker 1: how do you get water to the toilets and the
Speaker 1: taps and the days and the recreational pressure washing machines
Speaker 1: on the top floor of a building you're not aware
Speaker 1: of the league's never mind. Well, to get to get
Speaker 1: water up to the top of a really tall building,
Speaker 1: you have to pump it. I mean, you can't just
Speaker 1: rely on on pressure from a water tower or something
Speaker 1: like that. If you're going up above where a water
Speaker 1: tower would be, Uh, you have to pump the water out.
Speaker 1: But the taller you're building is the more difficult, the
Speaker 1: more costs, the more time intensive it is to get
Speaker 1: the water from ground level up to the top of
Speaker 1: the building. So how do you get around this problem? Well,
Speaker 1: you know, we already talked about one in in the
Speaker 1: in terms of the Shanghai Tower collecting rainwater. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: an oldie but a goodie, and depending on what's in
Speaker 1: your rainwater, you might only be able to use it
Speaker 1: for certain purposes like the gray water uses that Lauren
Speaker 1: was talking about, right, But another proposal that will get
Speaker 1: to later on is the sky Mile tower in Future Tokyo.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about this towards the end of
Speaker 1: the episode. It's it's really, I think more of an
Speaker 1: idea than a than a real building proposal, but it
Speaker 1: suggests an interesting solution, which is cloud harvesting. Have you
Speaker 1: ever heard about this? Uh? No, I hadn't heard about
Speaker 1: it before, but it does sort of make sense the idea.
Speaker 1: It's almost like creating a a surface of condensation so
Speaker 1: that you can collect the water moisture that's already in
Speaker 1: the air exactly. Yeah, So it's a method of using
Speaker 1: specialized materials to harvest water vapor from the air itself.
Speaker 1: And one standard example, the one you might have read
Speaker 1: about before, isn't so much used in buildings, but it's
Speaker 1: just a standalone collector you might use where it's something
Speaker 1: like a big piece of mesh fabric that's specially designed
Speaker 1: in such a way that when it catches the wind
Speaker 1: water vapor in the air, condenses in the fabric and
Speaker 1: then drips down into the bottom of the fabric and
Speaker 1: eventually collects in a receptacle. Have you actually seen I mean,
Speaker 1: I've been seeing it on Facebook all over the place.
Speaker 1: I think it might even be a Kickstarter campaign, but
Speaker 1: it's it's a amping. It's it's meant to go be
Speaker 1: a thing that you take camping with you, and it's
Speaker 1: essentially some sort of of like almost like a mug,
Speaker 1: but it's designed to pull moisture from the air, condensed
Speaker 1: down and fill up so that you have drinking water
Speaker 1: right there and you just leave it out. And it's
Speaker 1: supposed to pull humidity from the air and condense that
Speaker 1: into water. I have not looked into it further to
Speaker 1: make sure that it uh makes sense, but I mean
Speaker 1: the basic principles definitely makes sense. Whether that particular product
Speaker 1: works the way advertised, I don't know. In principle, this
Speaker 1: is not like an if thing. You you can use
Speaker 1: materials to collect water vapor from the air. That's a
Speaker 1: proven concept. I don't know about the scale issues of
Speaker 1: applying that to the water needs of a occupants skyscraper.
Speaker 1: It goes a mile into the sky, as the sky
Speaker 1: mile tower will propose. And again I'm going to mention
Speaker 1: that in a bit, but but it's a cool idea
Speaker 1: in general. I guess the way the would apply to
Speaker 1: a skyscraper would mean something about putting the special materials
Speaker 1: and drainage systems on the outside facade of the building,
Speaker 1: although at that point you might need to start getting
Speaker 1: back to terriffence our our climate episodes again into at
Speaker 1: least being aware of what that kind of moisture collection
Speaker 1: is going to do to your weather patterns around the
Speaker 1: city and whether or not it's going to have a
Speaker 1: detrimental effect. Yeah, it's kind of hard to imagine without
Speaker 1: having built it first. Yeah, but there are other big challenges,
Speaker 1: and one of them we've already kind of alluded to
Speaker 1: you You mentioned like the idea of traffic flow in
Speaker 1: these large buildings, but beyond traffic flow, just creating elevators
Speaker 1: that work in these environments is incredibly challenging. Yeah. Just
Speaker 1: try to imagine taking a normal elevator up one hundred
Speaker 1: floors to your office in the morning. Yeah. Well yeah.
