Public: City: Planning
ElastiCity   (+1)  [vote for, against]
City which stretches instead of sprawls

Dig a deep pit several kilometres wide, seal it hermetically by vitrification and fill it with water. Stretch a tough elastic surface across it, cover that in infrastructure and gyroscopically supported buildings and street furniture. Some of the infrastructure is helical in form and can therefore expand. People and businesses gradually fill the city, bringing with them urine and waste water, which is treated and discharged via the sewers into the pit. Also, the city collects rainwater. As time goes by, the elastic surface gradually bulges and inflates, moving the buildings further apart, which stay upright due to the gyroscopes. Build more edifices between the older buildings. More people move into the city (or engage in economic activity there), thereby importing more liquid waste and further inflating the city. Ultimately, what was formerly a flat city becomes a hemispherical city of twice the area, through which it's possible to move along spiral and radial roads away from the centre assisted by gravity. Finally, either dig satellite pits or start building down into the pit, allowing people to live surrounded by ancient slurry (best not to think about that bit).
-- nineteenthly, Dec 27 2013

Is this to do with breasts?
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Dec 27 2013


Is this a metaphor for capitalism?
Love the title by the way. <starts mentally building SincChronoCity>
-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Dec 27 2013


I don't see breasts as either inflatable or as filled with wee, so whereas you may have a point, it's subconscious at most, [MB]. It was actually inspired by a comment on Mornington Crescent that in Chaucer's time the game was quicker because London was smaller and therefore the tube stations were closer together. Not a metaphor for capitalism either until now, but you do have a point, [2].
-- nineteenthly, Dec 27 2013



random, halfbakery