Recapping the Rock City, we're going to build satellite cities going downward in rings around urban metroplexes such as Dallas / Fort Worth. After the migration from the aboveground structures is complete, we will demolish them thereby leaving the hub for the satellite open for subsequent design (i.e. anything but modern sculpture).
Note: must make some kind of minimal graphic for this since it's rapidly becoming an obsession.
Using the Earth for Duct Work
One criticism for building underground and using ground level for trucking, trains, pipe lines, etc is that it seems this relegates the surface level of the Earth to duct work but, shall we review the existing environment, we're doing that anyway. The objective is to do it the cleanest way possible. A country of any size needs arteries to supply it and America needs big ones. It's conceivable oil and gas pipe lines will be reduced based on a reduction in automotive traffic and also by heating moving to nuclear. However, food and all the other aspects of existence must be delivered so those transport highways or something better (e.g. HyperLoops) will be needed indefinitely.
Interstate Automotive Traffic
Maybe you question what reduces automotive traffic on the surface since presumably there will still be demand by private citizens to get between satellite complexes. We will reduce demand for automobiles in general by facilitating transit within the rock cities but that won't change the external demand. Let's go with HyperLoops for complex-to-complex traveling and maybe increased air traffic to account for the difference because we don't believe the love affair for the car is going to last.
Interstate Supply Channels
Those supply channels must exist but there's no reason they should be any more destructive to the planet than what they are now and, in fact, it should be less through reduction of automotive traffic. The general post-Rock City migration vision of the surface of the Earth is of a lot of farms, a lot of nature preserves, and a whole lot of improvement to the environment. Since we need to evolve the cities, we should also get cracking with the factories and the hideous smell zones they create as well.
Underground factories
If we do this as slick as a greased pigs, the factories will be constructed in parallel with the satellite cities. There's a giant difference in factory evolution because the current model tells the corporation to walk away from an old factory when it becomes unprofitable and then leave it to rot (e.g. Flint, MI). That model won't work with any type of underground construction because you can't simply throw the old factory away. Therefore, the building of factories needs to take into account at some time in the future this factory may be used for something else altogether.
The fact underground factories will always get reused is vitally important to the composition of the neighborhoods which develop around them. There shouldn't be the rise and fall we see in neighborhoods when employers stay generally stable.
Sewers
Maybe Ralph Kramden out there has observed there's going to one giant mountain of waste products from this rock city. That has to go two ways with the primary being we have to stop wasting so damn much and get a mile better in recycling things. The other is we need some major outbound channels for piping out anything which can't be processed. The Rock City design crew will be all over this part because we can't be good planetary beings while we waste things. Leave no trace.
(Ed: Ralph Kramden was a bus driver!)
Maybe Ed Norton was the sewer guy??
(Ed: trivia questions won't help the smell from the smoke)
Factory owners will scream until even their children are crying that they can't afford to clean it up but you know it's crap. There needs to be one hell of a lot more ingenuity applied to dealing with the stinks we create and that's much more than just the smoke.
Size
Lose the idea of Indian cliff dwellings in which they're all mostly the same since building down goes on a large scale and there is no thinking of boring out a billion identical apartments or so and call it a day. The size of any open space within this construction is dictated by the limits decided by engineers from study of the stone. We have seen how Nature will construct giant caverns which last for untold ages so we ought to be able to cobble together something similar.
The design of the Rock City overall needs to be in the hands of the Master Builders because this one can't go to some cheesehead who decides to put a housing development over land which was once an Indian graveyard. We need a wee bit more planning than that and now it's in three dimensions.
Elevators
Skyscrapers probably have one hundred stories by now and they have elevators with the speed to match. Our Rock City will need a lot of them since the one hundred stories of the skyscraper will spread over maybe a city block but underground they can be almost unlimited. We need to be able to move quickly horizontally and vertically and the latter will be a fundamental part of the design in stratifying it by functional areas. There needs to be tremendous thought applied to reducing the need for gratuitous movements (e.g. commuting in a car). So much time is wasted that way that the overall productivity of the species would increase if we could eliminate the drain. Even if nothing else there would be a jackpot in free time to screw around with social networks.
Recycling Water
Can you handle going full astronaut in the rock city with recycling everything and, yepper, that includes urine for the water and solid waste for whatever they do with that. Water is one of the Earth's big problems and the rock cities will need a lot of it. If you don't like that idea, how about building really big desalination plants along the coasts and then using the pipe lines which once were used for oil to deliver water to the cities. How about that for irony.
What About All That Rock?
Construction of our rock city will bore out an immense quantity of rock so we need some kind of plan for what to do with it. Since a junior ski resort will usually have a drop of about four hundred feet, you should have plenty of rock to build one from that which is excavated. That actually would be a relatively small application and you will be in a position to do some significant civil engineering but usually it's better if we don't. Expect an extended diatribe if you ask a Bavarian for thoughts about engineering the Danube for increased traffic, etc.