Speaker 1: The thing. The thing is, guys, is that if you're
Speaker 1: going to have an elevator pull you a couple hundred
Speaker 1: stories up into the sky, it's going to need some
Speaker 1: really serious muscle. And I've got some statistics from a
Speaker 1: really great piece that was in Scientific American in by
Speaker 1: one Larry green Meyer, and he was talking about the
Speaker 1: elevators in the one World Trade Center, which is the
Speaker 1: tallest building in the Western Hemisphere at one thousand, seven
Speaker 1: hundred and seventy six ft sev seventy six. Get it,
Speaker 1: sit down, John, see what they did there, um which
Speaker 1: is five forty one and it has seventy one elevators
Speaker 1: that are driven by eight electric motors weighing two point
Speaker 1: three tons apiece, which used five hundred tons of counterweights. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you're talking, you know, you have to use these
Speaker 1: massive counterweights in order to uh to get these elevators
Speaker 1: to work the way they were intended to work. And also, Joe,
Speaker 1: you were pointing out before we even started to go
Speaker 1: into the studio for the video piece that ultimately it's
Speaker 1: not just the elevator that you have to worry about
Speaker 1: or the weight, but the physical cable as well. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, as the cable keeps getting longer, So what
Speaker 1: what they would typically use in a system like this
Speaker 1: is steel wound rope and then a counterweight and a
Speaker 1: pulley system. And yeah, so once you get hundreds and
Speaker 1: hundreds of feet of steel cable, that really starts adding
Speaker 1: up in weight in itself. Yeah. Yeah, And and just
Speaker 1: in terms of the tentsile strength that you need in
Speaker 1: the materials science involved in that kind of equation. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of like we we talked about this
Speaker 1: with our Space Elevators episode two. The idea that as
Speaker 1: as you get longer, the weight gets gets greater, which
Speaker 1: means the strength needs to be greater in order to
Speaker 1: handle the way the thickness needs to be greater, which
Speaker 1: it just it just becomes like once you hit a
Speaker 1: certain tipping point, you realize this is no longer practical, right.
Speaker 1: But another thing that I think is important to consider
Speaker 1: with the elevators is that they're not just for moving
Speaker 1: cargo or something. Yeah. There, there's there's delicate human people,
Speaker 1: uh shoved shoved up in these things. Yeah. It kind
Speaker 1: of reminds me of some of the often overlooked limitations
Speaker 1: on aircraft and spacecraft design. Rapid acceleration is great on
Speaker 1: a crued spacecraft, unless it's so rapid that it renders
Speaker 1: unconscious or kills the passengers, generally considered to be a
Speaker 1: bad thing trowned upon in most offices. Now, I doubt
Speaker 1: we're going to have an elevator that would kill you,
Speaker 1: but there could be elevators that would be really unpleasant. Sure,
Speaker 1: I'm reminded of of like space Mountain, like the amount
Speaker 1: of jostle that you get on a on an old
Speaker 1: roller coaster. Okay, So to to get elevators to move
Speaker 1: both quickly and smoothly, the rail systems that guide them
Speaker 1: need to be as frictionless as they possibly can. But
Speaker 1: since elevators are moving vertically, their rails have to come
Speaker 1: in these short chunks that are going to support the structure,
Speaker 1: meaning that you need a lot of rail joints to
Speaker 1: connect all of them, um which are bumpier than just
Speaker 1: a stretch of rail rights you can probably understand. You
Speaker 1: also then have to account for stuff like the building's
Speaker 1: potential temperature changes and sway, as we were talking about
Speaker 1: in Shanghai Tower, and you just wind up needing to
Speaker 1: engineer all kinds of materials and systems that help absorb
Speaker 1: shocks and and kind of smooth the ride out so
Speaker 1: that you're not rattling people's teeth. I would imagine that
Speaker 1: with all those joints. Yeah, like you're saying, the temperature changes.
