Self Sustaining Cities

[Purple]

This is an idea I had some time ago and I want your input on what you think about it. The two questions I have are if it can be done, and more importantly how would it compare in terms of population density and other things to a normal city.

Now to present the idea.

Imagine a city divided into blocks. Each block is built around an industrial object and the people housed here are those working at said facility. This object can be anything like a factory, space port, mine, refinery, college, high school or what ever else you can think of that a planet needs. So far this is sort of like those small industrial towns, but the trick is that the entire city or mega city is composed entirely out of these rather than having separate habitation areas and factory districts.

Now here is the clever bit. Each block is built around a self sustaining community having it's own electric sub station, water works, mall, school, hospital etc. Only a minor amount of things that just can't be done locally would be centralized on the city level. The people working these also live in the community. However this is not where it ends. Each building is a self sustained as much as possible. I am talking about basement hydroponics bays and roof top green house gardens, roof top solar panels for electricity (I assume a future where they work as advertised without problems and with high output), in house maintenance workers etc.

This way, each city district will be completely self sustained and the city in turn will be completely self sustained newer having to import anything. The idea of this is to have huge Tokyo or New York sized cities that can sustain them self without importing food or other resources from the outside world. (Naturally this excludes stuff you just have to import like ores or oil) What can not be grown at the building level will be made on the district levels and trade will only occur between different districts. This would in theory allow cities that number in the billions to feed and supply them self indefinitely with minimum outside help.

PS. Living standards are not an issue for the sake of this argument since the state in question is an oppressive communist one.


So, any thoughts?

[Uraniun235]

Congratulations, I think you just invented the Arcology.

[Srelex]

Sounds like a less insane Mega City One.

[Purple]

Ok, I guess it can be done. But off to my 2nd question. How would it compare to a modern city?

[TOSDOC]

How are you handling your inbox and outbox-- raw materials and waste management?

[Broomstick]

Energy is probably one of the biggest potential bottlenecks, as are water and air. Yes, air - some of the massive "arcology" type structures would require massive ventilation systems.

It would require some massive and efficient sewage treatment (done properly, this could probably result in feedstock for the agricultural production) and recycling/toxic waste handling for both industry and local points.

Living in one might be somewhat like living in the highly built up downtowns of some modern cities, only more so. I think you'd find much more use of vertical space.

A major part of industry will have to be food production.

[Rabid]

If you do this horizontally (Detroit style, I'd say), your design will be highly inefficient : things like water treatment (before and... after), high energy power generation (for industries) and sewage disposal and recycling scale-down really bad.

I join to the bandwagon, and recommend that you study the concept of an Arcology. I think it respond almost exactly to your general specifications.

[Korto]

If your power is coming from solar, well I think that will dictate how large your city's area needs to be per person. You would need space for the hydroponics for food, but you could get that through building up or down, stacking on top of each other, but solar needs surface area. You could also use wind by placing turbines on the tall buildings, as far as I can see, but that still needs surface area. I would think wind and solar could co-exist, even covering the turbines with solar panels.
And industry uses incredible amounts of power.

I see your city being very spread out, unless you decide to use more concentrated energy sources.

[Purple]

The industry is powered by their own generators. The solar panels are there to keep the lights in the apartments burning.

This said, I am not thinking about archeologies. This is not supposed to be a huge habitation dome or a pyramid or anything like that. And I am certainly not looking to build something that needs artificial ventilation like some sort of lunar colony.


From the outside it is supposed to look like any old city block with 5-10 levels hight buildings that just happen to be built around each other to make a community. You have your school in one building, your hospital across the street, your supermarket left of that and it just happens that each habitation building also has its own hydroponics bay in the basement and it's own green house on the roof and that there is an old lady that lives in a penthouse tending to some chickens and cows for the inhabitants. (well the later metaphorically)

[Simon_Jester]

The problem is why you want this, as much as anything else.

Why bother having self-contained electrical generation in each habitat block, instead of big power stations five miles outside the city limits? Or, for that matter, 100 square miles of solar cells tiling an area of desert hundreds of miles away?

