The greatest challenge in attempting to design a new city is not what goes into it. Residential, commercial, social, educational, logistical (i.e., government and infrastructure) spaces are common and required elements of any modern municipality. The challenge is in determining how those choices will play out in the future. As a city that has been rebuilt in the relatively recent past, Chicago illustrates many of the successes and failures of urban planning. The successes (e.g., an undeveloped lakefront for all Chicagoans) correctly anticipated human and communal interests, allowing numerous generations to appreciate and champion the results and their decision-makers. The failures (e.g., Rockwell Gardens, Robert Taylor Homes, or Cabrini Green) are assumed to have been the result of good intentions and best-practices, no matter how wrong the results once in practice. And so, a neo-Chicago built atop an abandoned Lake Forest, IL will have its share of winning and losing choices. The winners will remain for many generations and the loser will quickly be plowed under and built over.
It is therefore my opinion that the success of a green pasture project is not in the decisions made above ground, but beneath the walkways and streets. A city above ground is ever-changing according to the shifting needs or the quirks of style. Below ground offers an opportunity to layout a sub-city that would make it easier to weather the changing trends above. Interestingly enough this is not a new idea, although to the best of my knowledge the only place it has been implemented, on a large-scale, is at Disneyworld in Orlando, FL.
Disgusted that guests of Disneyland were besought by garbage haulers, delivery trucks, repairmen and headless cartoon characters on smoke-breaks, Walt Disney began planning Disneyworld within weeks of its predecessor’s opening. From the outset Walt planned to hide the inner-workings of his cartoon world below the park in a series of interconnection tunnels. This was accomplished in a similar manor to the creation of the sewer system in post-fire Chicago. Instead of digging down into the earth, the tunnels were built above ground and the level of the surrounding land was raised/back-filled to make a new ground elevation. While in Disneyworld no one is the wiser, hints of this strategy can be seen in older Chicago neighborhoods where many houses have an exposed, below grade, lower-level and steps leading from the sidewalk up to the first-floor. What we now perceive as a raised first-floor was originally the second storey and the exposed basement was at street level.
What advantages would a buried tunnel system offer neo-Chicago …beside the distinction of “City on A Hill” due to a number of infrastructural sublevels? The following is a brief list of strategies and infrastructure items that may be maximized if a sizable, uniformly gridded, underground tunnel network was built prior to laying a city overtop.
Overview
The sizable, uniformly gridded, underground tunnel network would be large enough to integrate at least 2.5times the amount of space currently required for all sewage, waste management, communications, electrical, geo-thermal, railways, roadways, etc logistically necessary to operate a city. The extra space assumes that in the future new or replacement systems will need to be laid in without having to first tear out the old system. This would allow the old system to continue operating until the new systems was fully constructed, tested and ready for implementation. The underground network would in fact be several layers of infrastructure, one atop the next.
The Bottom – Sub Level 08
At the lowest level would be a geo-thermal grid for stabilizing the interior temperatures of all structures built on the surface. With a stable interior temperature averaging around 70 degrees heating and cooling cost would be greatly reduced along with the corresponding fuel consumption. Placing the geo-thermal system first would allow it to be set out horizontally, an economically impossible option in an existing city due to the shear amount of buildings and infrastructure in the way.
Sub Level 07 & 06
Immediately above the geo-thermal would be three or four strategically placed waste water treatment plants. Utilizing gravity, sewage lines would run down to these plants which would incorporate facilities for harvesting struvite granules and other fertilizers and resources. One level above would be a water reservoir in which the city’s grey water and run off would collect and await use. Uses for which grey water was adequate would draw directly from this aquifer and cost less due to their low/no treatment expense. Potable water would be produced in the bottom level treatment plants from water gravity-drawn from the run-off reservoir. As needed this would be supplemented by post-sewage, grey water stores surrounding the waste-water treatment facilities.
Sub Levels 05, 04 & 03
In order to greatly reduce the physical footprint of above ground transportation, making more room for green space, sublevels 05, 04 & 03 would relocate commercial truck traffic, the passenger subway system and a material transport train structure underground. I envision that these systems would consist of concentric circles radiating out from the city center. The commercial truck and material transport trains would merge and ascend above ground at strategically located points on the furthest out concentric circle. At these points vast intermodal ports would be located for train transportation of materials across the country or on containers ships globally via the Great Lakes. Next to these intermodal ports would be passenger and cargo airports. For passenger air travel the passenger subway systems would stop at the airports, similar to how the EL does now with O’Hare and Midway Airports.
Sub Level 02
Sub Level 02 would act as a filtration system for carbon, methane and other gases produced by the levels below. The specific technologies needed and available would change over time and so this space would initially be made up of large open cavities into which technologies can be built.
Sub Level 01
The final level is by far the most complex and yet necessary. It is here that a robust grid of interconnected tunnels is required. I envision that each tunnel might span 25 feet in width and 15 feet in height. In these tunnels would be the electrical and communication/data lines necessary to power and interconnect the city, as well as the primary sewer and drainage lines leading to lower levels. Also in these passage ways would be the air-intake and venting lines for the lower levels. The greatest challenge for designing this level of the city is in laying out the systems so that each can be clearly recognized and differentiated now and in the future. Furthermore there is the challenge of managing the logistics of workers from many different trades sharing a common work-space.
Managing the Magical Kingdom of Neo-Chicago
Again, Disneyworld offers a template from which municipal leaders and designers can draw examples. Other potential research for management models include ongoing NASA studies for creating livable bases on Mars or the Moon’s surface. While this may sound purely sci-fi, the logic is not otherworldly. NASA’s research delves deeply into simplifying complex systems in limited spaces so that people can achieve greater levels of success and comfort.
As has been the case with cities throughout history, the visual landscape of neo-Chicago would change with the whims of architectural style and generational neighborhood predilections; however, the disruptions to the city’s environment, economics and energy would be greatly mitigated by its substructure programmed for urban plug and play.
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