Speaker 1: If if one section is slightly warmer than the other,
Speaker 1: it may expand a bit, which means that you have
Speaker 1: created a bit of a jostling sensation as the elevator
Speaker 1: passes that that joint of track sway. As you point
Speaker 1: out again, anything that could push these rails out of
Speaker 1: alignment could cause some, if if not dangerous, at least
Speaker 1: uncomfortable side effects. Certainly, you also have to deal with
Speaker 1: air pressure, and not just in the cabin like we
Speaker 1: were talking about your your ears popping in that kind
Speaker 1: of internal discomfort, but also in the shaft of the elevator,
Speaker 1: because pulling an elevator car around means that you're also
Speaker 1: shing around a lot of air and creating a higher
Speaker 1: air pressure in the direction that the cab is moving
Speaker 1: and a lower air pressure behind it. So that means it, okay,
Speaker 1: like if an elevator is moving up, the resulting air
Speaker 1: pressure could blow out the doors on the floor on
Speaker 1: the floor above it and suck in the doors on
Speaker 1: the floor below it, right, So yeah, I just I
Speaker 1: just imagine, like if they have not thought about this
Speaker 1: with these super tall buildings, all I can imagine is
Speaker 1: going through the front door, walking toward the desk, and
Speaker 1: then immediately getting blown out the building because all the
Speaker 1: elevators are coming down to the ground floor, pushing all
Speaker 1: that air out into the lobby, and then you just
Speaker 1: shoot out like a bullet. Uh. So yeah, that's clearly
Speaker 1: something that you have to have some way to vent
Speaker 1: that air in a in a way that's going to
Speaker 1: be safe well, or just to just to mitigate it
Speaker 1: through aerodynamic controls on the elevator cab itself, on the
Speaker 1: outside of the cab. Um And yeah, a shaft design
Speaker 1: at that point becomes very importan um uh computer programming. Hey,
Speaker 1: if you guys have ever waited for elevators, let's say,
Speaker 1: a busy hotel or a convention center. You know how
Speaker 1: tough it is for even very good computers to handle
Speaker 1: large numbers of requests in multi elevator banks, largely due
Speaker 1: to the fact that some jerk faces will hit both
Speaker 1: the up and the down button no matter which direction
Speaker 1: they need to go, because they figure again in the
Speaker 1: first one that gets there. Don't do that, No, never
Speaker 1: do that. Just the worst. If you need to go up,
Speaker 1: just press the up button. Just press the up button,
Speaker 1: because then the computer system can handle it and you'll
Speaker 1: get there faster. Trust me, Yes, don't confuse computers. It's impolite.
Speaker 1: See you with dragon con Uh. I just use a
Speaker 1: personal gyrocopter and I'm great. Balcony to balcony, baby, go
Speaker 1: go gadget copter. There you go. But yeah, there's there's
Speaker 1: also another consideration with these super tall buildings and elevators,
Speaker 1: a very important one, which is what happens if something
Speaker 1: were to go catastrophically wrong and you need to evacuate
Speaker 1: the building. Uh? Yeah, you know how like most elevator
Speaker 1: lobbies have those signs warning that, you know, in case
Speaker 1: of a fire or whatever, you should use the stairs. Uh.
Speaker 1: In super tall buildings, people would not physically be able
Speaker 1: to exit fast enough via stairs. So these types of
Speaker 1: elevators need to need to be able to keep working
Speaker 1: in the case of an emergency, and also need to
Speaker 1: be programmed to take people to like designated rescue floors,
Speaker 1: which is hypothetically the quicker, easier way to get people
Speaker 1: out in in an emergency. Right And in other words,
Speaker 1: you won't don't have to worry about having to go
Speaker 1: down a hundred and twenty flights of stairs. Yes, that
Speaker 1: sounds like a bad day, you know that. That sounds like, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that sounds like there's gonna be a horrible outcome no
Speaker 1: matter what. So yeah, you have to think about that.
Speaker 1: That's it's actually one of the big challenges that I
Speaker 1: listed when we were thinking about pros and cons and
Speaker 1: uh and I'm glad that you addressed it here because
Speaker 1: it's it's are the ones that merely jumped out at
Speaker 1: me other future technologies that people are considering in in
Speaker 1: terms of because because all of these are are pretty
Speaker 1: much expansions of typical elevator technologies and stands today. But
Speaker 1: but people are forward thinking indeed, And uh so, okay,
Speaker 1: so we talked about tracks, what else moves at high speeds?
