The Begich Towers: A Real Life Arcology 

i thought it was lindybeige🤦

Did you ever try Sim Tower?

You and me, same page *slaps script

Same. But they were my college days. I had no idea this even exists.

Did you ever manage to get them to launch into spce

In winter. With the tunnels blocked off by an avalanche. And the harbour by an iceberg.

Can you imagine what would happen if Jessica Fletcher or Miss Marple lived there?

it could be similar to the office drama.

So.... Deep Space Nine?

@@spookerd ... Shit, that _is_ just like DS9. I knew the idea seemed familiar, just couldn't place it.

I have a 2 bedroom condo available that we just acquired. It can be arranged!

A Canadian colleague mentioned this to me when we were talking about a place called Byker Wall, basically a long block of flats here in Newcastle UK. Canadian wall sounds better.

Beyond are the White walkers

Yep. Hiked over there many times. Much warmer.

I agree, spent a fair amount of time there.

Yes, easily hits over 70 in the summer. I live in Anchorage and visit Whittier several times every summer.

50 degrees Fahrenheit or celcius?

my first thought also. second thought is i need to revisit them, as niven & pournelle wrote superb sci-fi and it's 30 years since i read them.

Same here, must go find that again

At what point does it increase, in retrospect, to an ELE (Extinction Level Event)?

@@neonpowar3766 Good point. But it's remarkable that so few people live there!

I remember when the railroad built that it would spook a lot of people

i went when the railroad was still in, not really that spooky. but ive only been there once, currently live in petersburg down in the south east.

@@LordOfNihil I remember when the guys from the railroad built the tunnel they would stay at our hotel, some of the guys were creeped out cuz it was so dark building it

@@ladymopar2024 i don't recall the tunnel being very well lit, at least it wasn't when i went through. they probably improved the lighting when they replaced the rails with the roadway. of course i haven't seen it in its current form.

@@LordOfNihil yes it is very well lit now, but some of the guys got creeped out when they were building it. It is the longest tunnel that you can't see from end-to-end so we can boast that

Similarly, information should be gathered from how people have coped with one-way migration on earth. I have heard space people make idle speculation that no humans have ever moved away from everyone like that, which is obviously historically inaccurate.

Business Blaze Mega Projects Side Projects Top Tenz Today I Found Out Biographics Geographics Highlight History Xplrd Visual Politik EN The Simon Whistler Show I may have missed one. Visual Politk EN is now hosted by someone else. The Simon Whistler Show hasn't had updated content for a while. His new podcast not included.

AMAC CAMA ...wtf is a cuppa?

@@branon6565 A cuppa is English or Australian slang for a cup of tea or coffee. In my case coffee.

Word!

I like how most of the top comments are for canadian places :D

Not quite the oldest. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anderton_Boat_Lift

@@agentcooper497 Thanks for the information, really interesting to know about this place!

@@agentcooper497 We do it a bit different in my neck of the woods. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Chute_Marine_Railway

One of Canada's greatest engineers. Constructing a 200km canal, and the entire history of "Bytown" now Ottawa is truly fascinating. Bytown, the Mos Eisley of Canada :)

yes

@@Darksh0t009 Did you catch the fish inside the building? Is all your food produced inside the building?

@@Darksh0t009 Wow, didn't expect that. Then my point is moot of course. Except for the jobs but if you can produce enough food in the building then jobs aren't as important.

Complete self-sufficiency isn’t a criterion for being considered an arcology. Simply having mixed-use developments within a connected complex of buildings, stressing integration with the surrounding environment, while avoiding land waste by developing vertically more than horizontally, is enough. Having schools, government services, residential and commercial spaces, _largely_ within a building complex with shared services, would certainly suffice. For ecological reasons, preferably food would come from nearby, from the surrounding countryside, and not be imported from far away via refrigerated truck… but your apple wouldn’t have to have been grown hydroponically in a building basement: it could simply come from an apple orchard which the arcology overlooks. Montreal’s RESO area could be considered a budding arcology, for instance. It’s too loosely-connected at the moment, but the framework is there. And Chicago’s Marina City from the ’60s, the Bertrand Goldberg building, was meant to be a vertical neighborhood, with offices, homes, a school, grocery stores, and recreation facilities, all under one roof. That’s an early precursor to the idea of arcologies. Really, the main criterion to be considered an arcology is avoiding land waste. A vertical city that frees up surrounding farmland which then feeds the city would be the ideal arcology, no sun lamps or hydroponics required.

@@danopticon Just checked the wiki and unless I misinterpreted something, self-sufficiency was a requirement in the first SciFi books that dealt with the idea. As it's a tiny bit impractical this was dropped or reduced for modern definitions of arcology projects. So I gues the answer is "It depends." ;-) I was going by the older, stricter definition but if anyone wants the call Begich an arcology that is fine too.

Yes please!

Man I miss living there

He pretty much covered it all.

Yeah, Britain has some amazing ones. Always makes me wonder how they built them a couple of thousand years ago 🤔

It was. However it didn't reach STATEHOOD until 1959.

@@samsamson391 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska

@@Hobbes4ever ...the definition of "state" is quite broad. Even the Vatican is a "state".

graduated from Service High myself. i love whittier

Agreed! Houston high here.

@@akkoyote I went to HHS! What a small world lol

@@russyp anchorage didn't have a houston high when i went to school. where is houston high?

@@carllarsen lol I live in Anchorage, but HHS is in Houston out near Wasilla and Big Lake

The second place that sprung to mind was the arcology depicted in High-rise by J. G. Ballard and particularly the building depicted in the 2015 film derivative. Wholesome.

The builders of Biosphere II suffered severe ignorance of concrete and what happens when it cures. Curing concrete sucks up massive volumes of Oxygen. Which had to be replenished in the Biosphere. I do believe the people suffered "too much togetherness", but hypoxia could have played a role also.

No, I don't know what it means either.

from wikipedia: Arcology, a portmanteau of "architecture" and "ecology", is a field of creating architectural design principles for very densely populated, ecologically low-impact human habitats.

@@LordOfNihil thanks😊

I appreciate the Wikipedia reference. Paolo Saleri near Phoenix AZ founded Arcosanti, also meant to be an "arcology". [I was disappointed to hear that that community structure was built without any bathrooms -- that certainly tempered my enthusiasm for Soleri's "VISIONARY" status. That is apparently a problem with inexperienced architects. The student union building of a university campus was a winning student design and had that problem in it's blueprint stage. Very capacious bathrooms "his" and "hers" were tucked into the design to make it practical.]

I encountered the term in the novel Oath of Fealty.

Sounds better than "war grouper" though.

@@svennoren9047 lol very true