Submitted via IRC for Bytram
In the 160 or so years since the first skyscrapers were built, technological innovations of many kinds have allowed us to build them to reach astonishing heights. Today there is a 1,000-meter (167-story) building under construction in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Even taller buildings are possible with today's structural technology.
But people still don't really live in skyscrapers the way futurists had envisioned, for one reason: Elevators go only up and down. In the "Harry Potter" movies, "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" and others, we see cableless boxes that can travel not just vertically but horizontally and even diagonally. Today, that future might be closer than ever. A new system invented and being tested by German elevator producer ThyssenKrupp would get rid of cables altogether and build elevators more like magnetic levitation trains, which are common in Japan and China.
Source: https://phys.org/news/2017-08-reengineering-elevators-21st-century-cities.html
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday August 10 2017, @04:39AM
Well, you mentioned a point right there.
My view is that I don't care. Most of these really large projects are probably just prestige projects and I'm fine with that. If it should turn out that there is an advantage to living high, then these sorts of projects will eventually find it in addition to nurturing the engineering and construction ability to make such buildings.