City of the future
The lack of ground space makes it easy for people to think of developing and utilizing underground space. Today, underground structures for various purposes are not uncommon, but all on a relatively small scale. With the advancement of science and technology, large-scale underground cities will appear on the earth.
Rainbow City is a microcosm of the future underground city. The city is located underground in Osaka, Japan, and is said to hold 500,000 people. The center of the city is a square, which is equipped with more than 2,000 nozzles, which can spray a water column more than 3 meters high, and use rainbow lights to make the light pass through the sprayed water droplets, refracting rainbows, hence the name Rainbow City.
The central square of Rainbow City is surrounded by rows upon rows of exquisitely decorated shops, restaurants and entertainment venues. There are many streets and alleys named after flowers between them, which are connected through each other. Rainbow City is illuminated by lights, which are bright day and night; computers are used to control and adjust the temperature to keep it at 25°C in winter and 20°C in summer; many closed-circuit televisions and monitoring systems are used to monitor the fire alarm, safety and security in the city. pollution situation. With its special and superior environment, this underground city attracts a large number of tourists to come here for sightseeing and shopping.
The underground city of the University of Minnesota is a vertical multi-level underground building. The building is 33 meters deep, and the ground part is about 6 meters high, with a total of 13 floors. Unlike Rainbow City, it does not use all lights, but cleverly uses a set of reflective lenses fixed on the roof grid to introduce sunlight into the ground, so that more than half of the area can be illuminated by sunlight. In addition, it also has two computer-controlled reflectors that can track the movement of the sun, reflect the sunlight to the central lens, and then guide the sunlight into deeper parts of the building through the central lens. In order that the people in the underground building will not feel imprisoned underground, the designer set up a TV window on the roof, and through a series of conduction systems, everyone living here can look at various places outside the building through it. ground landscape.
American urban designers predict that the underground city of the future will have many such underground buildings; and above the buildings will be picturesque fields and gardens. Only the interspersed solar absorbers jutting out of the ground reveal a bustling city beneath.
Elevated city in development
Speaking of elevated cities, people will naturally think of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai and the central building in Shanghai, my country. One is over 800 meters and the other is over 600 meters, both of which can accommodate as many as 10,000 people.
So is the limit of human construction stopped at 800 meters? If human beings build regardless of cost, maybe you will let you sigh. Japanese engineers plan to build a “sky city”. The city is more than 1,600 meters high, has 500 floors, and can accommodate a population of 300,000. The city will install express lifts that will take people from the ground floor to the top in just 15 minutes. In addition, considering that Japan is a country with many earthquakes, the building will be designed with a water storage pond controlled by the brain. The movement of the stored water is used to balance the shaking caused by the seismic waves.
There are other Japanese designers who are planning to design the “High-altitude City 1000” with a height of up to 1,000 meters in the past two years. The city has a construction area of 6 square kilometers and can accommodate 3 million people to live and work in it. The elevated city is 800 stories high and will use 12 pillars distributed on a circle with a diameter of 400 meters as the base pillars. At the top of the building, the pillars will become 6 and form a regular hexagon on the top floor. The whole building is also divided into 14 sections. There are hanging gardens between the sections, allowing the wind to pass through freely to reduce the pressure of the wind on the building. Elevators and a spiraling elevated monorail are used to communicate traffic within the building. Various shops, theatres, casinos and schools will also be set up in the city. Residents shop and go to school in the city, living and working in peace and contentment just like in the above-ground city.
Compared with Japan, Americans appear to be more ambitious. They are exploring the plan of building a high-altitude city with 100 floors, but no detailed plans have been disclosed yet.
underwater city
The ocean occupies nearly three-quarters of the earth’s surface, so when the land becomes more and more crowded, people will naturally think of opening up living space in the ocean. In 1962, people built the first underwater scientific research living cabin “Konshav” in the Mediterranean Sea near Marseille and Monaco, France. Five divers spent 30 days at a depth of 10 meters in the Conshav Habitat. In 1964, in the waters off the Bermuda Islands on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, the U.S. Navy also built a “undersea laboratory”.
Dubai Diving is currently the only swimming pool in the world that can dive to a depth of 60 meters. Diving and swimming here will make people feel like traveling through an underwater city.
In 1965, “Seabed Laboratory 2” was dropped into the seabed at a depth of 62 meters in the Gulf of Southern California. In addition to a 17-square-meter living room, it is also equipped with a water heater and a refrigerator.
There are also air ducts leading directly to the water surface and water pipes for supplying fresh water. People can work and rest freely in the house. There are TV, books and entertainment products in the house, as well as a kitchen for you to cook. Through the kitchen window, you can clearly see all kinds of fish shuttling back and forth. In this comfortable environment, the diver lived continuously for 30 days.
Of course, these are far from the city. The key to developing cities on the seabed is not the difficulty of construction, but that under the current conditions, it is difficult for people to fully adapt to underwater life. Under water, for every 10 meters of depth, the pressure will rise by 1 atmosphere. In order to prevent the intrusion of seawater in the underwater building, it must be filled with air with the same pressure. Therefore, at 30 meters underwater, the air pressure there will be four times that of the ground, which is difficult for ordinary people to adapt to. However, scientists are not discouraged. Inspired by fish, some people are working on artificial gills. With artificial gills, humans can breathe in water like fish; underwater buildings don’t have to be filled with air. By then, building a bustling underwater city will become a reality.
