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  #1  
Old Posted Dec 29, 2006, 7:33 PM
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Mega-projects - will we ever see them?

By mega-projects, I am talking about something on a new level above Burj Dubai - rather something like Sky City 1000 in Japan - a project that is massive beyond comprehension and just isn't a building, but a entire city built in a tower.

Obviously these projects would cost countless billions of dollars and the people who would live and work in them would have to realize they are part of something new and different.

The differentiation is 'just a building' like everything that is out there now, where you can easily visit the building, work or live in it, and get in and out quickly - it is just a building. A mega-project/mega-building would be something you would live and work in full-time, and you would only leave for vacation, to visit friends, shop/visit special places (as in, leaving the building would be like leaving your region and visiting another city/part of the city, not part of your daily life).

Anyone have thoughts on this? It would be fascinating to see something like this built.
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  #2  
Old Posted Dec 29, 2006, 9:51 PM
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Would be great if we got some megaprojects,
but I don't think we will see them in our lifetime...
they just simply cost too much...
and Buildings like X-seed 4000 will
probably never be buildt at all...
so I am afraid we would not see them soon.
But.. if ever, then in Dubai
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  #3  
Old Posted Dec 29, 2006, 10:36 PM
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I don't think Dubai would WANT one - I picture it in Hong Kong, Japan, or coastal China where they are out of room and people don't mind living in tight spaces.
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Old Posted Dec 29, 2006, 11:09 PM
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I don't know if we'll see them in the near future under current conditions. They're incomprehensibly expensive, would use an ungodly amount of resources and would take a massive outpouring of ingenuity and manpower...they're kind of impractical.

That being said, the regions you mentioned are about the only places I could see something like this being built short of some kind of ecological disaster that would all but necessitate them in other parts of the world.
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  #5  
Old Posted Jan 1, 2007, 6:15 PM
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All mega-projects will be built in Dubai, and only Dubai.
Perhaps they will even build the space elevator.
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  #6  
Old Posted Jan 1, 2007, 6:38 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MolsonExport View Post
All mega-projects will be built in Dubai, and only Dubai.
Perhaps they will even build the space elevator.
Given time and other criteria someone else will jump on the scene. China will do something massive soon just to show the rest of the world what it can do. Don't know what or where, but wait for them.
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Old Posted Jan 1, 2007, 10:20 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Dalreg View Post
Given time and other criteria someone else will jump on the scene. China will do something massive soon just to show the rest of the world what it can do. Don't know what or where, but wait for them.
Wait for them?
Don't you think people in the world are pretty aware of what China is and does right now? China does not need to "show the world what it can do"...
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  #8  
Old Posted Jan 1, 2007, 11:28 PM
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Originally Posted by staff View Post
Wait for them?
Don't you think people in the world are pretty aware of what China is and does right now? China does not need to "show the world what it can do"...
I agree but we are talking about the mega projects. China will eventually take a run at the worlds tallest building, and I'm sure it won't be by a few feet or so. But they will surpass it by a huge margin. Say the first 1000m tower?

With the infrastructure projects happening around China currently, it would be the single largest project ever built. If it was all one project instead of broken up into many smaller but still huge projects.

Until China does something along the lines of the islands of Dubai or the channel tunnel it just isn't in the eyes of everyday people around the world.

Three Gorges has been under construction for years, and very few people in North America even know of this project.
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  #9  
Old Posted Jan 2, 2007, 8:38 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Dalreg View Post
I agree but we are talking about the mega projects. China will eventually take a run at the worlds tallest building, and I'm sure it won't be by a few feet or so. But they will surpass it by a huge margin. Say the first 1000m tower?

With the infrastructure projects happening around China currently, it would be the single largest project ever built. If it was all one project instead of broken up into many smaller but still huge projects.

Until China does something along the lines of the islands of Dubai or the channel tunnel it just isn't in the eyes of everyday people around the world.
Well, to compare Dubai's islands with the Chunnel is not really realistic.
The islands of Dubai (well, all projects in Dubai) are built in order to get attention from the rest of the world, whereas the Chunnel (or the Öresund Bridge etc.) is a very important infrastructural project for Western Europe, and not built to say "look, here we are!".

I highly doubt that China would built something that expensive or wasteful such as artificial islands or 1000+ towers in the near future just to get recognition.
Why? Because China does not need recognition.

This doesn't mean that China has built/are building/planning huge projects such as the Three Gorges Dam (as you mentioned), massive infrastructural projects such as huge metro systems in numerous cities, massive bridges, the world's only Maglev train lines, brand new hyper-modern airports in almost every major city, the Beijing Olympics, as well as completely new cities to accomodate the 400 million people that are moving from rural areas in to urban areas - the biggest mass move of people in human history.

All these projects are indeed justified and built because they are a necissity.
Building artificial islands or space elevators just for show is not what China will do in a forseeable future - such projects belong to Dubai.


Quote:
Three Gorges has been under construction for years, and very few people in North America even know of this project.
Very few people in North America know anything about the outside world...
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  #10  
Old Posted Jan 2, 2007, 12:39 PM
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Auckland's Building Count

Built: 104 | Construction: 28 | Destroyed: 11 | Proposed: 20 | Renovation: 2
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  #11  
Old Posted Jan 5, 2007, 4:12 PM
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Megastructures of any kind are expansive. And there is always a safety problem. How good will a megastructure stand strong storms and earthquakes? What about sabotage or terrorism?