Speaker 1: On tracks bananas, no trains, Um, and we've got mag
Speaker 1: leave bananas. No, I mean trains. So why not you know,
Speaker 1: motor propelled magnetic levitation elevators. People have actually suggested this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's an interesting idea. Yeah, and Okay, they'd use a
Speaker 1: lot of energy and they'd create a lot of heat
Speaker 1: that you need to figure out how to dispel. But
Speaker 1: you could have multiple cabs in any given shaft moving
Speaker 1: around at the same time, and they wouldn't have to
Speaker 1: go just up and down. We're like basically talking about
Speaker 1: a wonkovator. But the really cool idea here, Yeah, allowing
Speaker 1: them to go a multiple directions means that you wouldn't
Speaker 1: have to wait on one car in one shaft, like
Speaker 1: you said, You could have multiple cars moving around like
Speaker 1: in a circle, so that you just have to wait
Speaker 1: until the next one arrives. Yeah. Also, the snowsberries would
Speaker 1: taste like snowsberries, they would. I dispute you. I've got
Speaker 1: I've got five little guys outside who have a whole
Speaker 1: song about it. I've got one really big guy. Uh
Speaker 1: right now, none of these maglev elevators exist. Um. Longtime
Speaker 1: elevator company Otis was playing with the idea in the
Speaker 1: late nineties, but eventually shelved it. Uh Fisson Krupp, which
Speaker 1: is the designer of the one World Trade Center elevators,
Speaker 1: and a local company here for us. They're up in Alpharetta.
Speaker 1: I didn't know that. Yeah, they've got their own version
Speaker 1: called Project Multi, which is in the works. It's it's
Speaker 1: vertical shafts would connect via these like horizontal turnstiles, which
Speaker 1: would let a single elevator cab like snake its way
Speaker 1: through a bill being as needed, and as of last summer,
Speaker 1: their plan was to test a prototype in Germany as
Speaker 1: of Yeah, I don't I don't know. So I think
Speaker 1: the idea of Maglave elevators is a really interesting one
Speaker 1: and definitely has some promise in general. At this particular company,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure about because I I saw a piece
Speaker 1: kind of critical of their proposal in the I think
Speaker 1: it was a tech opinion piece in Al Jazeera, and
Speaker 1: so I don't know what to think about that. Also,
Speaker 1: it seemed like I was trying to find recent stuff
Speaker 1: on their proposal and couldn't. But maybe maybe they're just
Speaker 1: working on it. Yeah. The last that I could find
Speaker 1: about it was in the middle of Yeah, but you
Speaker 1: know who knows. Maybe they're they're quietly doing it. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: you know what's interesting also is that we've seen some
Speaker 1: really cool um proposals for skyscraper design not necessarily meant
Speaker 1: to be put into practical construction. Sometimes it's more of
Speaker 1: a here's a really in a sting concept. Uh that
Speaker 1: changes the way we think about what a skyscraper could be. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of the ones I wanted to talk about is,
Speaker 1: like we said, I don't think anybody's gonna build this
Speaker 1: anytime soon, but we can dream. It was a really
Speaker 1: cool design from the Polish architecture firm, Uh not firm,
Speaker 1: It's a Polish architecture collective called BOMB. I think that
Speaker 1: was made from the initials the last initials of the
Speaker 1: architects who were involved, but it one and Evolo Design
Speaker 1: competition with the idea of this thing called the Essence skyscraper.
Speaker 1: And essentially this is a very tall building with multiple levels,
Speaker 1: each containing massive recreated natural environments of various climates. So
Speaker 1: one way I think, the way I put it in
Speaker 1: the video script is that it's like a gigantic multi
Speaker 1: level terrarium. But another way to think of it is
Speaker 1: it's it's sort of like going through all the episodes
Speaker 1: of Planet Earth with each level of the building, So
Speaker 1: you have levels that are caves, jungles, desert, grassland, glaciers.