A similar problem arises with food. Look at the number of calories a person requires to stay alive, and how much land it takes to produce those calories. Why would you build people's homes in 'apartment blocks' that wind up being 95% hydroponic gardens per unit area? For that matter, hydroponics can consume quite a bit of additional power; it's not necessarily more efficient than dirt farming a large area outside the city limits.

There's a practical minimum size to a self-sustaining community. You can build a self-sustaining community of a few hundred people on a footprint of a few square kilometers; it's called a peasant village and it only supports pre-industrial living conditions.

One of the reasons modern cities are so huge and prosperous compared to anything in the past is that they exploit economies of scale: the people are concentrated in a small space. The facilities needed to keep them alive are either concentrated in large, dedicated facilities you don't want to live next to (power plants, sewage plants), or are distributed because it's more economical to do so than to try and jumble together the farm and housing space. There's simply no reason why people should live within a few hundred meters of the place where their food is grown in a modern society, no real advantage to it.

[Broomstick]

If your power is coming from solar, well I think that will dictate how large your city's area needs to be per person. You would need space for the hydroponics for food, but you could get that through building up or down, stacking on top of each other, but solar needs surface area. You could also use wind by placing turbines on the tall buildings, as far as I can see, but that still needs surface area. I would think wind and solar could co-exist, even covering the turbines with solar panels.
And industry uses incredible amounts of power.

Given the way wind "concentrates" between skyscrapers in places like the Chicago Loop, wind might not need surface area. Mount the turbines in the "glass canyons" between the buildings. This will require you to orient the streets with the prevailing winds, but it would, again, allow you to build vertically.

You'll need a combination of power sources - wind, solar, methane from the sewage treatment, nuclear...

[Purple]

Well, the reason why I want this is to maximize the usage of urban area without resorting to archeology like structures while staying as environmentally friendly as possible. I also want to make cities as self sustained as possible to avoid giving someone the ability to besiege and starve them.

[Simon_Jester]

Well, the reason why I want this is to maximize the usage of urban area without resorting to archeology like structures while staying as environmentally friendly as possible.

Arcology not archaeology.

That aside, this doesn't really maximize the use of urban area, because you're limiting the maximum height of the buildings. If you want to maximize use of space you build up, not sideways. Moreover, you're relying on "green" power sources that are by nature low power-density: you can only get so many watts per hectare dedicated to the power plant. And you're relying on these power sources even more heavily, since you want all the agriculture and industry to be done inside these self-contained habitat blocks. That further increases the physical footprint of each self-contained block: the hydroponic gardens to sustain a thousand people, and the people themselves, consume enough power that you won't be able to run it all off a few hundred square meters of solar panels.

To get self-contained buildings, you need to build quite tall and use high-density power sources, or you need to accept large amounts of flat open space around the buildings for food and energy production.

I also want to make cities as self sustained as possible to avoid giving someone the ability to besiege and starve them.

Realistically, in a society technologically advanced enough to build something like this, you're going to have massive problems with garbage disposal and water supplies during a siege no matter what you do.

The idea of using cities as self-contained fortresses really doesn't work so well in modern warfare, though, because there's nothing stopping the enemy from just flattening the city with artillery barrages. Sure, if you have soldiers on hand they can live in the rubble and continue to defend the site, but by that point the physical damage means the place is no longer self-sustaining.

[Korto]

Given the way wind "concentrates" between skyscrapers in places like the Chicago Loop, wind might not need surface area. Mount the turbines in the "glass canyons" between the buildings. This will require you to orient the streets with the prevailing winds, but it would, again, allow you to build vertically.

You'll need a combination of power sources - wind, solar, methane from the sewage treatment, nuclear...

Good point, but we're talking about funneling wind here. If you look at an actual funnel, the mouth of a funnel still covers a large area, it's just the arse of it that's small. Therefore, in order to funnel a large amount of wind, the city will still need to cover a large amount of area. However, it will lead to a significant saving in number of turbines, and likely other efficencies.

Totally agree on the power source combination.

Another thing to consider. You can't "double-dip" on sunlight. If you've got high-efficiency solar collectors covering everything, roof gardens are going to have a problem.