Note: must make some kind of minimal graphic for this since it's rapidly becoming an obsession.
Using the Earth for Duct Work
One criticism for building underground and using ground level for trucking, trains, pipe lines, etc is that it seems this relegates the surface level of the Earth to duct work but, shall we review the existing environment, we're doing that anyway. The objective is to do it the cleanest way possible. A country of any size needs arteries to supply it and America needs big ones. It's conceivable oil and gas pipe lines will be reduced based on a reduction in automotive traffic and also by heating moving to nuclear. However, food and all the other aspects of existence must be delivered so those transport highways or something better (e.g. HyperLoops) will be needed indefinitely.
Interstate Automotive Traffic
Maybe you question what reduces automotive traffic on the surface since presumably there will still be demand by private citizens to get between satellite complexes. We will reduce demand for automobiles in general by facilitating transit within the rock cities but that won't change the external demand. Let's go with HyperLoops for complex-to-complex traveling and maybe increased air traffic to account for the difference because we don't believe the love affair for the car is going to last.
Interstate Supply Channels
Those supply channels must exist but there's no reason they should be any more destructive to the planet than what they are now and, in fact, it should be less through reduction of automotive traffic. The general post-Rock City migration vision of the surface of the Earth is of a lot of farms, a lot of nature preserves, and a whole lot of improvement to the environment. Since we need to evolve the cities, we should also get cracking with the factories and the hideous smell zones they create as well.
Underground factories
If we do this as slick as a greased pigs, the factories will be constructed in parallel with the satellite cities. There's a giant difference in factory evolution because the current model tells the corporation to walk away from an old factory when it becomes unprofitable and then leave it to rot (e.g. Flint, MI). That model won't work with any type of underground construction because you can't simply throw the old factory away. Therefore, the building of factories needs to take into account at some time in the future this factory may be used for something else altogether.
The fact underground factories will always get reused is vitally important to the composition of the neighborhoods which develop around them. There shouldn't be the rise and fall we see in neighborhoods when employers stay generally stable.
Sewers
Maybe Ralph Kramden out there has observed there's going to one giant mountain of waste products from this rock city. That has to go two ways with the primary being we have to stop wasting so damn much and get a mile better in recycling things. The other is we need some major outbound channels for piping out anything which can't be processed. The Rock City design crew will be all over this part because we can't be good planetary beings while we waste things. Leave no trace.
(Ed: Ralph Kramden was a bus driver!)
Maybe Ed Norton was the sewer guy??
(Ed: trivia questions won't help the smell from the smoke)
Factory owners will scream until even their children are crying that they can't afford to clean it up but you know it's crap. There needs to be one hell of a lot more ingenuity applied to dealing with the stinks we create and that's much more than just the smoke.
Size
Lose the idea of Indian cliff dwellings in which they're all mostly the same since building down goes on a large scale and there is no thinking of boring out a billion identical apartments or so and call it a day. The size of any open space within this construction is dictated by the limits decided by engineers from study of the stone. We have seen how Nature will construct giant caverns which last for untold ages so we ought to be able to cobble together something similar.
The design of the Rock City overall needs to be in the hands of the Master Builders because this one can't go to some cheesehead who decides to put a housing development over land which was once an Indian graveyard. We need a wee bit more planning than that and now it's in three dimensions.
Elevators
Skyscrapers probably have one hundred stories by now and they have elevators with the speed to match. Our Rock City will need a lot of them since the one hundred stories of the skyscraper will spread over maybe a city block but underground they can be almost unlimited. We need to be able to move quickly horizontally and vertically and the latter will be a fundamental part of the design in stratifying it by functional areas. There needs to be tremendous thought applied to reducing the need for gratuitous movements (e.g. commuting in a car). So much time is wasted that way that the overall productivity of the species would increase if we could eliminate the drain. Even if nothing else there would be a jackpot in free time to screw around with social networks.
Recycling Water
Can you handle going full astronaut in the rock city with recycling everything and, yepper, that includes urine for the water and solid waste for whatever they do with that. Water is one of the Earth's big problems and the rock cities will need a lot of it. If you don't like that idea, how about building really big desalination plants along the coasts and then using the pipe lines which once were used for oil to deliver water to the cities. How about that for irony.
What About All That Rock?
Construction of our rock city will bore out an immense quantity of rock so we need some kind of plan for what to do with it. Since a junior ski resort will usually have a drop of about four hundred feet, you should have plenty of rock to build one from that which is excavated. That actually would be a relatively small application and you will be in a position to do some significant civil engineering but usually it's better if we don't. Expect an extended diatribe if you ask a Bavarian for thoughts about engineering the Danube for increased traffic, etc.
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