Speaker 1: And I love this idea. I wish somebody would build
Speaker 1: something like this because that would be so cool to
Speaker 1: have right in the middle of a city. The concept
Speaker 1: drawings are really cool. Like the one concept I saw,
Speaker 1: the entire exterior of the skyscraper was transparent, so you
Speaker 1: could see in and see these different environments at different
Speaker 1: like they look to be suspended in mid air because that,
Speaker 1: you know, the entire building was transparent. So it was
Speaker 1: a really sort of star trek e kind of idea.
Speaker 1: And like you had also mentioned in your script, it
Speaker 1: gives you the opportunity to visit all sorts of different
Speaker 1: climates without ever having to leave your home city, which,
Speaker 1: depending upon what you want to do, could be great.
Speaker 1: I mean that could mean that you, instead of getting
Speaker 1: on a plane and generating a larger carbon footprint for
Speaker 1: your vacation, you go and you press a little elevator
Speaker 1: button and you go visit the Antarctic. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: would certainly say that I wouldn't hope that it would
Speaker 1: be a complete substitution forever going out into nature, but
Speaker 1: as something that would be close by without you having
Speaker 1: to travel a great distance. For for city dwellers, I
Speaker 1: think it would be a really great life enriching kind
Speaker 1: of thing. Yeah, I accessibility is lovely. Yeah, I just
Speaker 1: don't know how you would ever, Like, I can't imagine
Speaker 1: the energy needs that building would be, honest, in order
Speaker 1: to maintain that many very different ecosystems. Yeah, you can't
Speaker 1: put the actually I don't know. Maybe you could put
Speaker 1: like the desert room in the glacier room next to
Speaker 1: one another, so that so that the the offput of
Speaker 1: the energy from one could could Then you're like, well,
Speaker 1: I gotta go into the swamp room. It's the one
Speaker 1: that goes in between the two. Uh. Yeah, that was
Speaker 1: lunch break. Time to go catch some crowd ads. That
Speaker 1: is a really interesting, interesting concept. Another one which we
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier the sky Mild Tower. Yeah, this is another
Speaker 1: one that who knows if anybody will ever actually try
Speaker 1: to build anything like this right now, it's just it's
Speaker 1: an idea, it's proposal, but it is a cool one,
Speaker 1: I think. Um And so, a couple of firms called
Speaker 1: Cone Peterson Fox Associates and Leslie E. Robertson Associates have
Speaker 1: they recently proposed this thing called Sky Mile Tower, and
Speaker 1: it would be a tower in Tokyo. And actually it
Speaker 1: wasn't just a tower they proposed. They were talking about
Speaker 1: this whole idea called Next Tokyo and it imagines the
Speaker 1: possibility of creating islands of reclaimed land in the middle
Speaker 1: of Tokyo Bay. So if you know what Tokyo Bay
Speaker 1: looks like, it's kind of an elongated oval shaped sort
Speaker 1: of thing, uh. And in the middle of it there
Speaker 1: there's a place where the land masses on both sides
Speaker 1: kind of come close together. And this would imagine creating
Speaker 1: this artificial archipelago across that area. And and some of
Speaker 1: the islands are like these hexagonal yeah things that you know,
Speaker 1: they look extremely man made, yes, And the whole concept drawings,
Speaker 1: I should say, yeah, And the idea of it is
Speaker 1: that it would it would not just be a place
Speaker 1: for for transit and for you know, high occupancy buildings,
Speaker 1: but that it would also serve a function for the city,
Speaker 1: uh in protecting the rest of the bay from extreme
Speaker 1: coastal weather events and breaking up incoming waves. Sort of
Speaker 1: like the idea of how can we continue to build
Speaker 1: if Tokyo continues to grow, how can we continue to
Speaker 1: build in a way that also takes into account things
Speaker 1: like climate change, which could end up causing greater, more
Speaker 1: frequent violent weather events. Uh, and yet we still have
Speaker 1: this this other demand of continuing to grow our our
Speaker 1: city and furthermore, the obvious problem that we've seen with
Speaker 1: with tsunami and stuff like that. Yeah. So so why
Speaker 1: call it the sky Mild Tower. Well, because if actually built,
Speaker 1: the tower would be about eaters tall, which is about
Speaker 1: one vertical mile. Yeah, at one point six kilometers so yeah,
Speaker 1: oh yes, because kilometers instead of that is so tall,
Speaker 1: this would uh, this would make that that other tower
Speaker 1: I was talking about that's actually in the process of
Speaker 1: being built, uh look tiny in comparison. Yes. So, so,
Speaker 1: right now, the tallest building in the world is the
Speaker 1: Birch Khalifa in Dubai. Yes, that's the biggest mega tall
Speaker 1: building that exists, and that is around eight hundred and
Speaker 1: thirty meters tall. So this would be almost doubling the
Speaker 1: height of the tallest skyscraper in the world right now,
Speaker 1: which is already hard for me to imagine I without
Speaker 1: actually going to Dubai and seeing this this building in person,
Speaker 1: it's very difficult for me to imagine a building that tall.
