In a message dated 9/24/1999 2:37:52 AM Pacific Daylight Time, asa@nada.kth.se writes:
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I think this means that it will not be possible to generalise about nano cities; some might be built underground, other soar into the skies. The material constraints are still there, but so relaxed compared to current ones that the cities can indeed look like anything.
Oh yes, of course!!! This is why my paintings are not getting off the ground. The idea of archi-nan has tooooooooooo many possibilities. I can't seem to pick a theme and get painting, I do endless sketches of structures that look like anything from seed pods, to anemones to growing plants to women's behinds.. and I like them all! So I was actually hoping someone had seen some images. Closest to my heart so far is Roger Dean, for he uses colors that are not the usual "cold black gray metal with stars" so prevalent in SF and he uses organic shapes. The only thing I am SURE of is that the shapes will have a heck of a lot more curves than they do now.
>> However, all the wonderful ideas posted here assume a modernistic
planned city, with somebody who says "Hey! Let's build Transburg underground!" or "What if we made New Muse City *mobile*? >>
Well, I don't want my own Nan-city, just my hard-to-pin-down series of paintings about future cities.( musing on it.... If I did have a city it would be a musical theme I suppose...) Maybe a few series about them, and mobility is certainly one challenging ergonomic to portray.
>A more realistic situation would be the gradual retrofitting of current cities and the emergence of new cities, likely with even less central planning than today (given that the assumed level of nanotech is so strong there is no need for much centralization; in a feed scenario a la the Diamond Age other forms of cities make sense).
Yes, and No.
Conversion, from my understanding of it, would make it unnecessary to
piecemeal a city. One could '"retrofit," replacing nan with existing
materials (like people talk about redoing their dead bodies after cryo) with
assemblers, correct? Of course historians would want to preserve beautiful
places like New Orleans and Paris' left bank, etc.. and so we wouldn't lose
our old world places.(you could even reassemble a perfect nan version of it
so it would go on forever instead of rotting). Buildings would be "seeded",
instead of framed, poured, hung or plastered... and we are always looking
for a good antidote to the hated "Urban Sprawl". A planner would plan the
"growth" of the buildings, why not whole cities. They could even be planned
to grown over a certain time frame, as population increased.
And it would of course depend on legislation of nanotech, communities will either vote it *in* or *not*, out or fear or whatever. So cities who have nanotech will by and large be taking on quite a radical conversion, not piecemeal scattered factories and skyscrapers.