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Would it really be remotely cost-effective to take a skyscraper and refit the bottom three stories to be underwater? Sounds like a stretch. It would probably be

Would it really be remotely cost-effective to take a skyscraper and refit the bottom three stories to be underwater? Sounds like a stretch. It would probably be cheaper to abandon low-lying areas and demolish the buildings there.

kbenson 10y ago
Given that skyscrapers seem to describe buildings of 40+ floors, losing 3 is less than 10% of the total floors, possibly a little more of the total floor space given that upper floors may not have the same dimensions, offset by possibly fewer elevator shafts beyond certain points. If the bottom can be retrofitted to be very secure in water (extra concrete?), then I don't see why you would abandon it. It's not like you're constructing a whole new building and have to forego three floors, it's already existing and it's just a matter of putting the work in to make sure it's still usable. These things are all anchored into bedrock anyway, so it's not like you should have to worry about the material under the foundations shifting or eroding.
- myowncrapulence 10y ago
  You aren't taking into account the degradation sea water has on infrastructure. The pounding waves and salt would most certainly make the buildings unsafe.
  - virgil_disgr4ce 10y ago
    Well, the concrete that actually takes all the load would be safe; that's how pretty much any caissons or foundations in water are built anyway. Electrical delivery would have to be completely re-thought and redeployed. There wouldn't be 'pounding waves' since the rest of the city would be diffusing large waves.
- L_Rahman 10y ago
  Most of the things that skyscraper needs in order to be a viable structure - electricity, data, water, sewage - lie underground in systems that will not survive extended submersion beneath seawater.
  - sevensor 10y ago
    Kim Stanley Robinson has this problem in general. It's as if he just doesn't care about the science in his sci-fi. Engineering problems just get hand-waved around whenever they're inconvenient. Terraforming Venus? No problem! Ten kilometer tall spiral launch structures? Sure! A service corridor that goes all the way around a planet? Easy! I might be more inclined to forgive him if he could write a halfway interesting character, or manifest some semblance of a theme, but I'm just constantly disappointed. His work seems more ambitious than spaceships and rayguns, but it always comes up short. I'd rather spend my limited leisure reading time on mindless space potboilers like The Expanse.
    - jessaustin 10y ago
      I've just about given up halfway through Years of Rice and Salt. If the writing is this pedestrian, I need more of a point than reincarnation! In truth, I'll probably read the whole thing eventually, since I bought the paperback already, but it's certainly not a page-turner.
      - robbiep 10y ago
        People can have wild differences of opinion. The Years of Rice and Salt is one of my favourite books. I hope you come to enjoy it :)
      - jhbadger 10y ago
        The point isn't reincarnation -- that's just an excuse to have similar characters in different eras. The point is to think about how different (better in some ways, worse in others) the world would have been if Western Europe hadn't been as dominant as it was in our history.
    - robbiep 10y ago