Speaker 1: I don't have a good I don't have a really
Speaker 1: good idea of how long a mile is, like being
Speaker 1: annoyed by like three quarters the way through it that
Speaker 1: I'm still walking. Yeah, So so if you were to
Speaker 1: imagine a mile straight up, that makes it even more challenging, right,
Speaker 1: because most of us don't jump that high, So I'm
Speaker 1: unfortunately not Spider Man. Yeah. When you when you hear
Speaker 1: the dudes of the gym bragging about their mile time,
Speaker 1: it's like no, no, no no, no, I'm talking about a
Speaker 1: vertical mile. So again, like we were saying earlier, this
Speaker 1: is this is sort of a concept. It's not necessarily
Speaker 1: something that's going to be put into there, don't There
Speaker 1: don't appear to be any plans to fund this or
Speaker 1: building yet. But maybe it's just meant as more of
Speaker 1: kind of like getting some ideas on the table, sort
Speaker 1: of inspiring people to say, if we were going to
Speaker 1: try to do something like this, how would we do it?
Speaker 1: And I think that's cool to do. Yeah, And it
Speaker 1: may end up being that it inspires someone to take
Speaker 1: preps uh uh a less um uh, you know, a
Speaker 1: less extreme approach, but one that would incorporate a lot
Speaker 1: of the same ideas and philosophy ease from that design.
Speaker 1: One last thing I do want to say is if
Speaker 1: you're interested in the sky Mile Tower proposal, you can
Speaker 1: read more about it their proposal papers hosted on the
Speaker 1: Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitats page, which I
Speaker 1: didn't know there was a council for that. There is,
Speaker 1: so it is like the Council of Wizards. The one
Speaker 1: I want to tell you you must destroy this ring
Speaker 1: and build this building. The one I wanted to mention
Speaker 1: that I saw that thought was really cool was a
Speaker 1: design that has casually been referred to as the Mountain
Speaker 1: band Aid and it's ah. It was part of a
Speaker 1: skyscraper design concept design competition. I think it took third
Speaker 1: place in two thousand and twelve. But it was a
Speaker 1: response to China's mining industry, which a lot of people
Speaker 1: view as being particularly destructive to the environment and to
Speaker 1: people who live in the local area. Uh. It can
Speaker 1: impact their lives in a very negative way, particularly when
Speaker 1: you remember that China is our main source for rare
Speaker 1: earth minerals, so there are a lot of very aggressive
Speaker 1: mining projects throughout the country. The Mountain band aid looks
Speaker 1: like what would happen if you were to cover a
Speaker 1: surface of a mountain with with a building. So the building,
Speaker 1: the building actually uh conforms to the curves and contours
Speaker 1: of the mountain itself. So it's a skyscraper in the
Speaker 1: sense that the mountain is scraping the sky exactly. It's
Speaker 1: as tall as the mountain is, but not taller, so
Speaker 1: it's not much taller. Yeah, it juts out from the
Speaker 1: mountain's surface, which raises questions, right like, how would you
Speaker 1: get further up the Would there be special elevators that
Speaker 1: would go at an at an angle so that you
Speaker 1: could get from the bottom of the base of the
Speaker 1: mountain up to the top snaky Magla elevators. Maybe it's possible,
Speaker 1: But it was just it was really kind of a
Speaker 1: very interesting artistic design, and it was meant to be
Speaker 1: away of saying, let's let's place a band aid the
Speaker 1: idea of healing the damage that has been done to
Speaker 1: China's mountain sides and give back a place for the
Speaker 1: people who live there to to live, work, play a
Speaker 1: place that is good, a good, you know, healthy kind
Speaker 1: of place to live. It's really interesting. Again, it was
Speaker 1: meant as kind of an inspirational concept, not something that
Speaker 1: would ever practically be built. But um yeah, let's let's
Speaker 1: talk a little bit. Now we've we've covered all the
Speaker 1: kind of dream ideas, the engineering challenges, the fact that
Speaker 1: we do expect to see cities continue to grow based
Speaker 1: upon projections. Should we really invest in building vertical civilizations?