[Purple]

Arcology not archaeology.

Thanks for noting that. The dam spell checker keeps correcting it and I forget to correct it back.

That aside, this doesn't really maximize the use of urban area, because you're limiting the maximum height of the buildings. If you want to maximize use of space you build up, not sideways. Moreover, you're relying on "green" power sources that are by nature low power-density: you can only get so many watts per hectare dedicated to the power plant. And you're relying on these power sources even more heavily, since you want all the agriculture and industry to be done inside these self-contained habitat blocks. That further increases the physical footprint of each self-contained block: the hydroponic gardens to sustain a thousand people, and the people themselves, consume enough power that you won't be able to run it all off a few hundred square meters of solar panels.

Alright, dropping the solar panels in favor of local nuclear reactor plants. These are just as eco friendly since the refuse is used for the military industrial complex.

To get self-contained buildings, you need to build quite tall and use high-density power sources, or you need to accept large amounts of flat open space around the buildings for food and energy production.

What about having a normal apartment complex built around a large park. And than having a large (in both size and height) green house garden complex built next to it linked to a mall?

Realistically, in a society technologically advanced enough to build something like this, you're going to have massive problems with garbage disposal and water supplies during a siege no matter what you do.

Everything that can be recycled at the community level (like fertilizer) is, the rest is sent to recycling plants on the city level. I also have restrictions on how much waste people produce since I am not allowing them to be rampant consumerists. They don't buy much and waste nothing. For example they don't throw away food if it is still edible and generally their standard of living in terms of consumerism can be seen as something from the USSR.

The idea of using cities as self-contained fortresses really doesn't work so well in modern warfare, though, because there's nothing stopping the enemy from just flattening the city with artillery barrages.

Treaties and theater shields.

[Broomstick]

Given the way wind "concentrates" between skyscrapers in places like the Chicago Loop, wind might not need surface area. Mount the turbines in the "glass canyons" between the buildings. This will require you to orient the streets with the prevailing winds, but it would, again, allow you to build vertically.

You'll need a combination of power sources - wind, solar, methane from the sewage treatment, nuclear...

Good point, but we're talking about funneling wind here. If you look at an actual funnel, the mouth of a funnel still covers a large area, it's just the arse of it that's small. Therefore, in order to funnel a large amount of wind, the city will still need to cover a large amount of area. However, it will lead to a significant saving in number of turbines, and likely other efficencies.

I put "concentrate" in quotes for a reason. There's nothing really funnel shaped for the "wind tunnel" streets in Chicago, they're just aligned with the prevailing winds. I don't entirely understand the physics involved, but it would represent a significant source of wind power. There are several entrepreneurs in Chicago trying to work out practical ways to harness it.

As an alternative, you could sort of use outer structures to "funnel" the wind to a central core where turbines are located. You can also mount vertical turbines on the corners of tall buildings to capture the higher winds above ground.

[Samuel]

If you can get it so that tal buildings are more efficient you could probably pack more people into a smaller area. The problem is that the bigger the building, the more area has to be taken up by elevators and other systems so it becomes less efficient.

[Rossum]

I had a sort of similar idea to this but it was mostly for colonizing other planets.

Imagine building a space ship that can recycle enough of its air, water, and waste products to be self-sufficient for years at a time. Then, build this ship into a sort of building-like shape (kind of like the human buildings in the Starcraft games) and park it on a planet somewhere.

Now each of these ship-buildings are semi-specialised enough for a specific purpose that they can export a product or service to other ships. They are mostly self-sufficient but can take in resources to do something and export finished products.

Then have a huge fleet of these things that can land in an area to colonize the place and theoretically take off again. It would be like a Walking City but self sufficient. And you could just have them stay in one place for a long time to skip the "walking" part.


Basically, each building would be like a ship or perhaps a robot specilized to a particular task. Though the 'robot' would have people inside it which probably means it should be called something else. Or maybe it would be a symbiotic relationship between a robot building and its occupants.

[Purple]

Well, to explain my point further. I think I have finally found a good analogy for what I am trying to make.

