Since we "discovered" that buildings could be built (rented and sold) at dollars per square foot and return on investment became part of all activities, I guess safety factors and the idea that buildings could be built with an aesthetic approach became part of yesterday's thinking.
I agree, we need new governance mechanisms. Approaches that are congruent with a society that operates, more and more, in real time. Approaches that can drive decision making down to the appropriate levels. Etc.,etc. I think it is happening. I think it will happen at an accellerated rate as certain external events force the changes that are waiting to take place. Arthur -----Original Message----- From: Keith Hudson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, December 13, 2001 3:59 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Longer time horizons In the last day or two there is news that there exists a video of Bin Laden at a dinner party subsequent to September 11 in which he is supposed to say that he was surprised at the total effect of the plane crashes on the Trade Center towers. He was expecting a fire, and perhaps the death of hundreds of people above the crashed floors, but not the total collapse of the buildings. (And Bin Laden is supposed to be a qualified civil engineer.) >From what we know now, even an "ordinary" fire in those Trade Center towers (or other buildings of similar construction), if gaining a sufficient hold to affect the steelwork of the floor above, would have exactly the same effect -- viz the collapse of the floors above and then the accelerative collapse of the whole building. In civil engineering there used to be a concept, vague and unmeasurable though it was in many cases, of a "safety factor" in the construction of buildings and bridges. This safety factor was more intuitive, based on experience, than scientific but, nevetheless, it was a salutary discipline in the design of buildings, something that architects and civil engineers always had in their minds. When I was young, the safety factor that most worked to was 5. In talking to one builder in those days, I remember that he poured some scorn on Victorian buildings which, he said, were vastly overbuilt, having safety factors of 10 or more. Not far from where I live is the Clifton suspension bridge, built over a deep gorge of the River Avon and the first in the world to be built out of wrought iron. It was built over 150 years ago by the great English engineer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel. It was built for foot passengers and horse-and-carts. It still exists and is constantly choc-a-bloc full with cars, coaches full of tourists and lorries. Yet it is as sound now as the day it was built. Considering the present weight of traffic, Brunel's safety factor was probably in the hundreds! Even now it is probably several-fold. Present-day architects and builders cannot build to safety factors of 10, or even 5, because the buildings would be too expensive and would never produce a profit. Accordingly, most tall building today have safety factors which are probably in the region of 2 or 3 -- that is, 1+ a factor allowing for the occasional heavy winds or normal earthquakes experienced for that area. With the benefit of hindsight, it seems to me that the safety factor of the Trade Center buildings was barely more than 1. This safety factor matter is only one consequence of the modern philosophy of "live for today, tomorrow we die". Other consequences are that businesses hardly look any further forward than the next quarter's or half-year's results, government policies have in mind the chances of being elected at the next election and so on. There is something deeply ironic about all this. I was deeply impressed by an article I read a few days ago in which the writer said that modern society no longer creates new institutions. Almost all those that we have today were put in place during the 19th century. Productive though we are in all manner of innovations and consumer products, we still use ancient institutions that are now creaking in their joints -- indeed, now close to their safety-factors! The matter of how we choose governments is certainly our greatest weakness today. In this country we have recently had a General Election which had the lowest turn-out since that of 1918 (and this, when many WWI soldiers had not yet returned from Europe!). Turnouts have been dropping steadily for decades. Today, typical elections in developed countries involve less than 50% of the electorate, and typical governments are elected by somewhat less than 25% of the adult population. The credibility of governments is not at an all-time low. It has been getting lower steadily all through modern times and will undoubtedly be lower still in the years to come. In a recent (large-scale) opinion poll in this country, only 16% of the population sampled said that they trusted the government. Today we live in complex times with many complex issues and specialisations. The typical legislatures of developed countries, disproportionately consisting of lawyers and, more recently, "professional" politicians who have never had ordinary jobs (or even executive jobs in business), are completely unrepresentative of the jobs and experience of the population at large. They are as distant and removed from the conditions and worries of ordinary people as a Chinese Emperor. We need a totally new sort of governmental system. Perhaps it is already evolving. Today, we are seeing the powerful emergence of pressure groups of all sorts, public and private, large and small, self-seeking and altruistic, national and international. All these are pressing against politicians (sometimes corruptly) who, on the most important long-term issues of the day are, in truth, as bewildered and unqualified as anybody else you meet in the street to take decisions. However, we do not seem to be prepared to take the brave decisions that the Victorians did and build completely new institutions. Remember that the Victorians brought about adult suffrage against the interests of much of their existing establishment -- as revolutionary a decision as can be imagined for those days. We now need to be just as revolutionary. Keith Hudson ___________________________________________________________________ Keith Hudson, Bath, England; e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___________________________________________________________________