Speaker 1: What are what are some of the reasons to do it?
Speaker 1: What are some of the reasons that maybe maybe not
Speaker 1: necessarily reason not to do it, but things we have
Speaker 1: to keep in mind. Well, I think the most obvious
Speaker 1: pro and the main one that we should think about
Speaker 1: his horizontal efficiency. It would bring it so if you
Speaker 1: have a city and you can concentrate it into vertical volume,
Speaker 1: so you shrink it down and you have less distance
Speaker 1: to drive from place to place, it would just bring
Speaker 1: all of the city dwellers activity points in life closer
Speaker 1: and closer together, meaning they spend less time, less money,
Speaker 1: less energy, and less carbon emissions getting from one place
Speaker 1: to another. So, assuming that you are able to live, work,
Speaker 1: and play in the same vertical city, then, uh, it
Speaker 1: makes it much easier. It reminds me actually when when
Speaker 1: my wife went on a tour of various homes, there
Speaker 1: was like this this thing that happens every year where
Speaker 1: in different neighborhoods in Atlanta, you can go and tour
Speaker 1: different types of homes to just to see how how
Speaker 1: they're set up. It was when Pont City Market, the
Speaker 1: building that our offices in, was just showing off a
Speaker 1: model loft, and so she to check it out just
Speaker 1: to see it. And she came back and talked to
Speaker 1: me about it, and I said, so, uh, would you
Speaker 1: ever want to move there? And she said no, because
Speaker 1: I hate the thought that you would be able to
Speaker 1: roll out of bed five minutes before you have to
Speaker 1: be at the office, take an elevator, and you're there
Speaker 1: where I have to go, get in the car, drive
Speaker 1: across the city. Like, oh, so it's because you're petty.
Speaker 1: I understand. All the best decisions are made out of spite. Um.
Speaker 1: I was trying to think of a con and I
Speaker 1: guess one that occurred to me. I hate to say this,
Speaker 1: it's kind of morbid to think about, but I do
Speaker 1: think maybe it's worth mentioning. Is that when you're concentrating
Speaker 1: more and more people into more space, especially if you're
Speaker 1: considering skyscrapers. September eleventh starts to kind of come to
Speaker 1: some people's minds, probably especially in the United States, and
Speaker 1: it makes you think that, well, if you're worried about
Speaker 1: the possibility of nuclear war, a large scale terrorist attack,
Speaker 1: or something like that, gathering more and more and more
Speaker 1: people into smaller and smaller spaces, this is essentially a
Speaker 1: worst case scenario, making making it easier to do more
Speaker 1: damage to human life and in human civilization with fewer
Speaker 1: strikes on On the other hand, Uh, like we've mentioned before,
Speaker 1: one of the cool things about trying to do this
Speaker 1: is you end up identifying what are your challenges, what
Speaker 1: are your barriers to actually making a vertical city and
Speaker 1: a super tall building become a reality? Yeah, And once
Speaker 1: you identify them, then you have to start engineering away
Speaker 1: to to solve that problem. Yeah. It's a con when
Speaker 1: you're starting out, but it becomes a pro when you've
Speaker 1: designed all of this amazing new technology, yeah, which could
Speaker 1: possibly be put to use in other applications, not necessarily
Speaker 1: just for your vertical city or super tall building. Which
Speaker 1: is very similar to what we say about pure research,
Speaker 1: like you never know what the benefits will be when
Speaker 1: you set out to do something like this, So I
Speaker 1: would say that's a pro There are other cons as well.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously we we mentioned the the in case
Speaker 1: of emergency one, how do you effectively evacuate a building
Speaker 1: that has that many people in that small a footprint,
Speaker 1: Like you've got a huge amount of floor space collectively,
Speaker 1: but when you look at the actual base of the
Speaker 1: building and you think how many people are represented in
Speaker 1: this square footage at the base, it's enormous, And so
Speaker 1: you have serious traffic issues you have to think about
Speaker 1: when you in the case of an evacuation. Uh. Speaking
Speaker 1: of serious traffic issues, roadways are not necessarily meant at
