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What's caused the death of the megaproject in the last 50 years? Even if they weren't realized (and most weren't), all these megaprojects were fascinating exerc

What's caused the death of the megaproject in the last 50 years? Even if they weren't realized (and most weren't), all these megaprojects were fascinating exercises in creativity and sheer ambition.

mhh__ 7y ago
Is the ISS not a megaproject?
- thefounder 7y ago
  Not really. It's a difficult project though. A mega project would be a self sustained colony on a bigger ISS. Something like Elysium.
  - lifeformed 7y ago
    The ISS is the most expensive project ever, it surely qualifies. A space colony would be more like a gigaproject.
flohofwoe 7y ago
Unintended ecological catastrophes like the disappearing of the Aral Sea? The Soviets were really big into mega-projects (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_river_reversal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_river_reversal, they actual wanted to reverse the Aral Sea shrinking with that too). Thankfully they came to their senses (and probably also ran out of money anyway).
UweSchmidt 7y ago
I guess megaprojects need a strong economy, a high birth rate and low wages. This provides an environment and culture where many people will work for cheap under often tough and dangerous circumstances, for a long period of time. These days labour is expensive and the stock market needs success every quarter, so products are rushed to the market and everything is leveraged through mass production, outsourcing and automation. Our economies are not able to do megaprojects anymore.
pjc50 7y ago
Cost-benefit studies and the desire to privatise everything? Most of the proposed megaprojects were, like the Space Race, more demonstrations of national power than coherent plans. It's not a coincidence how China and the Soviet Union were big fans of megaprojects. Not to mention climate change. If there is to be a megaproject, it has to be an anti-climate-change one. Otherwise we're engaged in the worldwide megaproject of making earth slightly less habitable.
jeanlucas 7y ago
One more reason, given the huge amounts of salt all the new area would be a wasteland, and quite honestly just more space to fight
dmitriid 7y ago
Until the 80s we believed that we had unlimited supply of cheap energy. We no longer believe that. This affected a lot of thinking, planning, and creativity. In the 50s-60s people dreamed of megaprojects. Now we look at a megaproject and go: "well, no. it will take too much effort and power with no tangible benefit".
- userulluipeste 7y ago
  "Now we look at a megaproject and go: «well, no. it will take too much effort and power with no tangible benefit»." My thought about this was that we ceased the rush for bigger and went looking for smarter.
- zokier 7y ago
  > Until the 80s we believed that we had unlimited supply of cheap energy. We no longer believe that. Atlantropa would have helped there a lot :)
isostatic 7y ago
Can you define a megaproject?
Sharlin 7y ago
Megaprojects are alive and well, just not in the West.
- splike 7y ago
  Could you give examples of megaprojects happening outside of the west?
  - isostatic 7y ago
    Could you give an example of something you consider a megaproject in the past? Chances are similar projects are underway
  - Sharlin 7y ago
    The Three Gorges Dam certainly qualifies. I'd also count Chinese cities, even if not a single entity: China has used as much concrete in a few years as the US used in the whole 20th century. What has been happening on the Arabian peninsula is also pretty ridiculous as far as urban development goes. There are the various megaskyscrapers; the top ten tallest buildings in the world are all built in the 2010s, six of them are in China and only one in the West. Of the top 20 tallest buildings, all but one are built in this millennium. Another project that probably deserves a mention is the ongoing effort to reclaim land from the sea in Singapore. One Western example is a planned railway tunnel under the Gulf of Finland connecting Helsinki and Tallinn, the capitals of Finland and Estonia respectively. It would be the longest undersea tunnel in the world if ever built. We're probably going to see quite a few megaprojects related to climate change in the future. Assuming we actually want to stop it and not just talk about it.
rtkwe 7y ago
A lot of them just aren't great ideas to start with. This for example would create a lot of land but much of it would be pretty salty so wouldn't grow food very well. In addition the remaining water would slowly get saltier and saltier eventually probably dying similar to the Dead Sea, granted this would take a while but it's a definite negative, the Med is already saltier than most of the ocean because it's relatively isolated from the larger circulation of the Atlantic and Indian oceans with a large surface area where evaporation takes place. Then there are some like the city mega-projects that require a huge amount of social infrastructure that's hard to build, take a look at some of China's mega construction where they've tried to build cities out of whole cloth but the people haven't really come so they're just empty.
truthteller578 7y ago
One could say the west as a society got a severe depression/mental illness: shrinking population, religious belief in imminent climate catastrophe, exaggerated shame for colonial period, fear of changing "natural state" of the earth in the slightest are evidence of that.

