The Diary of Gabriel Wojsek Booker: ... on Cities
Here's a few collected pages of G. W. Booker's musings on cities of the tenth millennium:
Luna was first settled in the early in the third millennium. The settlers and planners looked back to the end of the second millennium for the source of their place names and the selection was often made to honor a hero or a person influential in the coming to the moon of Terra.
So it was with the city of Asimov.
Isaac Asimov was a speculative fiction writer and science essayist at the end of the second millennium... the twentieth century, in fact... which is as near the end of the the second millennium as one gets. Other than in the annuals of the University of Asimov, he is largely unknown today, and almost all of his writings are “lost in the mists of time”, but it was his writings that inspired many humans to begin the serious study of Astrophysics and Robotics and (to a lesser extent) Genetics which led to the Solsys as we live in it today.
When Asimov was established as a settlement in the twenty-first century, it was a North Am research center. It was a leading place for the studies that gave the Lunans the balanced conditions of environment that make Luna inhabitable.
Many of the place names on Luna have changed throughout the millennia, but Asimov has retained the name of the man whose writings inspired the yearnings of humankind to reach out to the stars and place settlements beyond Terra. Only three other Lunan cities have continued to honor their men of inspiration: Goddard named for a man who did pioneering rocket research, Gagarin named for the first man in space (a Russian) and Armstrong named for the first man from North Am to venture into space.
Looking at this short list as an historian, it is very pleasant to see a man-of-letters so honored. I'm also struck by the Armstrong name... I wonder if that name would have been used if it were not for the great competition between the Sov Union and North Am to be the nation that led the planet....
The Diary of Gabriel Wojsek Booker:
14 June 9863... on Cities
The solution to most urban problems came in the form of the linear city. That solved the situation where land was wasted and made unusable by urban/suburban sprawl. It solved problems related to people transportation (short and long distance), and it solved transportation of freight as well. The linear cities also were extremely efficient in terms of energy use and conservation. Even the “carbon-footprints” of people (a matter much agonized over in the early part of the third millennium) were much reduced.
Only one extremely important matter was not addressed by the linear city planners: international/intercontinental transportation.
The two principal means of transportation were used in the early third millennium to meet this need: sea-going ships and heavier-than-air planes.
The sea-going ships were generally powered by fuel oil consuming boilers or engines although some ships used coal or nuclear fuel to raise the temperatures in boilers. The advantage of the sea-going ships was that they were fuel efficient considering the great amount of weight that they moved. The disadvantage of these ships was that they could only deliver their cargoes or passengers to seaports.. with the secondary matter of concern being the fact that ships exhausts were very high in air pollutants because they were designed the very cheapest of fuel oils in their engines and boilers.
The airplanes moved their loads quickly and could go from virtually any point on Terra to any other point on Terra. That was their advantage. Their disadvantage lay in their engine designs. They were powered by jet engines which used expensive highly refined gasoline.. and were producing as a secondary matter, great amounts of air polluting contaminents.
The solution to these problem came with the reversion to an older technology: the lighter-than-air ship... commonly called today just the “airship”.
The airship originated centuries, perhaps even millennia, before the heavier-than-air planes flew.
They first were balloons filled with hot air. These flew as long as the simple fuel used to warm air could continue to keep the bag filled to be lighter than the cooler air surrounding it. These simple round bags could not be steered in any particular direction and, if released from their moorings, simply drifted in which ever direction the wind blew them.
These balloons were restyled in time to take on shapes other than round. By elongating one direction and placing fins on one of the ends, a modicum of steering ability came to the airship. This shape was commonly called a “blimp”.
The next step was to add an engine below the blimp to turn the air and move it away from the ship rather like the way a propeller moved in the water below a sea-going ship. This permitted the airship to move in a guided direction. These airships were called “dirigibles” or “zepplins”. They, however, had their own disadvantages: they need more than just warm air to keep them aloft.
The initial solution to this problem was to fill the gas bags of the air ships with hydrogen. This gas is quite a bit lighter than air and thus could permit the airships to carry quite heavy loads of freight or passengers and yet stay aloft. But hydrogen is combustible and can even be explosive. After several nasty accidents with that gas, the airship was simply considered too dangerous to continue in general use.
