On Mon, Oct 8, 2012 at 7:39 PM, Jouni Valkonen <jounivalko...@gmail.com>wrote:
Perhaps if we force agriculture to skyscrapers and deserts, then there is > enough room for humans to live comfortably in bungalows. So we turn the > idea of city and country side upside down. That in the future humans will > live in countryside, while food is produced in the cities and skyscrapers! > This is what I would like to see -- for roads to disappear from cities and be replaced by walkways between buildings that are built downwards for the most part rather than upwards. The tallest buildings would not be taller than three stories in most urban areas. You could get the population density needed for mass transit by building several stories downwards, around open-air gardens at the bottom of a wide column. The buildings would be all but hidden by trellises and greenery. In an economy of prosperity, rather than one of subsistence and want, there would be more than enough work to keep people quite occupied. As people's tastes are refined, they will start taking a liking for rarer cultivars, and they will often choose to maintain their own gardens. In the Bay area there is currently a flourishing of food trucks, where people try the kind of well-prepared food that you would otherwise have to travel some distance to get at a nice restaurant; I see this trend continuing and doubt that robots will ever become better chefs than the best human ones. There is also the problem of governance, which has been mentioned. And there is plenty of scope for a whole industry of hand-made furniture and textiles. Eventually people will see the kitschy mass-produced clothing and furniture of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as an embarrassing infatuation with the mechanization introduced during the industrial revolution. There will always be a need for gardeners and stone masons. Imagine the beautiful buildings that could replace the visionless industrial architecture that blights many north American cities these days. There will be a need for scientists and journalists and event organizers. There will be a need for people who sit at a terminal, making sure the mining robots are not broken. Eric
