An urban renewal idea

Chicagoan · Heavy Crude Joined: Jun 19, 2004 Posts: 315

I posted this in the open forum when I was unable to register, but I think it makes more sense here. This may sound far-fetched, but I believe that preserving the great cities of the world is a worthy goal. As the centers of culture and learning, they are essential to preserving civilization. I have a distant relation to the Daleys, so my chances of communicating this to the powers that be are somewhat better.

The biggest problem with peak oil is the lack of public awarness. In order to make our great city viable for the future, we need to start acting now. I believe the first order of buisness is cleaning up abandoned industrial areas, making the soils farmable again wherever possible. Abandoned neighborhoods should be demolished to allow the soil to regenerate while storing the building materials for future use. These things might be done post-peak, but would be much more labor intensive. In the future, these areas could be used as urban farms. As people leave the city to return to agriculture, these urban farms should be expanded as much as possible.

We need to build a renewable energy infrastructure capable of maintaining water supply. Steps towards this goal have already been taken. http://www.consciouschoice.com/issues/cc1408/solarpowerchicago1408.html

Electricity is absolutely essential to keep any city a livable place. We have to have at least enough of it to keep water flowing, to keep sewage off the streets, and to keep the el running. I think most of us realize that urban populations have to decrease, so demand for those things should go down. Precipitation is our part of the world is expected to increase due to global warming, so irrigation needs are not as great as in other regions. Public transportation needs will most likely go down as well, for similar reasons. But if we can keep it running, it may be used to transport crops. The Metra runs on diesel, so it is more problematic.

Downtown Chicago is very energy-innefficient. The Sears Tower alone consumes more energy in a day then most small cities. But that is not necesarry. One thing we must remember is that office buildings are currently filled with thousands of cubicles containing energy-hungry office workstations. Most of those businesses will leave post-peak. Those buildings should instead be used as residential apartments for the remaining industrial workers. If mankind can avoid the worst-case scenario, there will still be a demand for products farmers cannot make on their own. Solar cells. Wind generators. Metal tools. We have a huge junk pile from which we can search for recycleable materials. Following the arcology theory http://www.arcosanti.org/theory/arcology/intro.html it would be best to house non-farming populations in large skyscrapers. Since we will probably not have the capacity to build more, we should make due with what we have.

One idea I have that might be doable today is a renovation of the Sears Tower. After 9-11, nobody wants to work on the top floors. So why not take them off and replace them with windmills. That is what the developers did with the plans for the new WTC. It is very windy up there. There is currently a proposal to turn the huge abandoned steel mills in the region into wind farms. Since they are ugly as heck anyway, NIMBYism is not much of a problem.