The technology of the lighter-than-air ship never went away, however. The powered blimp continued on in use for purposes that included more or less staying in one place for a lengthy time. That was something that heavier-than-air planes could not do as their lift depended upon moving their wings through the air.
To prevent the explosive accidents that the dirigibles and zepplins had experienced, the hydrogen gas was replaced with helium. Helium has a bit less lifting capacity than the hydrogen as it is a bit heavier, but it is still lighter than air and it is stable and non-combustible. Helium's disadvantage is that it occurs somewhat less in nature than hydrogen and is thus somewhat more expensive. This disadvantage was overcome by the middle of the twenty-first century when fabrics were developed with filament reinforcements that made them very tough to puncture and by viscous coatings which could automatically seal tiny punctures should they occur.
Thus we see the airships traveling over our heads on Terra with gas bags filled with helium gas which is seldom lost. That makes the airships quite cost effective and, therefore, widely used to carry the international/intercontinental freight and passengers today in the tenth millennium.
The Diary of Gabriel Wojsek Booker:
Among the small treasure trove of literature saved from the early third millennium are a batch of news magazines. They were actually saved, not one way but in two ways! I noted in an earlier diary entry how the physical issues had been saved using an experimental vacuum packing technique. Now we find that some were actually saved in their electronic form.
The magazine saved in both forms were of the same series, but later in time. Publishing (and saving) in an electronic form was quite new at the time. The particular electronic format used was abandoned in the middle of the third millennium, and thus was no longer readable.
It wasn't until an archeology project in 9857 brought them to light, that we learned that they existed. And it wasn't until two years ago that the techs at the University of Nairobi (where I worked before taking the post with the Solar Guard) managed to translate the ancient electronic form into the standard form used today. That remarkable series of events makes us able to read them in the tenth millennium
Most of the magazines are a weekly publication called “The Economist”. This magnificent magazine was definitely the best of its time presenting more information on what was happening on Terra than could practically be read and absorbed in a week... rather like the legendary “Sunday New York Times” of which no more than 5 issues were saved, unfortunately.
Among the batch of news weeklies were a few that were not “The Economist”. One which I have just been able to read was definitely a delight to this old historian.
It was the August (Aust) 3, 2010 copy of “Newsweek”. Newsweek was a respected news magazine of its time though a light weight when compared to The Economist. Even so, we are very, very fortunate to have this window into the past which it provides.
One article struck me as particularly interesting. Called “L. A. Residential” and subtitled “Future of Work”. The conclusion of the article was a simple one: work was becoming something that could be done remotely from the home of the workman rather than going to a central location as was the custom of that time. Especially in Los Angeles (Los Angel), plans were under way to create huge skyscrapers (buildings with many floors... usually more than thirty) where the residences (flats), shopping, recreation, and work facilities would all be in the same building. People would travel in the elevators vertically and would never have to leave the building unless they wished to do so. The architects of the time had several such omni-use buildings planned and apparently ready to be constructed.
It seemed that the problems associated with “suburban sprawl”, as it was termed in those years, would soon be settled by the way that it was possible to work in one place and transfer the product of your work electronically to another place.
Close to the right solution, but not quite close enough. We now know that the right solution is the Linear City. A building of relatively low height, but of infinite length. It wasn't until the Drexel Institute of Technology student manifesto on the subject was published in 2052 A. D. that things got onto the right track.
As a historian, it is easy to look back and see the reason that no one had come to the “right” solution before that... and why the linear city solution was so controversial when it was proposed.
The linear city depends upon the state building a common transport core... multi-story and encompassing all forms of ground transportation. This can not be done by a non-state entity because too many land ownerships, too many transportation system owners, too many commercial and industrial entities would be involved. Once the state built the transportation core and mandated its use, then the private sector followed along and built by the core.
Then land which had been given over to “suburban sprawl” could be reclaimed for the necessary agricultural purposes. Then the polluting private transportation systems (mainly the private automobile) could be abandoned.
The flaw in the system of skyscrapers proposed in the Newsweek article is that place-to-place transport is not addressed. Not everyone was involved in the information work area, and for the ones who had to go somewhere to deal with something physical, a good transportation system was still required.