Speaker 1: this current juncture to handle the amount of pedestrian traffic
Speaker 1: that would start happening in cities if we started building
Speaker 1: these giant vertical towers. I agree with that, But then again,
Speaker 1: I think that that may be due to the fact
Speaker 1: that we sort of have hybrid cities right now. We
Speaker 1: have hybrid vertical and horizontal cities. So because you've got
Speaker 1: all this horizontal sprawl, you've got a lot of drivers
Speaker 1: who say, well, you know, I don't live particularly close
Speaker 1: to a train station or anything like that, so I
Speaker 1: don't so I so I drive into work. Um, if
Speaker 1: you had everybody gathered together in a pretty close area,
Speaker 1: you might have a much better case for almost everybody
Speaker 1: using public transportation and very little actual vehicle ownership. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or walking. Yeah, that the longest part of your commute
Speaker 1: would be catching that elevator in the morning. Or I
Speaker 1: think it could be interesting if you get to a
Speaker 1: point like taking this to the science fiction extreme, where
Speaker 1: you ask someone, so, where do you work? Oh? I
Speaker 1: work over on floor Okay, yeah, I've seen that on
Speaker 1: my way down to floor to twelve's neighborhood. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well and and then and then the petty thing would
Speaker 1: be like, well, I want to live in this building
Speaker 1: because it's where my office is. Well, but but I
Speaker 1: work in the building next door. And that's just a note.
Speaker 1: That's that's a breaker. Get up and get in the elevators.
Speaker 1: And Joe and I also talked about what if you
Speaker 1: went to the dystopian extreme where your entire society is
Speaker 1: contained within your vertical building, and you then have your
Speaker 1: vertical building have very little contact with other vertical buildings,
Speaker 1: so then eventually get to a point where generations thousands
Speaker 1: of years later, you come out of the buildings and
Speaker 1: meet the people from the other buildings and you're all
Speaker 1: very different genetic strains and the grays at that point, Yeah,
Speaker 1: occasionally you have to do genetic genetic exchanges just to
Speaker 1: keep everyone viable. And granted, that's that's like Terry Gilliam
Speaker 1: level science fiction right there. But yeah, yeah, that's that's
Speaker 1: pretty far out. Um uh bringing it back just a
Speaker 1: little bit from there, Yeah, you've got that that thing
Speaker 1: that I was talking about a little bit at the
Speaker 1: top of the show, where other infrastructure, like like getting
Speaker 1: enough water to that building, getting enough food to that building,
Speaker 1: we're we're having we're seeing problems and we talked about
Speaker 1: this in the Mega City episode a little bit. We're
Speaker 1: already having problems, uh getting enough energy and food and
Speaker 1: clothing in water to to everyone who currently in cities.
Speaker 1: So introducing a whole new element, it just it's not
Speaker 1: an insurmountable problem, and it's certainly the kind of thing
Speaker 1: that that I hope that this kind of line of
Speaker 1: thought brings about new solutions to but it's something I mean,
Speaker 1: it could cause some serious growing pains in the mean line,
Speaker 1: and the real issue here is that the growing pains
Speaker 1: are happening whether we go up or we go out right,
Speaker 1: because that's the trend. So so it's important for us
Speaker 1: to look at those solutions first because those problems are
Speaker 1: going to hit us no matter whether we choose to
Speaker 1: build super vertical civilizations or not. Uh. But this has
Speaker 1: been a really interesting discussion, largely uh fanciful towards the end.
Speaker 1: But that's that's the way I like. I like to
Speaker 1: end Forward Thinking episodes. Guys, if you have any suggestions
Speaker 1: for future episodes of forward Thinking, or you have any
Speaker 1: questions or comments on the stuff that we've talked about today,
Speaker 1: right us let us know our email addresses FW thinking
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Speaker 1: we'll talk to you again as soon as the elevator
Speaker 1: gets here. For more on this topic in the future
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