io9: urban design

Future Hawaiian Cities Will Be Partly Underwater

Annalee Newitz — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 18:05:16 PST

As the cities on Hawaiian islands grow larger, they'll start developing offshore, building underwater resources for residents. Already a plan is underway to cool Honolulu using ocean water; and offshore farming there could turn oceans into food production areas.

Over at the Food Futurist, Christophe Pelletier describes a new study from BioScience on the viability of offshore fish farming. He writes:

From an environmental point of view, the idea of shifting the production of animal protein from the land where it uses scarce resources such as land and water, to the ocean where space and water are no limitations anymore sounds very sensible. From a nutritional point of view, replacing meat and dairy by seafood that is rich in healthy components such as omega-3 fatty acids is quite attractive, too.

He could easily be describing the future of farming, especially in areas like Hawaii or Japan.

Meanwhile, Inhabitat points to a real-life ocean-industrial setup that's coming online soon in Honolulu. It's an energy-efficient cooling system for the city that uses cool water from the ocean to keep buildings cool too. They write:

Frigid seawater pumped in from the ocean's depths will soon help cool more than half of the buildings in Honolulu's downtown. Honolulu Seawater Air Conditioning LLC, which is undertaking the $240 million project, expects its technology to cut the Hawaiian city's air conditioning electricity usage by up to 75 percent while slashing carbon emissions and the use of ozone-depleting refrigerants.

Ocean engineers, your time has come.

A City That Walks on Giant Actuators

Annalee Newitz — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 08:30:00 PST

Back in the 1960s, a group of UK design radicals got together and formed Archigram, an art collective whose creations (like this "walking city") have become synonymous with architectural futurism.

The idea behind the walking city is simple: Instead of humans walking around the city on foot, the city itself can walk. It's perfect for nomads who live in a constantly-shifting urban landscape.

Meanwhile, some of their other designs are weirdly prescient, such as this moon vehicle, which looks strangely similar to a moon vehicle in development now (see below). For more Archigram madness, check out their gallery.

India's Walled Cities Resemble Neo-Victorian Enclaves of "The Diamond Age"

Annalee Newitz — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 10:14:42 PDT

It's as if we're witnessing the rise of the walled cities in Neal Stephenson's novel The Diamond Age, where neo-Victorians live in isolated, nanotech splendor while other people live in cardboard boxes. This image shows the stark contrast between the slums and the mini-city called Hamilton Court in Gurgaon, India.

Today the New York Times has an interesting report on a form of urban design whose popularity is growing in India: the walled mini-city, with its own schools and power generators, surrounded by slums full of people who work as servants. While these mini-cities are like the "gated communities" you see in the west, what sets them apart is the degree of autonomy they have from their environs — they are literally running off a different electrical grid, and are designed so that nobody ever has to leave. [NYT]

This City Will Never Drown Again

Annalee Newitz — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 16:10:00 PDT

This gorgeous image of a floating city is one design team's idea of what New Orleans might look like in the future. Let me add to that: a better future, where urban design is graceful, humane, and forward-looking. Their idea is to create low-cost houses that are buoyant, and that survive floods by welcoming the Mississippi River into the city.

Harvard design grad students Kiduck Kim and Christian Stayner explain how this would work:

Housing plats and roads are marked by solar-powered lighting poles. Individual dwellings bob, tethered with RV-type umbilical cords through which potable water, electricity, sew-age, and telephone connections continue uninterrupted. When the water subsides, depositing the city in a new arrangement.

Sure, it's Utopian, but I need Utopianism on Monday. Really, I do.

Floating in a Sinking City [Harvard via Inhabitat]