The strength of the system of skyscrapers proposed in the article was that a private entity could build a skyscrapers. All the government had to do was to grant permission to build. That was a seductively simple proposition. The state could let the private enterprise system (AKA Capitalism) build the omni-use skyscraper and then the state would simply levy taxes on it so that they could provide the necessary services... water, sewer, highways, police fire fighting services, etc.
Therein, of course, lay the flaw again. Providing these services to go anywhere from anywhere could never be efficient so the cost of providing such services was draining the financial support for other worthwhile goals. Further, providing services to reach anywhere from anywhere simply reinforced the “suburban sprawl” which was the huge problem generator for the societies of the third millennium in the first place.
The Newsweek article summed it all up, but did not see the solution....
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Today we know that the solution for cities lies in the solution to transportation problems. The linear cities with their multi-level transportation cores work better than any other system ever devised by humankind. Pedestrian travel... augmented by speed walks, short distance public rail, long distance public rail, short distance freight, long distance freight, all neatly stacked in the center of the city. No one very far from transportation to take them virtually anywhere they want to go.
(And for added efficiency, the transportation cores also carry water (pure and gray), gas, sewerage, steam, and (in some places) compressed air.)
Of course, the linear cities connect to the space ports and the sea ports for even longer range transportation.
On Terra, they even go better by adding transportation by airship.
I had only one occasion to travel in one of these magnificent lighter-than-air crafts. Floating through the air in and out of the clouds. Almost silently passing over the oceans. That's how I got to North Am during one student vacation time. That's how I was able to visit New York and Houston. Quite a delight for a man in his early twenties.
This extra layer of transportation is almost exclusively used in transoceanic travel. Compared with the continental rail net, airship travel is extraordinarily expensive. Getting to North Am on that trip from Africa was two-and-one-half times the rail transportation cost that I incurred when I went from Nairobi to Osaka, China, on that student exchange program oh-so-long-ago! (Note to self: Look back in my diary for the year of that visit to see how long that rail journey took.)
The Diary of Gabriel Wojsek Booker:
16 Feb thru 02 Marc 9876... on Cities
Though I am not really a technician, as an historian I admire all of the things that those with technical expertise have wrought.
First and foremost, I admire the cities.
The worlds of Solsys could never support the great population of humans as they do without the wondrously technical development of our cities.
The big deal of our cities is the way that they make the most of our resources by developing laterally. Or I should say, linearly.
When humankind became aware that a way was needed to house great populations, the first step that was taken in that direction was to build higher. Two factors limited that direction initially.
The first limiting factor was the strength of the materials used to carry the loads imposed from above. When everything was made of masonry, The walls lower in the building had to get wider and wider to support the floor levels above. I suspect that the failure of the Tower of Babel mentioned in the Old Testament (or Torah as the Jews call it) was a failure of the lower floors to support the ambitiously high construction above. The lower structure crumbled under the weight above. The Egyptians solved that with their pyramids by making the lower levels almost solid, but that works for a tomb. That would not work for a residence or an office building.
The first great step toward building higher came with the development of cast iron. The cast iron pieces framed into beams and columns permitted the construction of high buildings with fairly open spaces as the material was easily 10 times the strength of the masonry that it replaced. But cast iron was not as strong as the ambitions of the constructors aimed for. It wasn't until steel came into construction in the last quarter of the second millennium that really high structures became practical.
Then the second limiting factor came into play. No one wanted to carry burdens to the upper floors... people were even reluctant to walk up more than five sets of stairs. Thus the residential buildings in the great cities seldom were raise higher than four floors above the ground level.
The solution came with the invention of the elevator in the late nineteenth century. Something like a train car could lift you into the heights of the building. And so the skyscrapers as the very tall buildings' constructors proudly called them could raise into the clouds.
Even so, even with the development of integrally powered elevators that did not need to rely upon winches, cables or oil filled cylinders, even with the development of plassteel giving even great strength to the builders' frameworks, limits still remained. And most limiting was not what went on within the building, it was what went on when all of the occupants of these great tall building spilled out onto the ground level at one time. The street congestion and the difficulties of moving great numbers of people to and from these great buildings was the worst limiting factor of all.
It took the state-built linear city cores to solve this.
There are footnotes to every history. Things that are interesting, but not really all that important.