Where to evacuate the people when a structure like "X-seed 4000" was damaged so, that it may collapse?

I think one will only built such things when there is no other way.

The best construction site for megastructures would not be earth. It will be space, either in form of large space stations, space elevators, huge solar power stations, solar shields, scientific instruments, etc..
A megastructure in space could be much easilier built, because it has not to stand winds or earthquakes and in many cases no very large forces.
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  #12  
Old Posted Jan 5, 2007, 5:29 PM
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^In space, the impact of a basketball-sized object travelling at several thousand miles per hour would be catastrophic on such a megastructure.
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  #13  
Old Posted Jan 5, 2007, 8:51 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MolsonExport View Post
^In space, the impact of a basketball-sized object travelling at several thousand miles per hour would be catastrophic on such a megastructure.
No, it would be caught by the tracter beam before it collided.

Come on back to Earth guys.
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Old Posted Jan 6, 2007, 12:06 AM
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too say that we will never see mega-projects (like the above mentioned), is almost as bad as saying the humans are the only life forms in the universe. its a pretty cocky viewpoint to have.

people used to think that buildings would never be as big as the pyramids in Egypts, and then taller then the Eifel Tower in France. Hell, my great grand father (before he died) figured that they would never build a building taller then the Empire State Building in NYC, then Sears Tower and the WTC were built. Now, buildings like Burj Dubai and Tapei 101 are setting the standards for height world wide.

I wouldn't say that we were so far off building a megastructure that could house the population of a small city (IE: Okotoks Alberta Canada). It may take a virtually unlimited resource base and the will to do it. We certainly have the technology, and its only going to get better. I'd even go on record as saying within the next 15 - 20 years we will start seeing the construction of these cities in a building.

thats just my two cents.
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  #15  
Old Posted Jan 6, 2007, 12:13 AM
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Tall buildings are one thing - cities in buildings are another.

Imagine getting to a building, going thru security like at an airport, boarding a vertical train, going to a sky lobby, getting onto elevators, and going to where you want - maybe 30, 45+ minutes from getting to the building to getting to where you want to go if there are no delays.
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  #16  
Old Posted Jan 6, 2007, 12:16 AM
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If you consider that a "mega-project" does not necessarily have to be tall, then you certainly can count the Megamalls like Mall of Arabia, Mall of Asia or the Mall of America. As mentioned on another thread the Mall of America is undergoing an expansion that will have residences, offices, museums, and an art center, in addition to 800 stores under one roof. It already has a university, amusement park, theatres, aquarium and chapel.

In a sense, these malls are becoming small cities in themselves, and they don't need to go upward, just outward. (The daily population of the Mall of America is already well over 100,000 and expected to rise to over 200,000) And they are already larger than buildings like Taipei 101 in square footage.

I'm not necessarily a fan of malls, but they do qualify as mega-projects. And I would expect that these kinds of projects will be more financially feasable than a large tower.
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Old Posted Jan 6, 2007, 4:01 AM
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Mega-project: The Pentagon

President Franklin D. Roosevelt decided to build a new headquarters for the Department of Defense on a site close to Washington, D.C. Construction began in 1941. In just two years, a crew of 4,000 people worked 24 hours a day in three shifts to finish the largest federal office building in America.

Even though the building is 6,546,360 square feet and has five floors, you can walk to the farthest point from any location in less than ten minutes because of the clever interior design. Today, the famous five-sided building houses almost 24,000 men and women of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Coast Guard, who work together to protect the United States and the nation's interests abroad. On September 11, 2001, the Pentagon was partially destroyed and 190 people killed when a hijacked jet--manned by terrorists--slammed into the building. The Pentagon Renovation Program has the responsibility of re-building the damaged military headquarters of the United States, which has not undergone a major renovation since its original construction in 1941.





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  #18  
Old Posted Jan 6, 2007, 4:27 AM
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Any mega project requires a need for it (either real or perceived) and the funding to make it happen. Unfortunately my Arcology savings account isn't growing the way I'd like it to, and I don't see any place that has a real need for it. A country like Dubai doing it as a vanity project before there is any need for it would probably make the concept into a joke. That said, I'd love to see one built for a good reason.
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  #19  
Old Posted Jan 6, 2007, 9:03 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MolsonExport View Post
All mega-projects will be built in Dubai, and only Dubai.
Perhaps they will even build the space elevator.

Dubai is outside the tropical zone, a bit above the Tropic of Cancer line.

To build a space elevator, you need to be over the equator, or just a few degrees over or below it.
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  #20  
Old Posted Jan 7, 2007, 12:28 AM
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Originally Posted by kenratboy View Post
A mega-project/mega-building would be something you would live and work in full-time, and you would only leave for vacation, to visit friends, shop/visit special places (as in, leaving the building would be like leaving your region and visiting another city/part of the city, not part of your daily life).

Anyone have thoughts on this? It would be fascinating to see something like this built.
ya know, these things have existed for a long time, and they're called neighborhoods. you don't need a kilometer-high building for this, a well designed block with a sensible land use and transportation policy does just fine.
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