What's caused the death of the megaproject in the last 50 years? Even if they weren't realized (and most weren't), all these megaprojects were fascinating exercises in creativity and sheer ambition.

mhh__ 7y ago

Is the ISS not a megaproject?

thefounder 7y ago
Not really. It's a difficult project though. A mega project would be a self sustained colony on a bigger ISS. Something like Elysium.
- lifeformed 7y ago
  The ISS is the most expensive project ever, it surely qualifies. A space colony would be more like a gigaproject.

flohofwoe 7y ago

Unintended ecological catastrophes like the disappearing of the Aral Sea? The Soviets were really big into mega-projects (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_river_reversal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_river_reversal, they actual wanted to reverse the Aral Sea shrinking with that too). Thankfully they came to their senses (and probably also ran out of money anyway).

UweSchmidt 7y ago

I guess megaprojects need a strong economy, a high birth rate and low wages. This provides an environment and culture where many people will work for cheap under often tough and dangerous circumstances, for a long period of time. These days labour is expensive and the stock market needs success every quarter, so products are rushed to the market and everything is leveraged through mass production, outsourcing and automation. Our economies are not able to do megaprojects anymore.

pjc50 7y ago

Cost-benefit studies and the desire to privatise everything? Most of the proposed megaprojects were, like the Space Race, more demonstrations of national power than coherent plans. It's not a coincidence how China and the Soviet Union were big fans of megaprojects. Not to mention climate change. If there is to be a megaproject, it has to be an anti-climate-change one. Otherwise we're engaged in the worldwide megaproject of making earth slightly less habitable.

jeanlucas 7y ago

One more reason, given the huge amounts of salt all the new area would be a wasteland, and quite honestly just more space to fight

dmitriid 7y ago

Until the 80s we believed that we had unlimited supply of cheap energy. We no longer believe that. This affected a lot of thinking, planning, and creativity. In the 50s-60s people dreamed of megaprojects. Now we look at a megaproject and go: "well, no. it will take too much effort and power with no tangible benefit".

userulluipeste 7y ago
"Now we look at a megaproject and go: «well, no. it will take too much effort and power with no tangible benefit»." My thought about this was that we ceased the rush for bigger and went looking for smarter.
zokier 7y ago
> Until the 80s we believed that we had unlimited supply of cheap energy. We no longer believe that. Atlantropa would have helped there a lot :)

isostatic 7y ago

Can you define a megaproject?

Sharlin 7y ago

Megaprojects are alive and well, just not in the West.

splike 7y ago
Could you give examples of megaprojects happening outside of the west?
- isostatic 7y ago
  Could you give an example of something you consider a megaproject in the past? Chances are similar projects are underway
- Sharlin 7y ago
  The Three Gorges Dam certainly qualifies. I'd also count Chinese cities, even if not a single entity: China has used as much concrete in a few years as the US used in the whole 20th century. What has been happening on the Arabian peninsula is also pretty ridiculous as far as urban development goes. There are the various megaskyscrapers; the top ten tallest buildings in the world are all built in the 2010s, six of them are in China and only one in the West. Of the top 20 tallest buildings, all but one are built in this millennium. Another project that probably deserves a mention is the ongoing effort to reclaim land from the sea in Singapore. One Western example is a planned railway tunnel under the Gulf of Finland connecting Helsinki and Tallinn, the capitals of Finland and Estonia respectively. It would be the longest undersea tunnel in the world if ever built. We're probably going to see quite a few megaprojects related to climate change in the future. Assuming we actually want to stop it and not just talk about it.

rtkwe 7y ago

A lot of them just aren't great ideas to start with. This for example would create a lot of land but much of it would be pretty salty so wouldn't grow food very well. In addition the remaining water would slowly get saltier and saltier eventually probably dying similar to the Dead Sea, granted this would take a while but it's a definite negative, the Med is already saltier than most of the ocean because it's relatively isolated from the larger circulation of the Atlantic and Indian oceans with a large surface area where evaporation takes place. Then there are some like the city mega-projects that require a huge amount of social infrastructure that's hard to build, take a look at some of China's mega construction where they've tried to build cities out of whole cloth but the people haven't really come so they're just empty.

truthteller578 7y ago

One could say the west as a society got a severe depression/mental illness: shrinking population, religious belief in imminent climate catastrophe, exaggerated shame for colonial period, fear of changing "natural state" of the earth in the slightest are evidence of that.