      that's interesting to hear your opinion. Mine couldn't be more different. To start with in 2312, the science has largely been explained in the Mars Trilogy - whereas 2312 is more detective novel set in space than sci fi. I'm not sure why the service tunnel (or the rail system and city of Terminator itself, actually) are so far out there given just how far off things we are talking. You've got thousands of hollowed out terria and genetic engineering of humans where sex changes to one side and back again before settling in the middle are commonplace, and it's the metamaterials that defy your belief? Part of good literature and movies is being sold the story so as to suspend disbelief. This has always happened with KSR's books for me. Funnily enough, it didn't happen with Breaking Bad - I couldn't finish it. Anyway, diversity makes the world an interesting place!
- tpurves 10y ago
  Simpler solution would be to bring landfill to raise the ground level of NYC. The first floors of buildings would be converted to extra levels of sub-floors and new lobbies/entrances built higher up. Or other buildings could be potentially jacked up to new higher up with new subfloors built inbetween to keep them connected to their old foundations. Or lastly, tear down the old structure and build a new building at the higher level. A lot of cities today are build on top of fill on top of remains of old or ancient cities still below ground.
  - kbenson 10y ago
    I thought I heard once that quite a bit of Manhattan is already landfill (and many of the subfloors are already below sea level). If so, this sounds like it would be the obvious chosen solution.
    - czinck 10y ago
      I don't know how much is in total, but the west side was expanded with landfill in the 19th century, and Battery Park City is made entirely of excavated dirt from other construction projects, mainly the Twin Towers.
  - namlem 10y ago
    Why not just build dykes to prevent the flooding in the first place?
    - johan_larson 10y ago
      Two problems: the ocean and the Hudson river. The sea approaches NYC from two directions. To the south is the passage between Long Island and Staten Island, and to the east is the passage between the mainland and Long Island. If your goal is to protect all five boroughs of NYC, you have to protect Brooklyn, which faces the open sea directly. So a huge seawall south of of Brooklyn, crossing over to Sandy Hook. That looks to be closer to 10 km straight across. The east is also tricky, because the Bronx reaches so far north and east. Your best bet is probably a dam at Sands Point, but it will have to be a good 4 km long. That should be fun. Finally there is the Hudson river, which flows north to south. You are going to have to divert that somewhere, or it will just pool up in New York harbor until it finds a way to the sea. A Yonkers-New Rochelle canal perhaps? If this is your plan, you will have the gratitude of an entire generation of civil engineers, construction workers, and financiers. Your taxpayers may be less enthusiastic.
thriftwy 10y ago
Or build a few dams here and there. Doesn't seem very hard to do.
- DavidAdams 10y ago
  I'm sure it would be much more effective to go full Netherlands on Manhattan and set up dikes and seawalls and pumps.
  - johan_larson 10y ago
    Hello, Reinhardt Gehrke here from Deutche Bank Municipal Bonds. We got the the RFP you sent around. We are eager to be of service of course, but is this a misprint? You want to borrow trillions of dollars for infrastructure projects?
    - thriftwy 10y ago
      I don't think it would be prohibitively expensive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Petersburg_Dam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Petersburg_Dam to compare to - 15mi of dams built for a much less wealthy city.
      - binarymax 10y ago
        At New York prices it would be... http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/23/where-the-second-avenue-subway-went-wrong http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/23/where-the-secon...
davidw 10y ago
They're certainly not skyscrapers, but that's what has happened with the lower floors of buildings in Venice, as they sink into the muck.
WalterBright 10y ago
It's be cheaper to build a dike around the city.