On Terra, the cores of the linear cities are numbered. The numbering system that they used for these cores was based upon an earlier numbering system that was used for the great highway system of the United States of America. Not the same numbers and certainly not the same routes, but the same philosophy of numbering.
That great highway system was built during the end of the twentieth century... the closing years of the second millennium.
No one recorded the actual creator of the numbering system, but the system made such good sense that it was adopted throughout the USA... and that system has continued into the linear cities cores that we have throughout North Am, and to a certain extent into the linear city cores of all of the linear cities in all of the nations on all of the worlds of the Solsys.
The system is simple enough. All of these great transportation corridors which run North-South have odd numbers with the lowest number on the eastern edge of the nation. All of the linear city cores forming East-West transportation routes have even numbers with the lowest number at the southern end of the nation.
Thus Core 001 runs from the coast of the state of Maine to the southern most edge of the state of Florida... passing through the great cities of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Richmond, Atlanta, and Miami as well as a number of minor cities as well.
Core 002 runs across Guatemala very near the southern border of North Am. Because of the geography of the nation, Core 002 is the shortest in North Am.
The simplicity of the numbering system makes one think that the cores form an extremely straight forward grid, but, of course, this is not the case (except in areas that were planned before the land was developed into the linear cities). The cores run along routes to ancient cities so that they could be incorporated into the system and follow routes influences by mountains and rivers. Since the main component of the core is rail travel, and since rail transportation is only efficient when it runs a fairly level route, the transportation cores sometimes run rather deep into the ground, sometimes rise up to cross rivers, and sometimes even change the basic design of how the rest of the city relates to the rails system. This last case, of course, refers to the instances where the linear city run out onto the continental shelves where the living areas are actually below the core and under the sea.
Another reason the the cores run a certain path originally was the avoid the actual centers of the ancient cites as the value of the land in these old city centers was too great, and crashing through the old city centers and destroying the old construction would have been too great a shock to the economy of the area.
Because of this, the intersection of Core 001 and Core 030 which is now the center of the great city of Philadelphia is actually in the northwest corner of what was the ancient city of Philadelphia. Similarly, the ancient center of New York was on the island of Manhattan which is well south of the intersection of Core 001 and Core 034 which is the current city center of New York. To cite another example, the intersection of Core 021 and Core 034 which is the current center of the great city of Chicag is well south of the the center of the ancient city which was actually built along the shore of the Great Lake named Michig.
Except for these great cities at the intersections, the linear cities are intended to be no more than 4 miles wide. 2 miles on either side of the Core. To get to the buildings on either side there are short cross streets leading out to the edge of the city ans sometimes beyond into the parks, playgrounds, and even beyond into the agricultural areas where the food for the cities is grown.
Of course, the numbering system does allow for some aberrations: Bypass loops where needed are given 400 series numbers, alternative routes are 100 series numbers, and full loops are given 600 series numbers. The 200 series numbers were given to in historic districts, and the 300 series numbers were given to alternative routes created when to basic route became too crowded. The fact that there are very few 300 series cores attests to the skill of the planners.
The 500 series number were reserved for fictional references in entertainments and dramas. Impossible addresses.
Linear Cities. Such a beautiful planning concept.
It takes a strong nearly all-powerful force to get the linear city started, but once started, it has a life of its own because the purpose and need for the city is so clear.
To build the seven story high (infinitely long) core and to control the development in the beginning takes a strong central government, such as the nations of Terra or the world government of Mars... or a proprietary development company like the one that controlled Europa, Io, and Ganymede in the early years... or a narrowly focused mining company as existed when Titan and Callisto were first settled.
Then when the master plan is set down and the basic cores are built, the rest of the development can be turned over to private enterprise. Then the buildings are built along the sides of the cores. Flats, penthouse homes, stores, factories, schools, restaurants and brothels... everything that humans need to make a complete life.
The control of the pattern of the linear city normally includes the limitation that the privately constructed buildings are within two miles of the core and are no more than seven stories higher than the top level of the core. There are many exceptions to this, but these regulations are set forth and observed in most areas.
In some places, there is nothing at the sides of the core. In many places the buildings are a mere two stories above the top core level. And, of course, in the great cities at the intersections of the N-S and E-W cores the buildings are allowed to go higher.
