The Event Horizon

1. ``Guest'' Editorial: City of Haze

As a change from `torturing' poor soul with my ramblings, I though I'd let you be tortured by yourselves, so to speak. (In fact, you'll find that I've written surprisingly little: most of the stuff is contributed by you, the SFAS members. This is great and I hope it can be kept up.)

What follows is a (much shortened) discussion that came up on the SFAS mailing list due to the current haze situation in South-east Asia. The topic was: ``What if a city could rearrange itself when it is unseen due to haze?'' Take it away, guys:

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From: keithlim@pobox.com (keith lim)

Subject: The city-rearranging haze

[...] The shuffling takes place on the building level (or equivalent: cave, mountain, etc.), with secondary infrastructure (roads, rivers) adjusting themselves accordingly. It all makes sense when rearranged: nothing like a house ending up at the bottom of a river or a bridge in the middle of dry land, etc. It's a regular city, except all the people are very confused and lost. [...] High emphasis on aerial photography and communications systems. Public TV monitors everywhere flashing maps of the local area. A computer system to quickly locate buildings. Maybe the street signs get shuffled around too, so you still get the same set of streets (that are in a totally new network of connections). High rise buildings are actually pretty good for giving an overview of the local area-arrangement of roads and buildings. [...] Wouldn't that be an easy way to get to know your entire city or discover new experiences, places to shop or eat, that sort of thing. Just wait for the haze to descend, and when it lifts, take a walk around your neighbourhood.

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From: "vanessa chan" <vchan@entelchile.net>

Subject: Re: The city-rearranging haze

[...] If your city and all infrastructure rearranges itself, perhaps the easist thing would be for each building to have some form of location beacon, directed to a central receiver, which would automatically update the city map and directory, to which everyone would have access through their home computers. [...] It would also be a more egalitarian sort of city, without rich or poor neighbourhoods, and without zoning restrictions. A highly-developed cooperative sense might also develop, since whoever your neighbours are you would know that you had to cooperate with them in maintaining the local services, wherever 'local' might turn out to be.

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From: "Yuen Kit Mun" <yuenkm@fsl.fujitsu.com.sg>

Subject: Re: The city-rearranging haze

[...] Since the fog rearranges buildings, one way to not be rearranged would be to build large buildings. In the extreme limit, you could build a building as large as a city. [...] But what is a building? Do two buildings, connected by a passageway constitute a building? How about a whole stack of covered passageways connecting all the floors of two neighbouring buildings? What is the threshold? [...] I need to know to stop my outhouse and my dog's kennel from being moved to some other guy's back yard! [...] We could play with the definition of city too. How about cities that grow until their borders merge (Dallas - Fort Worth). If that is a city, what if a ``building break'' of bulldozed buildings was made to separate the two cities (to avoid buildings moving between them, causing Town Council management headaches. [...] Is there a minimum size for a city before it is a candidate for rearrangement? If so, new cities might control growth to not reach this minimum size. Existing cities might break up into smaller cities via ``building breaks''.

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From: Marimuthu <oberon@cyberway.com.sg>

Subject: Re: The city-rearranging haze

[...] Lets just say a building is an artificial structure that is physically connected. Two separate buildings would be considered as one is they are connected by a physical passageway (as opposed to, say, a mud track). So if you want your kennel to move with you, it must have either a physical connection to your house or be adjoined to your house. I think it's a good way to lose bad neighbors - just break the connection from your neighbour's house to the rest of the structure before the Haze descends. [...] As long as there is a connection, it is a single structure and it will not re-arranged. If there is a break, it is no longer considered as a single structure. [...] Let's just say that all cities, no matter how small, are subject to this. Remember, in addition to the local rearrangement, I'm thinking that this happens on a continental level as well. No longer will societies develop independent of each other! Imagine Eskimos meeting Kalahari tribes....

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