kbenson 10y ago

Given that skyscrapers seem to describe buildings of 40+ floors, losing 3 is less than 10% of the total floors, possibly a little more of the total floor space given that upper floors may not have the same dimensions, offset by possibly fewer elevator shafts beyond certain points. If the bottom can be retrofitted to be very secure in water (extra concrete?), then I don't see why you would abandon it. It's not like you're constructing a whole new building and have to forego three floors, it's already existing and it's just a matter of putting the work in to make sure it's still usable. These things are all anchored into bedrock anyway, so it's not like you should have to worry about the material under the foundations shifting or eroding.

myowncrapulence 10y ago
You aren't taking into account the degradation sea water has on infrastructure. The pounding waves and salt would most certainly make the buildings unsafe.
- virgil_disgr4ce 10y ago
  Well, the concrete that actually takes all the load would be safe; that's how pretty much any caissons or foundations in water are built anyway. Electrical delivery would have to be completely re-thought and redeployed. There wouldn't be 'pounding waves' since the rest of the city would be diffusing large waves.
L_Rahman 10y ago
Most of the things that skyscraper needs in order to be a viable structure - electricity, data, water, sewage - lie underground in systems that will not survive extended submersion beneath seawater.
- sevensor 10y ago
  Kim Stanley Robinson has this problem in general. It's as if he just doesn't care about the science in his sci-fi. Engineering problems just get hand-waved around whenever they're inconvenient. Terraforming Venus? No problem! Ten kilometer tall spiral launch structures? Sure! A service corridor that goes all the way around a planet? Easy! I might be more inclined to forgive him if he could write a halfway interesting character, or manifest some semblance of a theme, but I'm just constantly disappointed. His work seems more ambitious than spaceships and rayguns, but it always comes up short. I'd rather spend my limited leisure reading time on mindless space potboilers like The Expanse.
  - jessaustin 10y ago
    I've just about given up halfway through Years of Rice and Salt. If the writing is this pedestrian, I need more of a point than reincarnation! In truth, I'll probably read the whole thing eventually, since I bought the paperback already, but it's certainly not a page-turner.
    - robbiep 10y ago
      People can have wild differences of opinion. The Years of Rice and Salt is one of my favourite books. I hope you come to enjoy it :)
    - jhbadger 10y ago
      The point isn't reincarnation -- that's just an excuse to have similar characters in different eras. The point is to think about how different (better in some ways, worse in others) the world would have been if Western Europe hadn't been as dominant as it was in our history.
  - robbiep 10y ago
    that's interesting to hear your opinion. Mine couldn't be more different. To start with in 2312, the science has largely been explained in the Mars Trilogy - whereas 2312 is more detective novel set in space than sci fi. I'm not sure why the service tunnel (or the rail system and city of Terminator itself, actually) are so far out there given just how far off things we are talking. You've got thousands of hollowed out terria and genetic engineering of humans where sex changes to one side and back again before settling in the middle are commonplace, and it's the metamaterials that defy your belief? Part of good literature and movies is being sold the story so as to suspend disbelief. This has always happened with KSR's books for me. Funnily enough, it didn't happen with Breaking Bad - I couldn't finish it. Anyway, diversity makes the world an interesting place!
tpurves 10y ago
Simpler solution would be to bring landfill to raise the ground level of NYC. The first floors of buildings would be converted to extra levels of sub-floors and new lobbies/entrances built higher up. Or other buildings could be potentially jacked up to new higher up with new subfloors built inbetween to keep them connected to their old foundations. Or lastly, tear down the old structure and build a new building at the higher level. A lot of cities today are build on top of fill on top of remains of old or ancient cities still below ground.
- kbenson 10y ago
  I thought I heard once that quite a bit of Manhattan is already landfill (and many of the subfloors are already below sea level). If so, this sounds like it would be the obvious chosen solution.
  - czinck 10y ago
    I don't know how much is in total, but the west side was expanded with landfill in the 19th century, and Battery Park City is made entirely of excavated dirt from other construction projects, mainly the Twin Towers.
- namlem 10y ago
  Why not just build dykes to prevent the flooding in the first place?
  - johan_larson 10y ago
    Two problems: the ocean and the Hudson river. The sea approaches NYC from two directions. To the south is the passage between Long Island and Staten Island, and to the east is the passage between the mainland and Long Island. If your goal is to protect all five boroughs of NYC, you have to protect Brooklyn, which faces the open sea directly. So a huge seawall south of of Brooklyn, crossing over to Sandy Hook. That looks to be closer to 10 km straight across. The east is also tricky, because the Bronx reaches so far north and east. Your best bet is probably a dam at Sands Point, but it will have to be a good 4 km long. That should be fun. Finally there is the Hudson river, which flows north to south. You are going to have to divert that somewhere, or it will just pool up in New York harbor until it finds a way to the sea. A Yonkers-New Rochelle canal perhaps? If this is your plan, you will have the gratitude of an entire generation of civil engineers, construction workers, and financiers. Your taxpayers may be less enthusiastic.

thriftwy 10y ago

Or build a few dams here and there. Doesn't seem very hard to do.

DavidAdams 10y ago
I'm sure it would be much more effective to go full Netherlands on Manhattan and set up dikes and seawalls and pumps.
- johan_larson 10y ago
  Hello, Reinhardt Gehrke here from Deutche Bank Municipal Bonds. We got the the RFP you sent around. We are eager to be of service of course, but is this a misprint? You want to borrow trillions of dollars for infrastructure projects?
  - thriftwy 10y ago
    I don't think it would be prohibitively expensive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Petersburg_Dam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Petersburg_Dam to compare to - 15mi of dams built for a much less wealthy city.
    - binarymax 10y ago
      At New York prices it would be... http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/23/where-the-second-avenue-subway-went-wrong http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/23/where-the-secon...

davidw 10y ago

They're certainly not skyscrapers, but that's what has happened with the lower floors of buildings in Venice, as they sink into the muck.

WalterBright 10y ago

It's be cheaper to build a dike around the city.