Even at the centers of the great cities though, the buildings seldom are allowed to be more than 28 stories higher than the top level of the core. The old problem of congestion at the core level kicks in at about that height of building. No skyscrapers are built to rival those of the third millennium.
The centrally controlled use of the land extended throughout the ancient cities when the construction of the linear cities began. Through enforcement of land use codes, the buildings more distant from the cores were allowed to atrophy and today... with the exception of historical districts like Kobe, Old Philadelphia, Reston, Manhattan, Sen Louie, and such... the width of the linear cities has contracted to the planning limit of two miles from the core. That's considered to be a proper walking distance for any human and the fact that segues are seldom seen attests to the wisdom of that limitation.
Calculations have been made that 98% of the fifty billion population of Terra can be housed, and have their commercial and cultural needs met on less than 10%
of the land surface of the planet.
The remaining 2% are the farmers who grow the food for the great population and those who choose not to be part of the great linear cities... and are permitted to exercise that choice.
That means the Elves, the Halfpints, some of the Dwarves... and of course, the Slave Races.
Slave Races. I wonder if the Crocodilia, Anubi, Sealinae, Porcs, Kanus, and Hawkmen, are actually counted in Terra's fifty billion population?
02 Marc 9876... on Cities
Linear Cities. Such a beautiful planning concept. Of course, it was originally design for Terra. Changes occurred when it was adapted for other worlds.
On Mars, the lighter gravity and the lower oxygen levels shaped the cities. The lighter gravity meant that the fourteen story limitation which were based upon the practical limitations of pumping fluids in Terra's gravity were inappropriate for Mars. A nineteen story limit was found to be the appropriate building height limit for Mars. That meant that nineteen stories above the top level of the core was a called for limit with thirty-eight stories as the limit for the great cities where the cores intersected.
But the lack of population density on Mars made the thirty-eight story exception moot. Nowhere on Mars was the thirty-eight story buildings really needed. The few thirty-eight story buildings that were built on Mars were built as public monuments or regional pride expressions rather than needed buildings.
The low oxygen level situation expressed itself on Mars by limiting the width of the linear cities. This was done so that large areas could be enclosed and have their oxygen level raised to make early citizens and visitors from other worlds more comfortable.
On the Jovan worlds, Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto, the 8/1 pattern was overlaid on the linear city. Flanking the core are 8/1 units where the principal function is to gather radiant energy from eight squares surrounding one square where the energy of Jupiter and Sol are focused to make agricultural products grow. Since the basic 8/1 group is about a mile square, the Terran limitation of being no further than 2 miles from the core are generally observed as the customary pattern is to put two 8/1 units on each side of the circulation core.
Since the collection of radiant energy is the core need on these world, the size of the collectors needed is the dominant planning element. With more collection area required than the area required to house the population, the cores on these worlds are wide and only four stories high rather than the seven stories that are the rule on Terra. Further because of the lower population density, the building height seldom exceeds two stories above the top level of the core and often is actually lower than the top level of the core. (The lower height of building construction is especially evident on Io, and Callisto.) The collector-domes which cover the 8 portion of the 8/1 pattern are often high enough to allow for building up to nineteen stories above the ground, but I have never heard of any buildings of that height being built on these worlds.
With the mining worlds like Titan, all rules no longer apply. Here the need is to burrow into the earth: the core is in a tunnel for all of its length except at the space port. The galleries at the side of the transportation core were created first because they were where the desirable minerals were found. Later they were enlarged and reinforced as residential and commercial-industrial areas.
Luna is a different case principally because it was settled first as discreet enclaves. The linking of these enclaves with the “Girdle” made all of Luna into one long linear city. As an airless world, Luna's linear city had to be airtight and had to be compartmented so that a puncture in one of its many domes would not cause great loss of air before the puncture was repaired. The requirement to be airtight has made the four mile Terran linear city width absolute with many areas along the Girdle being only one and one half mile wide.
And of course the Lunan “linear city” has no intersections with other cores: a world girdling core is long enough for everything and everyone on the world.
And need I point out that the girdle runs straight only from enclave to enclave? Viewed as a total system, it appears to have a very chaotic path!
