Seoul’s Skygarden – which will be open to all 24 hours – repurposes a 1970 motorway flyover.
Photograph: MVRDV
The Skygarden – or Seoul-lo 7017 as it is also called in reference to the dates of the original structure, and of its reincarnation – is both a symbol and an instrument of the shift from car to foot. The original concrete structure has been strengthened, and lifts, stairs and escalators have been added where necessary to connect it to the ground. Bridges also connect to adjoining commercial buildings, who have to pay for the uplift in value. Other uses – cafes, performance spaces, a market – are scattered across the site.
The Guardian: A garden bridge that works: how Seoul succeeded where London failed
When the original highway flyover was originally deemed unfit for purpose, the road was abandoned. Now it's been strengthened in various ways but what does that mean with the first halfway decent earthquake.
Ed: London Bridge comes falling down
The Guardian article practically gets to the level of a pop rock fanboy over the glory of this solution relative to the abominable job of essentially the same thing in London but we will leave the li'l snowflake to his salivating and move along.
The picture is the world's finest example of the Army maxim, if you can't move it then paint it.
I'm not sure of which area has flyovers stacked the highest in the DFW (cough) metroplex but there's one with four and maybe five levels not far from here. Yevette won't drive on it and I'm also reluctant but possibly not for the same reasons. I'm not willing to entrust my life on a road which was built from a contract by a cowboy hat-wearin' Austin hack politician who found the lowest bidder.
Note: they love to call it a metroplex because (?)
The problem with being choked by aging infrastructure is ubiquitous around the world in its largest cities and Boston got into the mix with the hilarity of its Big Dig which may have taken twenty years and who knows if it's finished even yet. Yeah, nice, nice but Boston still gets monster traffic jams; the Big Dig didn't fix the problem and couldn't possibly.
There are far too many cars and you know it as well. There's no need to belabor that aspect since this is another example of the Law of Evolutionary Potential in which it's far easier to build a new system than to upgrade an old one. That's true from computer systems up to the potential for the entire country, possibly the world.
Recently there was science regarding design of power grids with much more clever networks than those in existence now but implementing such a thing will likely get hamstrung by the same evolutionary potential.
The Rockhouse has proposed, amazingly enough, a Rock City which has nothing to do with me but rather it's a design for an underground city. There was much scoffing but consider the Great North Road the Brits built under Gibraltar which is still in use and the underground bunkers in the Netherlands which the Germans built and are even more extensive than the Great North Road. The example of Cheyenne Mountain is most familiar to Americans and possibly as well the Yucca Mountain Fed nuclear waste storage facility now abandoned.
Elon Musk is becoming the World's Leading Tunnel Rat since he's going well underground with his latest plans and there's one thing for sure about that cat: he doesn't bluff.
The Rock City isn't necessarily the solution since it lacks the flexible expansibility of aboveground construction but that easy flexibility aboveground led to the current situation of enormous spread over the land but with mediocre means to traverse it. Maybe you don't mind a one-hour commute but most people hate it. Unless they master time travel, autonomous vehicles won't do one damn thing about that.
The Law of Evolutionary Potential ... it matters ... because painting bad solutions only makes the wreckage more colorful when it falls.
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