I was not going for an Arcology but for something more down to earth. In particular I was looking to revive the feel of 1940's Britain (Was watching history channel yesterday and found that this will work as a description) when every family that could had one parent working and the other tending to a small garden in the back yard with some chickens and bunnies and a vegetable patch. Just replace vegetable patch with hydroponic garden.

Milk and stuff that can't be grown on a family level would be grown in the district level and than stuff like furniture and electronics would come from higher up.

[Sarevok]

How much space and electric power would you give each family under this plan ?

Edit:

What I mean is that the biggest obstacle towards self sustainability is the prodigious requirements of modern people. Even third world people wish to live in 2000 square feet apartments with multiple air conditioning and heating units and at least one big screen TV. It would be very hard to please the current generation let alone the next one who will want even more bigger houses with more energy consuming gadgets.

[K. A. Pital]

Arcologies suck. If you want an ecological vision of the world, try this - 100% green power (nuclear, water, solar + wind in that order), only electromobiles (ban all the shit which guzzles gasoline) and, if possibile, limiting the use of petrochemicals in nature. Cargo transport - rail or ship only, trucks an atavism. There'll be a problem with airplanes, but hydrogen engines wouldn't be too far away, I hope.

[Sarevok]

Is not the problem over population rather than power generation technology ? If the current electricity production grid had to support 1/10th the number of people we would not have problems in the first place.

[jollyreaper]

Are you talking about including any futuretech or with today's tech?

The biggest problem with the idea is that planned economies always seem to fail. But taking a look at our current situation in America, unplanned economies aren't doing so hot, either.

I think that your self-sustainment idea is the heart of the matter. In the past, 90% of people were in agriculture and had to work to directly support their own existence. Now we have 2% in agriculture and the rest are split between manufacturing and bullshit work. The idea was you worked in the factory and that gave you money to pay for everything else. Those factory jobs go away, there's no agriculture work to go back to and people are called lazy fucks for being unemployed. WTF?

There's a whole big discussion on this sort of thing I'll try to dig up, the post-post-industrial economy. There's a lot of research going into regreening cities, getting food production back within city limits and no longer relying on cheap oil to pay for truck farming. One benefit of the oil collapse is that China will no longer be able to undercut domestic manufacturing. It'll be expensive to ship stuff in, locals will regain an advantage of being local.

[Sarevok]

The only reason we need more and more exotic energy sources is insatiable hunger for moar by an ever growing number of people. There would be no need to look into space based solar or fusion if this planet did not have to support another few billion future Americans (China and India).

[Purple]

Well, first thing first. Since I am working with a society that has passed from feudalism into communism directly with no intermediate stage and has not encountered capitalism until about a year ago even thou it has several millennia worth of history the cultural things won't be an issue. People don't wish for more than they have since they have nothing else to compare them self with. (eveyone else are worse off to say the least) But that is the perk with SF settings where I get to control entire planets.

Their entire culture is built around the concept of not having much but using what they have responsibly. And even if they did not, they have no choice in the mater. If someone is not satisfied, nice for him but he does not get to have a say in it. You can't well have consumerism when the economy is controlled.

Arcologies suck. If you want an ecological vision of the world, try this - 100% green power (nuclear, water, solar + wind in that order), only electromobiles (ban all the shit which guzzles gasoline) and, if possibile, limiting the use of petrochemicals in nature. Cargo transport - rail or ship only, trucks an atavism. There'll be a problem with airplanes, but hydrogen engines wouldn't be too far away, I hope.

No automobiles at all. The only type of transport allowed for civilians is public transit and inter city trains. Everything is electric too.

The society in question is much like old eastern block countries. You buy a TV set and it lasts for your grandchildren. And when it does break down and they do go to buy a new one they find the exact same model still stocked because the state does not think people need newer ones. The same goes for shoes, socks, and anything else you can't make on your own. The government also promotes a "do it your self" culture where people are encouraged to fix things them self and make their own shelves and stuff rather than buying.

Finally, the idea would be that stuff like wheat and rice are made in farms like they are today. But each person grows his own eggs and vegetables for home consumption. And each small community has its own department store that includes a small dairy farm and fish tanks to feed the local population.